Padres history (May 4): Randy Jones makes quick work of Phillies

Randy Jones never bothered to wait for a hitter to get settled in the box. His own outfielders even tried his patience on the rare occasions they had to track down a fly ball surrendered by the Padres’ sinker-baller.

“It used to irritate the hell out of me waiting for them to get back in position,” Jones said this week with a laugh. “Hurry up. Let’s go.”

Jones had an especially hellacious pace on this date — May 4 — in 1977.

He teamed with the Phillies’ Jim Kaat in the fastest game in Padres history, a 4-1 victory completed in one hour and 29 minutes in front of a crowd of 10,021 at San Diego Stadium.

Of the two notoriously quick workers, it was Jones who went the distance, fetching 19 ground balls while striking out one and walking one. Philadelphia’s lone run scored in the third inning on Garry Maddox’s single, which Jones helped erase himself with a double in a two-hit game in which he scored a run.

Kaat wasn’t nearly as strong as Jones, allowing four runs — three earned — on eight hits and two walks before he was lifted for Ron Reed with one out in the seventh inning.

“The game was whizzing by until they (lifted) Kaat,” Jones recalled. “I was disappointed. They weren’t going to score anyway, but Reed was a human rain delay. He had to have added 10 minutes to the game.”

The first 6 1/2 innings took an hour to complete. Jones and Kaat breezed through six innings in 52 minutes the previous summer, according to the San Diego Union.

“We knew it was going to be a quick game,” Jones recalled. “Kaat only needed (a few) pitches to warm up between innings. I’d throw five and throw it down. Why waste a couple pitches?”

Jones learned later from Kaat that the quick 7 p.m. affair allowed his Philadelphia counterpart to get to a Kenny Rankin concert with plenty of time to spare. Jones grabbed a bite to eat with his wife after picking up his second win as the reigning NL Cy Young Award winner.

He’d developed quite a bit since the Padres drafted him in the fifth round out of Chapman College to reach that height.

The Orange County kid, of course, didn’t have much of a fastball in those days, either.

“But I knew how to win ballgames,” he said. “That’s the one thing I brought with me.”

Minor league coach Warren Hacker began schooling Jones on the finer points of throwing his sinking fastball in 1973 as he shot from Alexandria in the Texas League all the way to San Diego. He lost 22 games his sophomore season in the majors (4.45 ERA) before pitching coach Tom Morgan challenged Jones to tighten his game in the spring of 1975.

Let the hitters get themselves out. Let your defense work for you. Work quickly.

It all sounded good to Jones.

He led the NL with a 2.24 ERA while winning 20 games that year and won the Cy Young in 1976 while leading the majors with 25 complete games, 40 starts and 315 1/3 innings. His 1.027 WHIP was the lowest in the league and his 2.74 ERA was tied for fifth.

“It was like,” Jones said, “a light bulb went off.”