A FEVER PITCH; BROWN WHIFFS 16 AS PADRES TAKE GAME 1 : SAN DIEGO 2, HOUSTON 1.

Byline: Richie Whitt Fort Worth Star-Telegram 

And you thought Kevin Brown was too boring to do impersonations.

Giving his best Randy Johnson imitation against none other than baseball's reigning strikeout king, the stoic-but-spectacular Brown suffocated the National League's most potent offense in a 16-strikeout, two-hit masterpiece that gave the Padres a 2-1 victory over the Astros at the Astrodome on Tuesday.

``He was as dominant as a pitcher can be without throwing a no-hitter,'' said Astros manager Larry Dierker, whose team set franchise records for runs and home runs in a 102-win regular season but now trails the best-of-five Division Series 1-0 with Game 2 tomorrow. ``When our team gives up only two runs, 90 percent of the time we're going to win. But Kevin was so good, he put us in the other 10 percent.''

Jim Leyritz produced a bases-loaded sacrifice fly in the fifth inning and Greg Vaughn drilled a solo homer in the eighth for the Padres, but Brown was essentially a one-man show.

With a sailing 95-mph fastball to complement his 88-mph sinker, Brown approached a postseason record with his career-high 16 strikeouts. His Astro-nomical performance included striking out every Houston batter at least once, allowing only two runners to reach third base, only four balls out of the infield, and handcuffing Houston's star quartet of Craig Biggio, Jeff Bagwell, Derek Bell and Moises Alou into 0 for 11 with eight strikeouts.

In the history of baseball's postseason, only Bob Gibson's 17-strikeout game in the 1968 World Series topped Brown.

``I didn't think I had great stuff, but it must have been moving pretty good,'' said Brown, who threw 118 pitches (77 strikes) on three days' rest. ``Obviously, going against Randy, I needed something special and I thought that was pretty good for me.''

Only when Brown left the game for fellow Cy Young Award candidate Trevor Hoffman after the eighth inning did the Astros have a prayer. Bill Spiers doubled and - after outs by Bell and Bagwell - scored on Ken Caminiti's throwing error, which was forced by Alou's infield single to make it 2-1 in the ninth. Hoffman, however, fought back from a 3-0 count and got Carl Everett to fly out to end the game.

The Padres improved to 86-0 this season when leading after eight innings and a remarkable 175-0 in that situation since July 24, 1996.

Johnson, who had been 5-0 at the dome with four shutouts with the Astros, wasn't at his best, striking out nine but also allowing nine hits.

In the sixth, he threw a wicked, sidearm slider on the outside corner to Tony Gwynn, who calmly poked it down the left-field line for a leadoff double. After Vaughn's infield single and a broken-bat bloop single by Caminiti loaded the bases, Leyritz lofted a 2-2 fastball to the warning track to bring home Gwynn. In the eighth, Vaughn smashed a 2-0 slider into the left-field seats for insurance.

``I didn't pitch that bad,'' Johnson said. ``But (Brown) was dialed in and focused, just better than me today.''

SINGLE GAME POSTSEASON STRIKEOUTS

The most strikeouts in a postseason game with pitcher, team, opponent, and date:

17: Bob Gibson, St. Louis vs. Detroit, Oct. 2, 1968 (WS)

16: Kevin Brown, San Diego at Houston, Sept. 29, 1998 (DS)

15: Sandy Koufax, Los Angeles at N.Y. Yankees, Oct. 2, 1963 (WS)

15: Mike Mussina, Baltimore at Cleveland, Oct. 11, 1997 (ALCS)

15: Livan Hernandez, Florida vs. Atlanta, Oct. 12, 1997 (NLCS)

14: Carl Erskine, Brooklyn vs. N.Y. Yankees, Oct. 2, 1953 (WS)

14: Joe Coleman, Detroit vs. Oakland, Oct. 10, 1972 (ALCS)

14: John Candelaria, Pittsburgh vs. Cincinnati, Oct. 7, 1975 (NLCS)

14: Mike Boddicker, Baltimore vs. Chicago, Oct. 6, 1983 (ALCS)

14: Mike Scott, Houston vs. New York, Oct. 8, 1986 (NLCS)

CAPTION(S):

Photo, Box

PHOTO (Color) San Diego's Kevin Brown gave up two hits in eight innings against Houston.

David J. Phillip/Associated Press

BOX: SINGLE GAME POSTSEASON STRIKEOUTS (see text)