Last-day drama has a familiar ring

What does a team do if it already has clinched a playoff spot and comes down to the last game of the regular season tied for the division title? The scenario is not foreign to Red Sox personnel such as Larry Lucchino, Theo Epstein, Charles Steinberg, and most notably, Bob Tewksbury and Craig Shipley, all of whom were with the San Diego Padres when they played the Dodgers on the last day of the 1996 season tied for the NL West lead.

It's conceivable that the Sox could face a similar scenario with the Yankees, who lost yesterday in a makeup game to Toronto and are now two games behind the Sox with six games left. The biggest difference, of course, is that the Sox and Yankees will not be going head-to-head. The Sox finish the season at home against the Twins; the Yankees will be in Baltimore.

Tewksbury and Shipley played for the Padres; the other three were in the club's front office. The Dodgers elected to start Ramon Martinez, who later pitched for the Sox, then pulled him after one inning, because they decided that setting up their pitching for the postseason was more important than winning the division.

The Padres took a different course.

"I remember being in the clubhouse after we came from behind to win on Saturday," said Tewksbury, speaking by phone from Florida, where he serves as the team's sports psychology coach during instructional league play. "Ken Caminiti, who was our star player and our leader, said something I'll never forget. He said, 'We didn't come here to be the wild-card team. We came here to win the division. We've played all year, this is what we came for. It's a matter of pride.' "

Tewksbury, then 35, went 10-10 for the Padres that season, but struggled down the stretch and was yanked from the rotation after getting lit up by the Giants Sept. 17. He was pitching with 12 days between starts when manager Bruce Bochy gave him the ball that Sunday afternoon in Dodger Stadium.

Shipley, Boston's vice president/international scouting, was a reserve infielder with the Padres.

"I think the consensus was that winning the division meant a lot," Shipley wrote in an e-mail yesterday.

"For me," Tewksbury said, "this was my playoff game. I didn't sleep a wink the night before. I didn't want Caminiti mad at me."

Kevin Towers, who later would be Epstein's mentor, had just been hired as GM by Lucchino, the Padres' CEO. Towers loaded up on veterans like Tewksbury, Greg Vaughn, Rickey Henderson, and Fernando Valenzuela in a bid to get the Padres to the playoffs for the first time since 1984. The Padres went into Dodger Stadium that weekend and beat the home team in extra innings Friday night, came from behind to win on Saturday, then turned to Tewksbury.

Tewksbury shut out the Dodgers for seven innings on three hits. The Padres won in the 11th, 2-0, on a base hit by Chris Gwynn, younger brother of Hall of Famer Tony Gwynn.

"One of the great quotes ever came out of the game," Tewksbury said, "when Tony said, 'Today, I'm Chris Gwynn's brother.' "

Tewksbury pitched 13 seasons in the big leagues. He never got the chance to pitch in the postseason (the Padres and Dodgers were swept in the first round in '96). That regular-season finale was as close, he said, as he ever would come to knowing what winning a title felt like.

"I'll never forget that day," he said. "For me, personally, that was the highlight of my career, the single happiest moment of my life in baseball. I can't fathom the feeling of what running out there after winning the World Series was like for the 2004 Red Sox.

"I can tell you this much. I'm sure the players on the 2007 Red Sox who were there in '04 remember that moment in a heartbeat, and would like nothing more to replicate it."

Only a division title?

"I know this," Tewksbury said. "Every time I called the team that winter, they answered the phone with, 'NL Western Division champion San Diego Padres.' That sounded pretty good to me."

Swing time

Manny Ramírez and Kevin Youkilis both hit on the field yesterday, according to club spokesman John Blake, Youkilis for about 45 minutes and Ramírez for about an hour. They were joined by Bobby Kielty. Brad Mills threw to them. According to Terry Francona, Blake wrote in an informal release, both Ramírez and Youkilis had a good workout, but the manager made no commitment as to when either would play.

Gordon Edes can be reached at edes@globe.com.