BLISS IN PARADISE : Steve Garvey and San Diego--It’s Been a Perfect Match

Up in the Shea Stadium sky, thunder was clapping, giving the rain its proper cue to come on down. Members of the San Diego Padre baseball team sprinted for the dugout, and Steve Garvey ran, too, raindrops beginning to fall.

And as Garvey neared the dugout, he heard the daily screams, the pleas for his attention, the pleas for eye contact. STEEEEEVE! STEEEEEVE! GARVEEEEEY! GARVEEEEEY! These were kids screaming, Met fans, but also baseball fans. A Steve Garvey autograph was worth something, they thought. Worth maybe five bucks at school the next day.

So Garvey stopped, and, as raindrops kept falling on his head, he signed and signed. His teammates, dry, watched from the dugout. Garvey didn’t mind it at all, because signing autographs and meeting people and making friends and making contacts and making smiles have become his obsession. He is on Earth for a purpose, he says, here to improve mankind. He believes this sincerely.

And, thus, signing autographs, in the rain or in the sun, is a profound way for him to influence. Ten years ago when he was a Dodger, he introduced an autograph clinic designed for the young fan. He set ground rules for seeking autographs, a set of easy steps to follow:

a) Always bring a clean piece of paper.

b) Always have a pen ready.

c) Always say “Mr.” and “Please” and “Thank you.”

d) If you mail a letter to a player asking for an autograph, always enclose a self-addressed, stamped envelope.

Ten years later, the rules are even more detailed. For instance, he will not sign skin, for health reasons obviously, preferring instead to give the child a handshake.

“There was a study done that said 50% of autographs are lost within 48 hours, anyway,” Garvey said. “Besides, it’s the interaction with your face that’s important.”

He is a surrogate parent to all children. In Chicago, fat kids knocked over skinny kids to get to Garvey, and he said: “We have to do it one at a time or else I can’t sign these autographs.”

Then a kid screamed: “Hey Garvey, give me a ball.”

Garvey: “What’s the magic word?”

Kid: “ Please , give me a ball.”

Garvey: “Say: Mr. Garvey , please give me a ball.”

Kid: “ Mr. Garvey , please give me a ball.”

Garvey: “Not this trip, but maybe next trip in. I’m sure your parents taught you something about manners. You have to learn a lesson.”

And so this is the Garv, three years later, three years after he became an ex-Dodger. He is the same, really, only he has rarely been more relaxed than he is now, his .303 batting average serving as legitimate proof. And although his divorce to Cyndy is not final--”These things take time,” he says--the ordeal with her is basically over. He still sees his two daughters regularly, and he dates one woman regularly, although it’s not clear how serious they are. Inevitably, he will find the perfect candidate’s wife and marry her.

And politics obviously are in the back of everyone’s mind. Today, while he still plays baseball, his successful business--the Garvey Marketing Group--is his main off-the-field focus. But last week, he visited the White House, as honorary chairman of the Multiple Sclerosis Society, and saw his friend and idol, Ronald Reagan. When in New York, he’d get back late from night games and be up at dawn, just so he could be on ABC’s Good Morning America and CBS’ Morning News.

And although he denies this, remember the year 1992, for that probably will be the year, as a 43-year-old, he runs for the U.S. Senate, taking the seat vacated by then 80-year-old-plus Alan Cranston.

“Steve Garvey looks good and talks good,” said Michael Kaye, the media consultant for Sen. Bill Bradley, a former basketball star turned politician. “He’d be a formidable candidate who should be taken seriously. If I were the democrat in the Senate I’d be looking over my shoulder.”

Garvey, although he has not chosen a party, is considered a likely Republican.

Said Garvey: “I think it’s time to start to understate the whole subject of politics. It’s been overstated the last couple of years. People ask me: ‘When will you run?’ . . . Apparently, there’s no doubt in a lot of people’s minds (that I’ll run). To be perfectly honest, it isn’t fair that people have used my personality and the sacrifices I make because I want to as an indication that I want to be in a political office.”

So in other words, Garvey signs autographs in the rain, kisses women in wheelchairs, visits hospitals, contributes money to the arts, responds to all fan mail, memorizes people’s first names, helps fellow baseball players plan for the future and does interview after interview because he wants to, not because he wants to be president.

He says he is not phony.

And the tendency is to believe him.

Steve Garvey grew up in Tampa, Fla., where he was reared perfectly, an only child in a home fit for a king or president. Not that Joe and Millie Garvey were rich, because they were far from it. But Joe and Millie Garvey were reared correctly and, consequently, reared their son correctly.

So Steve Garvey is a product of his parents and of his parents’ parents. Parts of him belong to Joe Garvey Sr., Steve’s paternal grandfather who was a police sergeant in Rockville Centre, N.Y. Parts of him belong to his father, a World War II veteran who drove a bus for a living.

Parts of him belong to his maternal grandmother, Philippine Winkler, who was crippled by a spinal disease in her 30s and who lived with Steve during the formative years of his life. Parts of him belong to his mother, Millie, who taught him to plan his day, who taught him to press his shirts, who taught him to have the neatest locker in the National League.

He is real, because he is them.

And perhaps the most influential time were the moments he spent with Winkler, a woman who could walk, but could not use her arms. Many times, Steve would be left alone with her, many times on a Saturday night while his parents were out. He would comb her hair. He would cook dinner, listening to her recipes and carrying them out.

After school, he could go out and play, but it was stressed to him that he not stray too far. Because Joe, a bus driver, and Millie, an auto insurance adjuster, worked, Winkler would often be home alone. They would make lunch for her, put a straw in a drink and leave it there. If she needed anything, she could call Steve.

Their messages were simple. A bell was attached to a string just outside the house, and Winkler would tug on it with her mouth if she needed Steve. He’d hear it and come running. Also, she would flick the porch light on and off with her chin.

“He’d come flying,” his father, Joe Garvey Jr., said.

Steve says today he didn’t mind. She was his grandmother and she was a pretty fun gal with a good wit. And it’s obvious that this is why he relates so well to the crippled. After he’d taken batting practice one day and ran into the clubhouse, he saw a woman sitting in a wheelchair. He kissed her, for no apparent reason other than that he wanted to. Another day, his secretary passed along a message:

“A lady whose son you visited at the hospital yesterday called to say thank you. Her son made it through the night. She says you’re the reason.”

Said Garvey: “Just from being with my grandmother, my maturity escalated. And now I’m in tune to the needs of people. It was a large responsibility, taking care of a human being. . . . A lot haven’t been exposed to that situation. Fortunately, at an early age, I learned.”

But few knew of this special relationship, because he hardly spoke of it. His baseball coach at Chamberlain High in Tampa, Charley Lyle, says he never knew of Winkler even though Garvey used to come over to his house often. But Lyle also knew Steve was not the type to hang around. Steve Garvey has never hung around. Everything he does has a purpose.

He brings his fan mail on road trips with him, piles and piles of it. And all of it is read, either by him or his employees. Once, a woman wrote him, begging for money, telling him that her four children were starving. But Garvey does not help individuals directly, preferring to work through charities. An elementary school teacher would use him as an example every day in class, and once had her pupils write letters to him on the back of their spelling tests.

One letter said: “Please come see our teacher. I’m getting sick and tired of hearing about you.”

It was signed “Not your fan, Joey.”

It’s all answered. His office organizes the letters, so all he has to do is sign a baseball card or a photo and seal the envelope. He does this on the airplane, in his hotel room.

Once, he and Kurt Bevacqua drove two hours from spring training in Yuma, Ariz., to Phoenix. Bevacqua drove; Garvey worked. One spring training, Garvey and Bevacqua rented a condominium together at a golf course.

“We spent two exciting nights,” Bevacqua said. “One night, we looked at Gentleman’s Quarterly, and the next night, he read me the New York Times and the Washington Post.”

He got this way because of Millie, whose side of the family is responsible for Steve’s flawless hair that doesn’t blow in the wind. Millie always had a plan.

“On a Saturday, I would plan on what I’d do, as far as cleaning the house, doing the wash, ironing, grocery shopping and I’d stick to it,” Millie Garvey says today. “I might write a lot of notes to myself.”

Today, her son writes memos to himself. His days are planned months in advance, his months are planned years in advance, his years are planned decades in advance. By August, for instance, nearly his entire off-season is charted. Bevacqua came to Garvey one day last season, asking if he’d play in his golf tournament that winter. Garvey looked in his daily planner; Garvey’s manager, an old friend named John Boggs, looked at his. Garvey had himself playing in a celebrity tennis tournament that day; Boggs had him doing a speaking engagement in Palm Springs. This was four months in advance.

The point is that Garvey prefers to think ahead. When Tommy Lasorda saw him play in the minors, he told Garvey he could make $50,000 some day. Garvey, being a contemporary thinker, told Lasorda he was thinking more in line with $100,000 a year.

“I think three-to-five years ahead minimum,” Garvey said. “I have a short-term plan, a five-year plan and a decade plan.”

Millie downplays her influence. She seems uncomfortable talking about it. Those who knew Steve as a child, though, say she dominated that household.

“From what Steve would tell me, he loved both his parents, but I got the impression his mother was the dominant factor in the family,” Lyle said. “His father is a low-key guy, but it appeared to me that she was one that kept everything straight. . . . She ran a tight ship. The house and yard was immaculate. Steve was always immaculately dressed.”

Naturally, Joe Garvey, the father, was impressed by all this. He’d wake Steve early before school, and come back minutes later to see if Steve had obeyed. He always did.

And if Millie was the disciplinarian, Joe was the mediator. He is incredibly pleasant, embarrassingly so. Today, Joe and Millie live in La Jolla, working for the Garvey Marketing Group. At work, Joe is the crime stopper, the one to calm everyone down. If there is a problem, call Joe. If you need a smile, call Joe. If you need an ear, call Joe. Just call him. He’s the poised one, the policeman.

So was Joe’s dad.

Some say Steve is more like Joe Garvey Sr., his grandfather, than anyone else. Joe Sr., a Judge Wopner look-alike, had been raised in a Catholic orphanage, because his father was killed working construction on the Panama Canal. His mother had died just months later. He later became a policeman in Rockville Centre, N.Y., and everyone knew him as Uncle Joe. He gave blood. This Irishman even spoke Italian, which was important since it was an Italian area.

During the depression, the family got by. They had an old car that had holes in the radiator. Uncle Joe, if he needed to get downtown, would fill the radiator with oatmeal and mix in water. The oatmeal would swell, fill the holes in the radiator and get them downtown.

“Every so often, my wife says Steve’s personality is a lot like my father’s,” says Joe Jr. “They’re both easy going. He (Joe Sr.) wasn’t excitable. He thought things over. And Steve, you rarely see him over-react or show anger. He might get upset, but he never shows it, even in a ballgame.”

In last year’s beanball brawl in Atlanta, videotapes show the Garv trying to hold people back. Good old Garv.

As for Joe Jr., he was a World War II veteran, who had been overseas in Japan. He had volunteered at age 17 to go in the Navy, and so he sailed the Pacific. On his ship, he naturally was the Master of Arms, the ship policeman, the ship good guy, the ship Garv. He remembers sailing to Japan, the second day after V-J day, remembers that the Japanese were still ready to fight.

“They were very hostile,” Joe Jr. said. “We didn’t leave our ship.”

When he came home, he was married and worked for Millie’s father, who owned a service station. He and Millie moved to Tampa a month before Steve was born. Joe drove first a city bus and then a greyhound bus. Once, he spent Christmas on the road.

Steve, born in 1948, had Joe’s eye’s, mouth and huge hands. Actually, Joe and Steve look alike today.

The Garv was reared in his family’s image. Steve was quarterback of the football team--he watched game films during lunch breaks--a baseball star and a member of the glee club.

He was voted most likely to succeed.

His classmates weren’t fools.

To this day, Steve Garvey regrets that Joe Garvey Sr. never saw him in a Dodger uniform, for Joe Garvey Sr. had been a Brooklyn Dodger fan. Joe Jr. remembers walking down Main Street in Rockville Centre and remembers how every radio in town was on at once, tuned to the Dodgers. It was stereo before its time.

But, today, the Dodgers are out of Garvey’s life. They were good times, but they’re old times. Steve, Millie and Joe are so glad to be in San Diego.

First of all, Steve is the Padres. They signed him with his image in mind. Joan Kroc, the owner, adores him.

“He has a high level of maturity,” she said. “He has his head on straight. But he always has had. He’s dependable, reliable, and he’s handsome. . . . He’d help anyone’s image, whether a sports team or shaving lotion.”

But how powerful is Steve Garvey within the organization? Some say he could get Dick Williams fired if he wanted. Who knows? As for Williams, he says he wouldn’t mind Garvey for a son-in-law. He tells a story of how Don Sutton, who once fought with Garvey when they both played in Los Angeles, apparently was interested in playing with the Padres this last winter. People asked Williams if he was interested in Sutton, and Williams said: “If we get Sutton, do we have to get rid of Garvey? No thanks.”

Garvey also helped design the new Padre pinstriped uniforms. His company organized the uniform fashion show, too. His office was in charge of a team calender and a McDonald’s TV commercial that features Kurt Bevacqua, Tim Flannery, Tony Gwynn and Carmelo Martinez moonwalking.

Said the Garv of his image: “That’s why (team president) Ballard (Smith) needed me. He could see things coming together, and he needed to add a sense of a proper way of doing things, the way things should be done. After winning the pennant last year, we had to continue to upgrade the team’s surroundings (i.e. uniforms). And we’ve not only improved cosmetically, but structurally.

“There’s a very strong difference between an $80,000 house and a $500,000 one. Our structure is stronger--the new Diamondvision scoreboard, the new turf, the season-ticket plan, more television games, pay cable, exposure in the press. Over the last year and a half, this team has had its awareness to the public raised 50%.”

Meanwhile, he is comfortable in San Diego. This is partly the reason why he is off to a hot start this season. Joe Jr. says he’s hitting as he did in his MVP year of 1974. And his business is booming. GMG has just moved to a new building, one with 4,700 square feet. It’s a marketing group, in that his company markets athletes, gets them speaking engagements and endorsements. It’s a small scale IMG (International Management Group), and Garvey even stole one of IMG’s clients, runner Rod Dixon.

The Garvey Marketing Group prides itself on giving players input into their business decisions. Tony Gwynn is not comfortable giving speeches to corporations, but he’s comfortable talking to kids. Garvey’s group understands this. Dixon left IMG because input wasn’t appreciated. Garvey’s clients include Dodger Steve Sax. “When I was a rookie, I got to spend time with him,” Sax said. “I was on Cloud 9. I was the luckiest guy in the world.” Jerry Reuss and Mike Marshall also are GMG clients.

And Garvey also promotes himself. He sells photos of last year’s famous playoff home run, a homer that still is frozen in time, as the Garv likes to describe it. The homer, in fact, is still cheered every day when it’s shown on the stadium television screen. Selling the photos is a shrewd business move.

And he’s no problem to his teammates. In Los Angeles, there had been tales of jealousy. There was the feeling that Garvey got the publicity and the endorsements and that it wasn’t fair. But his teammates were from the same era--the Ceys, the Lopeses the Russells, the Suttons. Sutton actually hit Garvey in the head the first time he faced him as an ex-Dodger. This was two spring trainings ago. This spring, he nearly hit him again, but Garvey retaliated with two shots up the middle, seemingly aimed directly at Sutton.

Now, with the exception of Goose Gossage, Graig Nettles, Kurt Bevacqua and Al Bumbry, Garvey is the older man on the Padres, the one to look up to. One player, pouting over a slump, wasn’t talking to reporters. Garvey took him aside and told him it wasn’t the way to solve the problem.

Garvey is chairman of a non-profit organization that helps athletes plan for the future, plan for what they’ll do after retirement.

He does this for free.

“If I can’t improve the state of my profession or the state of life around me, I’m existing for myself,” Garvey said. “And I’m not here to do that.”

So most Padre players let Garvey be Garvey, and are not in the least concerned about his publicity.

Said Tim Flannery: “San Diego is not a large media place like New York, Los Angeles or Chicago. Guys that play down here don’t care who gets the media attention. They just want to win. They don’t care who gets the credit.”

So the Garv is one of the guys. At last year’s pennant-victory party at Gossage’s house, his teammates couldn’t wait to throw Garvey in the pool. He showed up in a suit and tie and was promptely dunked head first. He got out, adjusted his jacket and carried on. This season, Padre players marveled at him when he wore a pink bow tie to a game in Pittsburgh.

“I even joke with him at times about his cleanliness,” Bevacqua said. “I’m talking impeccable. The other day on the plane, he had a suit with just the right touch of baby blue, and it brought out the color in his eyes. It made me sick. . . . And who’s got the guts to wear a bow tie and make it look decent? If I wore one, I’d look like Bozo the Clown.

“I started calling him roomy, thinking it would drive him nuts. I wanted to know if it was possible to drive him off the deep end. I’m making progress. I told him back in ’82 that I’d get him in a pair of jeans. I’m working on it.

“But, really, I think he’s the kind of guy that whether or not people admit it, they look up to him. People say: ‘How can he be that All-American?’ So I guess people are jealous. But that media coverage, the love of the fans? It’s all deserved.”

Other things he does not deserve. Certainly, the treatment he received from fans after his breakup with Cyndy was vulgar and uncalled for.

Bevacqua, a close friend, said it had to bother Garvey, even though it did not show.

“It’s starting to get away from him now, but for a couple years, wow,” Bevacqua said. “I know. I’ve got an idea what he went through. The remarks . . . we all heard them. But he kept on track like the professional he is, and it had to be eating at him.

“He’s a public figure, yet he’s a very private person. That’s a tough combination. In one facet of his life, he likes to be personal. . . . But for a person in the public eye, it’s tough to do. . . . He’s probably got a sound-proof room built somewhere, and once a month, he goes there and screams for 30 seconds, walks out and everything’s fine. He’s got to have a release. He must. I’d think so.”

Garvey refuses to talk of this release, saying he’d prefer that his personal life be kept out of all articles. He did mention his girls, Krisha, 10, and Whitney, 8, whom he says are maybe the most important people in his life. So they are obviously one of his outlets. He visits them anytime he’s “East of the Rockies” during the season and every other weekend in the off-season. Both live with their mother.

He asked that where they live not be mentioned, though, for he actually fears that they could be kidnapped or worse.

“I have a problem with the safety and security of the kids,” he said. “I’m so highly visible and make money, so there could be a problem. That’s why I don’t talk about the girls that much.

“But we communicate closely. There’s never more than two days where I don’t talk to them. And they see daddy on TV. Last summer, I showed them how to read box scores so they could keep up with daddy. Whitney said once: ‘That’s too many zeroes.’ She likes 4, 2, 2 and 2. It used to be a quarter for every home run. But we’ve gotten out of that now. After last year, they said they were losing money and preferred a lump sum.”

Of Cyndy, Garvey would only say this: “She’s a wonderful woman and a mother, and that’s all I can say.” He would not elaborate on why their divorce is not final or on their current relationship.

Cyndy was unavailable for comment.

But, basically, the worst is over between them. Garvey did say his personal life has settled over the last few years but, again, he would not elaborate. Neither would Joe nor Millie.

“To talk about anything personal wouldn’t be fair,” Garvey said. “You don’t have the enough space or time. If you do a story, do it how I feel personally. Anything else would cloud the story up. Too many articles have tried to be philosophical about my personal life, and they’ve weaved it into the stories, and all that has done is cluttered it.

“It gets old. People are tired of hearing about it. They’d rather see how Steve Garvey thinks and feels in 1985.”

In 1985, Steve Garvey dates. One girl in particular is Judith Ross, a woman he met through his involvement in the Multiple Sclerosis Society. She currently does charity work with him, and they are seen together often. Their future together is uncertain.

And she won’t comment about their relationship either.

“I’m sorry, but both Steve and I prefer that you keep our personal life private,” she said. “We’d like to keep it strictly to business. Steve is a very private person when it comes to his personal life, and he has reason to be that way.”

His past, his breakup with Cyndy, will not effect him politically.

“When he’s ready to run, he’ll have the wife in place,” said Kaye, the political expert. “Cyndy will be a long-gone memory. It won’t even matter. The biggest challenge will be to convince the people that he understands the issues, that he can talk about the issues. His opponent will be reminding people that hitting a baseball isn’t proper preparation for politics.”

But Bill Bradley and Jack Kemp faced the same questions and won. Both left sports and immediately went into national politics. Bradley retired as a forward for the New York Knicks and was elected to the Senate. He’d been a Rhodes Scholar from Princeton and been viewed as an intellectual, so the jock image wasn’t a problem.

As for Kemp, he’d been a physical education major, a jock. He barely won his way into Congress, but since then he has skyrocketed.

And it’s assumed that Garvey, who took political science courses at his alma mater, Michigan State, will start at the national level, only because he’s always had high standards. He says he has three years remaining on his contract, and only then will he speak specifically of his political future. But interest groups are all over him.

He will admit that he’s in the process of gathering political information, and that only when his data is complete will he decide whether he wants to run and under what party affiliation. It’s thought that waiting to choose his party is a shrewd move, a good way not to alienate people. Dwight D. Eisenhower did it that way.

Garvey does say he’s a people person, that he has backed democrats and republicans. He admits, though, that he’s conservative. Just so you know, his hand is over his heart during every national anthem.

Also, when asked to list the five most influential people in his life, Garvey wrote: 1) Jesus Christ; 2) his parents; 3) his children; 4), former Dodger manager Walter Alston and 5) Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford.

Said Garvey of No. 5: “We all obviously need others to look up to, and be inspirational to us. Ford did a great job as far as putting the presidency back where it belonged, getting the trust back after Nixon. And President Reagan has been one of the most influential presidents.”

Kaye, when told of those comments, swore Garvey would be a Republican, saying: “The handwriting is on the left-field wall.”

Kaye added: “I take him seriously. California has spawned more celebrity types than anyone. . . . But I wouldn’t mind working for the guy running against him. There’s a certain amount of preparation needed for this job, and I’m not sure he’s put in the time. But Americans don’t care. The more I think about it, I think he’d be very tough to beat.”

Garvey says there’s a 50-50 chance he’ll enter politics. Others say it’s 90-10. What he’s got going is that he’s known by nearly every American, and in a large state such as California, television exposure is imperative. He’s also comfortable in front of a camera, obviously from years of experience.

“Television is such an intimate medium,” said Bill Schieffer, a CBS political correspondent. “How do people perceive you? That’s important for someone trying to take an office. Does he come of as a good guy? As someone you can trust? As someone with brains? Somehow, people come off with an impression of someone, just off of how they look on television.”

So ultimately, the most-asked question in Steve Garvey’s life will stay with him, perhaps haunting him, perhaps not. The answer to this question, if he’s to succeed politically, must be an emphatic yes.

So, Steve Garvey, are you real?