Just Look at Him Now : Andy Hawkins, 9-0 for Padres, Is Coming Into His Own

Andy Hawkins once picked up his little brother and slammed him against the ceiling.

His brother had a bump for a month. But since Hawkins always has been perceived as the ultimate pussycat, a timid Texan, many refuse to believe that such an incident happened.

That perception of Hawkins as a shy guy is changing, though, now that the San Diego Padre pitcher is 9-0, obviously headed for the All-Star Game.

Hawkins, once the quietest Padre, has become somewhat extroverted. He is even able to conduct interviews between starts. It was, though, an agonizing evolution for him, one that finally was completed last October. Before then, he couldn’t stand to be watched closely.

As a high school senior in Waco, for instance, scouts spied on him playing catch in the outfield, peering at his release to see if it was fluid. He noticed that they watched him from all angles, and he blushed.

“Why is he looking at me from there?” he whispered to himself, to only himself.

Now, he has become a man who can pump his fist in public. On Oct. 10, 1984, he ended the fifth inning of the second game of the World Series by striking out Lou Whitaker and Alan Trammell. He ran off the field, showing his emotions to millions. It was an amazing scene to his father and mother, who knew how rare it was.

“He stuck his fist up and said: ‘Let’s go,’ ” Mel Hawkins said of his son, who had just lived out his father’s dream. He came off the field, and you could see the confidence. It was the first time I felt he was really there.

“You know, everybody says the World Series made him, and I think that’s truer than anyone thinks.”

So today, Hawkins is the winningest pitcher in baseball. Basically, he is there because he conquered his emotions during three especially tough stages of his life:

--High school.

--The minor leagues.

--The major league indoctrination.

Andy Hawkins needed to be pushed. Mel Hawkins learned that early, because Andy grew early. He was bigger than most kids, and so he tended to relax at the sports he played.

That angered Mel Hawkins, who had had little talent as a ballplayer. He hated to see anyone waste anything. He was a banker, a disciplined man, but an outgoing man. Andy was too quiet for his tastes.

Consequently, Mel always saw what Andy did wrong. Once, his son had just thrown a three-hit shutout, but Mel said to him: “Why did you gut that pitch when you had two strikes on the batter.”

Said Mel: “Instead of telling him he played a great game like everyone else was saying, I’d be a little critical. He didn’t understand it, and his mama would tell him what I was trying to do.”

Linda Hawkins, Andy’s mother, was the mediator, the cheerleader. Ken Beverly, Andy’s coach at Midway High School in Waco, says Mel once grounded Andy for walking too many batters in a game. Linda had to do the consoling but she went along with the discipline because she knew it was right.

“Some people, to get the best out of them, you’ve got to be tough on them,” she said. “Some people just need it.”

So Mel carried on. Just last week, he and his wife were cleaning house and Mel saw three holes in the closet door of Andy’s old room. He asked his wife how it happened.

“I guess I don’t mind telling you now,” Linda said. “It was Andy in high school. He got mad at you and didn’t say anything about it at the time.”

Still, Andy praises his father now because the strategy, and the interest, worked.

Mel certainly was interested. He would stand behind the backstop at every game. He would come home from work and play three games of H-O-R-S-E with his son on their outdoor basketball court. Andy’s mother, sister and little brother would shag fly balls while Mel pitched to Andy. Mel would throw him football pass patterns until his own arm swelled or until it got too dark.

So, by Andy’s senior year in high school, he was no longer reticent. On one occasion, after having pitched a victory, he asked his coach if he could pitch the second game of a doubleheader the next day, completely certain that he’d win. And he did.

“My dad is real special to me,” Andy Hawkins said. “He pushed on me and was hard on me, but when it was over, he’d come up and talk to me and make up. He didn’t do it all to be mean. He had a purpose for everything. He didn’t punish me without a reason. Anyone can be hard on me if it’s fair.”

Life, though, is sometimes unfair.

The fifth pick in the 1978 June free-agent draft, Hawkins signed with the Padres right out of high school. A month later, he left for rookie camp in Walla Walla, Wash., where he realized that there was more to baseball than outscoring the other team. Where would he live? How would he cook? Where was his girlfriend? When would he start having fun?

He had never been away from home, and now he was more than 1,000 miles from Texas. Besides, the big leagues seemed 2,000 more miles away. He called home once a week, on the verge of tears.

“It’s pretty bad when you send an 18-year-old kid away who doesn’t know how to wash his clothes,” Linda Hawkins said. “He had a lot to learn about people. He had to toughen up.”

Said Mel: “Lots of times, he felt down. He said it was weird because he wasn’t associated with drugs. He said guys were either real religious or on drugs, either getting them or pushing them.”

Andy Hawkins would not elaborate on the drug scene, but he did say: “It was a much more mature environment. There were always guys older, and it was a situation that I didn’t handle well. I still have trouble with that to this day.

“I mean, socializing. It was something I’d never done before. It requires an adjustment, and it’s not something that comes easy to me. Most of these guys had been to college and been in different life styles.”

Every bit of confidence he had gained growing up was gone by the next season in Reno, where they play Class A ball. He had just married his high school sweetheart, a school cheerleader, and suddenly people were hitting his pitches. He hadn’t learned to throw a curveball until he was 13, and that was the pitch they were hitting.

“I didn’t believe in it (the curveball),” Mel Hawkins said. “You should throw hard, throw strikes.”

Andy almost quit. He almost went back to Texas to play football.

Every Southwest Conference team had recruited him in high school, and he had actually signed a letter of intent at Baylor University as a punter and place-kicker. Baylor still wanted him, too. In high school, he had averaged 46 yards a punt and had kicked a 55-yard field goal, a Class 4A record that still stands.

The situation was bad, but Andy made it worse by taking his job and its frustrations home with him to his bride. He almost had enough of baseball.

The slider saved him.

He learned to throw it, even against the orders of his coaches. They had wanted him to throw curveballs only, but his curveball wouldn’t curve. So he worked on a new pitch, telling the coaches it was a cut fastball. He began to get people out.

By 1983, he was in the big leagues.

If Hawkins was saved by an unlikely pitch, he also was saved by an unlikely man, a man who treated him as his father had.

Dick Williams, the Padre manager, was rough and vulgar. He kept telling Andy Hawkins that he was too timid. Williams held nothing back.

“I’d be on him a lot,” Williams said. “I never saw a Texan so mild, quiet and nice.”

After one game last May, Hawkins, perturbed because he had been taken out of games early, finally confronted Williams, going into his office and shutting the door.

Said Hawkins: “By me coming in, I think it changed his opinion of me. I don’t think he thought I’d do it. I don’t think a lot of people did. We’ve had a good relationship ever since.”

Said Williams: “Some guys need a pat on the butt; some need a kick.”

Hawkins needed both, and Williams gave him the kick. They spoke for 20 minutes, Williams telling Hawkins that he needed better control, that he’d been trying to pitch to the corners too much and had walked too many batters.

Then in the fall, Hawkins had his World Series moment, gaining some much needed confidence.

Now, this year, he is getting the pats on the back from Galen Cisco, the club’s new pitching coach, and he is 9-0.

Cisco and Hawkins are a lot alike. Neither is an extrovert. They talk about carpentry and baseball. In effect, Cisco is playing the role that Hawkins’ mother once played.

He also has refined Hawkins’ cut fastball, a pitch with a fastball’s rotation but the slightly curving effect of a slider. Hawkins says that pitch is the mechanical key to his start this year.

So now there are interviews, almost daily. There are pregame and postgame shows, a measure of fame. Hawkins was impressed that ESPN wanted to interview him.

“It’s a situation I want to be ready for,” Hawkins said of the media interest. “The last thing I want to do is be a babbling idiot on ESPN.”

He asks his teammates not to kid him about his record. He says he appreciates their cooperation. He does not think about the All-Star Game, for that would be a distraction. He just knows that he’s throwing strikes--he has walked just nine batters in 62 innings--and having success with four pitches. He is not overpowering.

He is also smart enough to realize that the Padres have averaged six runs a game when he has pitched, more than any other pitcher has received.

All things considered, he’s ready for a fall.

Yet, he is no longer a pussycat.

“Quiet people have a tendency of being overlooked,” he said. “I don’t mind it, but I’m getting into situations where I have to be more social. No one’s ever accused me of being the life of the party, but at least I go to the party now.”