It’s Not All a Game to Player Representative Kennedy

In a given baseball game, Terry Kennedy will catch maybe 120 pitches. That is the easy part of his job, because that is not all he catches these days.

He also catches questions. They come from teammates, from writers, from the front office, from the manager and coaches, from fans and probably from the guy who pumps his gas.

Will there really be another baseball strike?

Terry Kennedy is the Padres’ player representative. That makes him the man on the inside, the man with the answers. It also makes him the most visible of the Padres, the one targeted by fans as a villain of the piece as the Aug. 6 strike date looms ominously.

“I get all the mail,” Kennedy said. “When I get an envelope addressed to Terry Kennedy, player representative, I know it’s not someone asking for an autograph.”

Instead, it is usually a fan asking: “How could you?”

Sensing the kind of summer it would likely be, Kennedy moved his locker from the clubhouse’s Grand Central Station--between Steve Garvey and Tony Gwynn--to a more sheltered location behind a post in the opposite corner. However, the mail finds him and the media finds him.

On this particular afternoon, Kennedy reached into his locker and retrieved a letter lamenting the plight of the fans.

“We outnumber you,” a woman wrote, “and we can’t do anything about it.”

I told Kennedy he should feel good. There was a time in Padre history when the players outnumbered the fans. Those were the bad, old days, when the players could have gone on strike and no one would have noticed they were gone.

Kennedy laughed. He could talk one minute of being depressed and frustrated, frowning like he had been called out on a pitch that was a foot outside. And he could smile and laugh the next.

It helps to maintain sanity and a sense of perspective.

A bit earlier, he had been talking about the meeting of the player representatives last Monday in Chicago. It was at that meeting that the Aug. 6 strike deadline was set.

“One-third of the reps wanted to strike right then,” he said, and, incongruously, smiled. “I didn’t. I just found out I was starting the All-Star Game the next day.”

That would be an understandable sentiment, but Kennedy was not really serious. Player representatives are just that. They cast their votes in accord with the sentiments of their teammates.

“The guys who wanted to go out weren’t just guys from teams in last place,” he said. “A lot of guys were saying, ‘Let’s go and let’s go now.’ ”

Cooler heads prevailed. Cooler heads bought some time. Cooler heads delayed what no one hopes will be inevitable.

Will there be a strike? Huh, Terry, huh?

“I can’t call it,” he said. “If it happens, it’ll be real bad. I think the best we can possibly hope for would be a settlement at the 11th hour. The worst would be that we wouldn’t play again until ’87.”

Wait a minute, I thought. Did he mean ’87 or ‘86?

He meant ’87.

“I think there’s a group of owners who’d like to break us,” he said. “I’ve been in the meetings. I’ve seen how we haven’t made any progress. I’m making other plans just in case.”

Realizing Kennedy is writing a weekly column for a North County newspaper, I wondered aloud if he might be looking for work in my field of endeavor.

“Naw,” he said. “Too much work. I don’t know how columnists do it.”

“We make it up,” I told him.

“That’s what I do,” he said, “but I only have to do it once a week.”

I might also have told him that sportswriters have, thus far, been spared the evils of multi-year, seven-figure contracts, but I didn’t want to make the job sound quite that attractive. I didn’t think he’d want to hear that my idea of a tax shelter is the finance charge I pay on my credit cards.

Meanwhile, he was explaining the issues. The players are taking what is, to them, a principled stand on television revenues and arbitration. The owners, of course, have taken a stance about from here to E.T.’s living room from the players’ position.

“They’re asking us to give up gains we’ve earned through collective bargaining,” he said. “They can’t expect us to accept that.”

Being a rather bright and perceptive individual, Kennedy is aware he does not represent a group of laborers who will get much support from the populace. His constituents, if you will, are not exactly forced to work sewing machines for 12 hours a day at poverty-level wages.

“No matter how much I explain,” he said, “I don’t expect sympathy. We feel sorry for the fans. We can say that--and mean it--but they aren’t going to believe it. We are simply standing up for what we think is right, and I don’t think we have to apologize for that.”

And so the questions persist, as they will persist on a daily basis until the stalemate is resolved. Why? When? Over and over again. Terry Kennedy will look at one of those envelopes--you know, “Terry Kennedy, player representative”--and futilely wish it was an 8-year-old asking for an autograph.

These are the toughest of times for a player representative, right?

“Naw,” Kennedy said. “This is the easiest part. I’ve got to worry about parking spots for the wives and security for our families and autograph hunters getting into the wrong places and checking travel arrangements. Anyone who has a problem brings it to the player rep. All that stuff drives me nuts.”