The Day the World of Fun and Games Turned Bizarre

Was the moon full Tuesday? I don’t know if I have ever encountered a crazier day in one city’s world of fun and games as Tuesday in San Diego.

And none of it really had anything to do with the games themselves.

This was board-room bizarre. This was hiring and firing and firing and rehiring and reinforcing. This was musical chairs in business suits and ties and, in one case, high heels.

When the music stopped, I expected Doug Scovil to be managing the Padres and Don Coryell to be coaching third base. And Dick Williams would be the Charger coach and Ozzie Virgil would be the mayor.

The mayor? Roger Hedgecock would be football coach at San Diego State.

This all may seem far-fetched, but it was that kind of day. I checked the calendar to make sure I hadn’t slept in--until April 1.

How long has it been since a baseball team had to get permission from San Francisco to rehire its third base coach? It happened on this day in San Diego.

This also was a day when a local institution of higher education called a press conference to announce the hiring of an athletic director--and never mentioned that, oh yes, it also had fired the football coach.

Of course, much can be learned on such a day. Let’s not chalk it off as a brief visitation of crazies, caused undoubtedly by some unforeseen alignment of the planets and satellite dishes.

We have learned that Fred Miller is, indeed, the athletic director at San Diego State and that Doug Scovil is not, indeed, the head football coach.

Why no announcement on Scovil at Miller’s press conference?

“Partly timing,” said Thomas Day, the SDSU president, “and partly taste.”

It also was perfectly clear on this day that Day runs San Diego State the way he wants to run it, but we all knew that already.

However, as to taste . . . Scovil learned he was fired Sunday night in Hawaii, but read it in Tuesday’s newspaper before he was officially informed by Day. That is a strange way to handle personnel matters, but this was that kind of a day.

And so Miller’s top priority is to replace the top man on what is the top team at most top universities. As Miller said: “Football’s the engine that drives the ship.”

If SDSU athletics is a ship, Miller needs a pail--or a lifeboat--as badly as he needs a football coach. But this is an upbeat man at the top.

“San Diego State is in position to become an extremely strong and vital force in the community,” Miller said. “San Diego State is for San Diegans. You’re going to hear us banging the drums loud and long and often. People will want to come to our events. And they’re G-rated.”

While Miller was being introduced, Padre President Ballard Smith sat nearby. He had been a member of the search committee which sorted through more than 100 candidates and recommended Miller. Little did Smith know at this point, but this would become a PG-rated day for him.

That’s right. That’s PG, as in parental guidance. In this case, the guidance came from mother-in-law Joan Kroc.

On this day, we learned who unequivocally has the final say when it comes to the Padres. Not Ballard Smith. Not Jack McKeon.

Joan Kroc. Period.

Dick Williams’ close friend and colleague, third base coach Ozzie Virgil, had been fired by the Padres. This was a rather rude gesture by the Padres, because the decision had been made without Williams’ knowledge.

Suggestions that Ballard Smith and/or General Manager Jack McKeon were trying to wound Williams’ pride and embarrass him to the point of quitting came to Ms. Kroc’s attention on this particular day.

“When it comes to the big decisions,” she told an Associated Press reporter, “no one is going to make them but me.”

The firing of a third base coach does not normally come under the heading of Big Decisions, except that this slap really stung when it landed on Williams’ cheek. After all, another close chum, pitching coach Norm Sherry, had been fired out from under him last year.

I am not about to state that there was a conspiracy to dump Williams, but it would be hard to otherwise explain the decision to fire such a close associate as Virgil.

If Smith and/or McKeon were trying to get rid of Williams, they were quite close to success. Except . . .

“I’m terribly involved with Dick Williams,” Kroc said. “It would be a great mistake to let him go, to pay him off or to make life so miserable for him that he would walk away. If that is a fact, it’s not going to work.”

And so it came to pass that Kroc told the boys that Williams would manage her team and Virgil would be the third base coach for her team, even if they had to beg him to return--or beg the San Francisco Giants, who had quickly hired him, to let him return.

Kroc is definitely in charge of her team. Anyone who does not like the way she is doing it is welcome to pursue employment elsewhere.

In this town in this December, jobs in the world of fun and games seem to be quite abundant. They are kind of like buses. If nothing is there at a given moment, just wait five minutes and another will be along.

And on this wacky day in December in this town, I am still waiting to hear that Day is the public relations man for SD G&E;, Smith is a short-order cook at McDonald’s, McKeon has become a cigar store Indian and Kroc has ordered Miller to rehire Scovil at San Diego State.

I know this may all sound ridiculous. But is it?