Leon Roberts May Be Answer at Second Base : Padres Hope Bip Is More Than a Blip

This Bip is a real pip. The other day, he looked out at the San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium playing field and announced: “Leading off for the Padres and playing second base . . . BIP ROBERTS!”

This Bip also has zip, as in zero money. His first major league paycheck isn’t due until Tuesday, when he arrives in Yuma, Ariz., for spring training. Early last week, he had just $150 left, and when he asked his wife, Janina, how much she had, she answered: “About $100, Bip.”

And later in the week, there was virtually nothing left. Janina had a headache and needed medicine, and Bip had to go to the Padres for help. He knocked on General Manager Jack McKeon’s office door.

“I need some money,” he said.

“How much?” McKeon asked.

“About 20 bucks,” Bip said.

McKeon gave him $25.

“I certainly won’t let the kid starve or let him get in trouble,” McKeon said later. “What’s a few bucks?”

It only took a few bucks to get him, anyway. In their only significant off-season move, the Padres drafted Leon (Bip) Roberts in the minor-league draft this December, and basically said to him: “The second baseman’s job is yours if you want it.” It was a base stealer they wanted, and it’s a base stealer they got.

“If I get a good jump, I’m gone,” Bip has said. “I don’t care if it’s Tony Pena, I’m safe.”

But he’s only 22, he’s only 5-feet 7-inches, and he’s never played higher than Double-A ball. Can he hit? Can he field? Throw?

The Padres brought him down from his hometown--Oakland--to get him acclimated. They put him through trainer Dick Dent’s workouts. They put him up in a hotel room. They gave him $30 a day for meal money, but who knew he’d be bringing along a wife and a kid?

Almost everything they own is in that hotel room. Padre towels, Padre cups and Padre duffel bags lie there, too. Gifts from McKeon. Toys lie in the corner. So does an ironing board. So does an extra television set. The 3-year-old boy, named Lantavio but nicknamed “Fudd” because he looks just like cartoon character Elmer Fudd--sleeps on a cot. The television is on constantly. What else is there to do?

One day, when they’d been out driving, Janina said: “Let’s go on home now.” Oops. She caught herself and said she never wanted to call that place home again.

“It’s not bad,” she said of the hotel, “but Fudd needs some kids to play with. He’s driving me crazy.”

After spring training, they will finally drive to their own home.

“But let my accountant worry about finding it,” Bip said. “All I’ll worry about is starting at second base and getting food in the refrigerator. It’s empty right now.”

One night, Padre shortstop Garry Templeton was nice enough to have him over for dinner and a movie. They talked baseball. Templeton asked Roberts where he likes the ball thrown on double plays, and Roberts said “anywhere.” Templeton said he would take the throw anywhere, too.

And before the Roberts left that night, Templeton said Bip could come over any time to eat, to hit in his homemade batting cage or to hang around the house. And just Thursday, Templeton invited Janina and Fudd to stay there while he and Bipp are in Yuma.

Bip told him: “Let me pay you something.”

Templeton told him: “If my wife heard you say that, she’d kill you.”

Later, Bip said: “My goal is to get a Garry Templeton house someday. Wow!”

Question: Bip, do you think you’ll be intimidated by some of these major leaguers charging into you at second base this year?

Answer: Intimidated? I don’t know what the word means. I’m from Oakland. I made it out of Oakland, so I can make it out of anywhere. Shooooot. I made it out of Oakland.”

Thanks to three women:

-- Grandma --Her name was Idell Shivers. She was ideal. She and her husband lived with Bip when he was growing up, and she always encouraged him to play sports. Her son, for instance, was Roy Shivers, a former running back for the St. Louis Cardinals. She said if Roy could make it, Bip could make it, too.

One day, her husband died of a heart attack, and then her health deteriorated. It was diagnosed as diabetes. Her legs had to be amputated, then she lost her eyesight, and then her fingers had to be cut off.

Bip would stay with her, often on Friday and Saturday nights. He’d cook for her, clean her, rub her back.

“It kept me off the streets,” said Bip, who was nicknamed as a child by his uncle.

-- Mom --Her name is Wilma Roberts. She’s a sports nut. During the National Basketball Assn. playoffs, for instance, she answers the phone: “Hello, Mrs. Magic Johnson speaking . . . “

To her, the body is sacred.

Ah, but one day, Bip came home after having smoked some dope. His eyes were so red.

“It’s tough to do it and look your mother in the eye and say: ‘Mom, I don’t do drugs,’ ” he said. “She said to me: ‘Don’t do it again.’ I was 15. She said it would mess up my body, and I’d never get to where I wanted to go. She said to look at all those fools out there in the streets with their bodies cut up.”

He fought regularly. In junior high, he’d been playing ball one day at a park. He’d won his game, and he’d gloated. He began to ride his bicycle home, but stopped for some water. One of the guys who’d lost saw him. “There’s that punk!” this other kid said. “I’m gonna kick your butt!”

But Bip kicked his.

Still, the older Bip got, the smarter he got. He learned to walk away, as his mom preferred. One guy wanted to sell him marijuana one day. Bip said thanks but no thanks. He doesn’t do drugs. The guy called him a mama’s boy. Bip said he was no such thing and tried to leave.

The guy tugged on Bip’s hair. Bip hit him. The next day, five thugs were waiting for Bip at school, so he turned around and went home. He didn’t want his mom to worry, so he told her he was sick. He secretly took the thermometer and held it under hot water. “Look, mom,” he said. “102 degrees.”

This went on for three days. Finally, he called his cousin, the drug dealer, who told the thugs to cool it.

“Drug dealers get respect in Oakland,” Bip said. “Athletes don’t.”

Oakland is rough. He bought a BMW with his minor league signing bonus, and wherever he drove, people on the streets just assumed he was a drug dealer. He tells horror stories about the streets.

“Every day, someone I knew was going to the pen or getting buried,” he said.

-- Wife --Janina, two years younger, met Bip in high school. They had known each other briefly then, but Bip went on to play minor league ball. They didn’t see each other until last year, four years later. Then, he saw her at a shopping mall, and they chatted. The same day they decided to go for a pizza and a movie. And in between the pizza and the movie, they opened up to each other.

Janina told him she’d been pregnant and that Fudd had been born.

Bip then told Janina he also had a son by another person.

In an uncommon way, they had another thing in common.

On Jan. 2, just after the Padres had drafted him, they were married.

They came to San Diego on Jan. 13.

Bip treats Fudd as if he was his own.

“I love Janina so much,” he said.

Question: Bip, do you think you can make the jump from Double-A to the big leagues?

Answer: Shoooot. Willie McGee did it. Dwight Gooden jumped from A ball. I can do it.

At the end of the 1984 season, he had been placed on the Pirates’ 40-man roster. Then, in a 1985 spring training game, he went back, back, back on a pop fly, while right fielder Bobby Bonilla came in, in, in.

They collided.

Roberts jammed his right shoulder, his throwing arm.

Bonilla broke his ankle.

Roberts played hurt the entire season, for he wanted to impress major league scouts with his toughness. He slumped to a .272 batting average (he’d hit over .300 the previous two seasons) and his minor league manager thought he made too many throwing errors.

He was sick of the minors. He’d had fights with teammates from time to time, out of frustration. Johnny Ray was the Pirate second baseman and showed no signs of weakening. Roberts took it out on teammates.

Pittsburgh, meanwhile, made trades with the Dodgers and Angels and had to make room for new acquisitions on their major league roster.

There was no room for Roberts.

“I cried,” Roberts said.

Would he ever play in the majors now?

McKeon, who knew of Roberts’ speed, drafted him in December, and the Pirates admit now they had made a mistake.

Former Pirate General Manager Joe Brown, who made the decision not to protect Roberts, said: “We were of the opinion that Bip had a hurt arm, and it had affected his throwing. And we thought no one would draft him. We were obviously wrong. San Diego made a fine selection. It was a quick decision we made that, in retrospect, we wouldn’t make all over again. It was incorrect, improper, unwise. Call it what you will.”

The Padres call it a steal. McKeon said he about jumped out of his chair when Roberts wasn’t protected. So he drafted him and signed him for $60,000 a year.

One point, though: If Roberts flubs up this spring, the Padres can’t send him to the minors without first offering him back to Pittsburgh.

New Pittsburgh General Manager Sid Thrift said: “We will take him back if we get the chance.”

He isn’t a cinch to start, you know.

Here’s what people are saying:

--McKeon: “Is he ready? Who knows? We feel he’ll let us know in spring training. If we’re reading him correctly in this off-season, he’s closer to being ready than to not being ready.

“We’ll give him the opportunity. We aren’t giving him the job, but he possesses the ingredients we’re looking for.”

--John Lipon, his minor league manager the last two seasons: “Personally, I’m worried about his defense. He had problems last year. His feet got in the way sometimes, and he wasn’t in position to catch a ground ball a lot. His arm is quick on double plays, but he throws the ball away.

“But he does have the talent to play in the big leagues, and San Diego is giving him confidence. With him, confidence is important.”

--Bip Roberts: “Starting, man. It sounds good, but I won’t believe it ‘til it’s real. I won’t count my chickens before their hatched . . . I worked hard four, five years in the minors. I ate my baloney sandwiches. I don’t expect to hit .250. I expect to hit what I’ve always hit--around .300. These are my expectations.

“And I can run. I’m thinking 50-plus (stolen bases). I figure I’m getting better and better reading pitchers, and once I’ve seen them on film, I might crack 70 . . . “

Question: Bip, what question do you hear the most these days?

Answer: Alan Wiggins questions. Alan Wiggins questions. Definitely.

And he will wear No. 2.

Wiggins’ old number.

“See, they try to make people forget about Wiggins by getting this guy, and then they give him Wiggins’ number?” Padre outfielder Tony Gwynn said. “Do you believe it?”

And while we’re playing believe it or not . . .

Do you believe the pressure Roberts is under? The team finished third last year, and he’s really the only new player.

“You can’t put that type of pressure on a 22-year-old player out of Double-A,” infielder Jerry Royster said. “He can go out and have a good year, and if we lose, it’ll be like it’s his fault. They ought to let the kid go out and play. All you have to say is we have this kid named Leon Roberts, and he has some speed. And if he does great, all the better.

“But how can he take Alan Wiggins’ place? . . . Tim (Flannery) and I had great seasons (platooning at second last year), and that wasn’t good enough. We knocked in 70 runs, and that’s not enough. Because we couldn’t do the things Alan did. You got to let this kid be himself.”

Do you believe this is fair to Flannery and Royster, who both hit .281 last season, perhaps the best seasons of their careers? Royster will probably play a lot anyway, platooning at third base with Graig Nettles, but what about Flannery?

Flannery said: “I don’t mind sitting on the bench if he does the job. If he’s good, all the power to him. When I’m playing, I play hard. And if I’m not, I cheer as much as I can.”

But Gwynn said: “He (Bip) is talking big time. That’s what’s really scaring me about the whole thing. First of all, Flannery and Royster did a great job . . . I’m sure guys were upset to hear they were going to hand him the job . . . Personally, I’ve never felt good about guys coming in and popping off unless they’ve put big numbers on the board. He hasn’t really.”

Well, Bip’s loose. Already, he calls members of the front office staff by their first names. McKeon says: “Biff (he meant Bip) has great charisma.”

And the other day, Bip was hanging around the stadium again, carrying a ball and glove. He threw the ball against a wall, went to grab it and started broadcasting:

“It’s a ground ball in the hole. Roberts gets it, throws. Garvey stretches . . . WHAT A PLAY!”