GARRY TEMPLETON : Second Coming, at 30, Has Really Come Around

On his 30th birthday last week, Garry Templeton spent the day with his wife and kids. Wife Glenda was by his side, sons Garry Jr., 7, and 4-year-old Gerome (who wore red shades) were playing ball nearby, and baby daughter Genae Nicole sat on his lap.

On the day after his 30th birthday, Garry Templeton spent time with another kid, 22-year-old Padre Bip Roberts. “Bip,” Templeton was saying, “don’t just slap at the ball when you’re batting left-handed. Drive it!”

Here at age 30, Garry Templeton drives nobody crazy. Standing around the batting cage last month, he, in jest, pronounced himself the San Diego team captain. He laughed, but teammate Jerry Royster liked the thought.

“You are!” Royster said.

Bip Roberts agrees. Roberts, a rookie, was short on money before his spring training paychecks started coming in, so Templeton used to invite his family over for dinner. He’d say: “Come anytime.”

Roberts was star-struck, for when he’d grown up playing ball on the streets of Oakland, he’d always tell his friends: “I’m Garry Templeton!”

But back then, Garry Templeton wasn’t Garry Templeton.

“A Mays . . . . A Mantle . . . . A Templeton. Who else? There aren’t too many.”

--Lou Brock in 1978.

Around his 21st birthday, Garry Templeton was the second coming.

And he never arrived.

They expected too much, expected a Mays and a Mantle. You can get pretty depressed trying to keep up with those kinds of legends.

In 1981, it all caught up with him when a San Francisco Giant catcher didn’t catch a called third strike. Templeton, the batter, should have run to first base as the ball bounced free, but he did not. The hometown St. Louis fans booed, and he made obscene gestures at them. His manager, Whitey Herzog, then pulled him into the dugout and threw him against a wall.

You can get pretty depressed chasing Mays and Mantle. Templeton finally got psychiatric help.

And finally he got traded.

“The move (to San Diego) did it,” wife Glenda said. “It matured him.”

Everything had come so easy before. When he was a boy growing up in Texas, his dad, Spivey (now nicknamed “Mr. T”) taught him how to play. He took his first swings in a cow pasture. Spivey had played in the Negro Leagues, and once told his son: “Don’t ever be scared of any man. One thing he’s always got to do is throw it over the plate.”

Most every man became scared of young Templeton. He moved to Southern California when he was 7, and he went to high school in Santa Ana. Glenda met him there.

“Yeah, he was big man on campus,” Glenda said.

His nickname, given by a cousin, was “Jumpsteady.” When he’d danced to that song by Aretha Franklin called “Rocksteady,” he did more jumping than dancing, and thus the nickname.

The Cardinals jumped on him, signing him in the first round of the 1974 draft. They made him a shortstop (he’d played center field in high school) and a switch hitter. He’d never before hit from the left side, and when he tried, he’d always run forward and slap at the ball.

Soon, he got good at it.

Soon, he was hitting more than .400 in the minor leagues with Arkansas.

Soon, he had 200 hits as a rookie. He said at a baseball dinner: “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

Soon, he became the first major leaguer to have 100 hits from both sides of the plate.

Soon, he had hit the most triples in a season since Willie Mays. There was that name again.

Soon, he was the second, third and fourth coming.

Said Dodger scout Ed Liberatore in April of 1978: “Templeton has a chance to be the greatest shortstop who ever lived. He has all the tools. It’s just a matter of what he does with them.”

Said Cardinal teammate Keith Hernandez in 1979: “I’m telling you, he might be the next guy to get 4,000 hits. If he wants to play until he’s 40, he might make a run at Ty Cobb. I’m serious. I’m deadly serious.”

How could Garry Templeton be Garry Templeton when they were making him out to be a god?

He didn’t want to be a god.

Watch his self-destruction:

After his batting average dropped from .322 in 1977 to .280 in 1978, the Cardinals wanted to cut his salary by $5,000. Templeton said he’d just as soon quit the game and go back to California to “drive a beer truck.” He ended up with with a $30,000 raise, but he said in the spring of 1979 that he’d only play at half speed and wouldn’t be fielding grounders in the hole unless he got even more money.

He demanded a trade.

That summer, he made the All-Star team as a reserve, but he thought he should have started and wouldn’t go.

He tried to be nicer, donating $1,000 of free tickets to underprivileged children, but when he was dropped to No. 2 in the batting order in 1981, he asked to be traded again.

“They’re tired of me in St. Louis,” he said.

Some of his teammates certainly were.

“We’re better off without him,” Gene Tenace told the Sporting News in 1981, after Templeton’s fight with Herzog. “He’s a loser. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve lost all respect for him as a human being. If Whitey had not hit him, we’d have had it in here (the clubhouse), and it wouldn’t have been pleasant.”

After Templeton did seek help for emotional problems, Tenace calmed down some himself, saying: “Some of us said things now that we regret because we didn’t know what was really wrong.”

There are scars.

Today, at 30, Garry Templeton still does not trust members of the media.

He did not want to comment at length on himself, saying only: “Just say I’m doing fine.”

Once in a while, when he does speak, he says he has matured. But once in a while, he gets the St. Louis blues. Last year, he told one teammate, in a bitter tone: “When I was in the minors, people in St. Louis heard my name ‘Templeton’ and thought I was white. Boy, were they surprised when I ended up being black.”

But the Cardinal sins are over. Garry Templeton drives nobody crazy anymore.

“He’s a very likable person,” Royster said. “There’s not one guy who doesn’t like him.”

What he wants out of life isn’t necessarily what his bosses want, but that’s life, isn’t it?

One thing he wants is friendship.

Just see the way he has befriended Roberts.

“That’s Tempy’s nature,” Roberts said. “It’s the sign of a great person. The first time I met him, that stuck out. He said “Come over and hit (at his private batting cage). Bring the family.” I had just met him, and here was this super guy that I always thought he’d be. I’d say he’s my best friend on the team, by far. The other guys are great, but he’s just my best friend. Not all of them would do what he did. Tempy’s special. He’s a special person.”

But when Templeton was 21, someone helped him, too. Then a Cardinal, Jerry Mumphrey of the Cubs had done the same thing for Garry and Glenda back in the early ‘70s.

“I was really young, too, and I appreciated it,” Glenda said of Mumphrey. “It would’ve been hard. . . . So we understood how it was for Bip. Bip’s wife Janina stayed at our house during spring training. It was good company for me. We sat and watched TV and played backgammon half the night. It was great.”

Templeton also wants security, and now he has the house of his dreams. It’s in Poway, north of San Diego, and the land goes on for acres. He has his own batting cage, his own par-3 golf hole, and Royster said: “He has a music system in there that Prince would love to own.”

Templeton might like golf more than baseball. Remember how easy it was to be a switch hitter? In less than two years of playing golf, Templeton now shoots in the high 70s.

“I helped him with his golf,” Royster said. “And now I’ve really got to play to beat him. He loves that game. And he has so much natural ability, it’s incredible. And he listens so well. I watched him one time and told him a couple things, and the next time, he was seven shots better.”

The kids, of course, are No. 1. Garry Jr. plays all sports, but Gerome appears to be the big baseball fan. Wearing those red shades, he asks mom to pitch batting practice.

“I’ll bunt,” he promises.

“You better,” Glenda says. “Last time, you almost broke a window.”

And then there’s the baby girl.

“She’s struck on him,” Glenda said. “She loves seeing daddy.”

The people of San Diego love seeing daddy, too. He does not hit .300 anymore, nor is he the speedster who once ran a 9.5 100-yard dash. The knees, you know. But he hit .282 last season and was voted the team MVP.

Remember? He hit .280 in St. Louis, and they wanted to dock his pay.

But that was when he was 22.

Now, he’s 30.