Leaning Left, Padre Bench Making Things Just Right

Benches are funny things.

A bench can be plastic or wood or even concrete. But baseball further twists the word and allows benches to be shallow or deep, and sometimes even lean to the left or right.

Even the word is funny, at least in baseball.

Bench is a noun, as in a place to sit, or a verb, as in being assigned to sit there. A benching is normally considered to be a demotion.

Beyond all of the above definitions, a bench is a group of people who occupy reserve roles and spend considerable time on their namesake. A team’s bench had better be good because pennants are won and lost by guys who reside thereon.

The Padres’ bench was not considered to be a very sturdy structure at the onset of the 1986 season. There were fears that it was not very deep, and it had this undisguiseable lean to the left.

Pinch-hitters come from the bench, and the Padres were equipped with an abundance of such characters who hit from the left side of the plate. This sort of bench would figure to put them at a severe disadvantage.

This problem was compounded, of course, by the collective agreement among owners to restrict rosters to 24 players. This is a little bit like cutting the alphabet from 26 letters to 25 by eliminating the “Z.” The 25th man, like the letter Z, isn’t used very often, but certainly can come in handy.

Ostensibly, this move was made in the interest of fiscal responsibility, but the money it saves--probably $100,000 per team--is comparable to trying to balance the federal budget by dropping asparagus from school lunches.

Regardless, all benches are a bit more shallow than they were in the old days before owners decided to zip their pockets after most of the cash was gone. These 24-man rosters are of particular inconvenience in the National League, which uses up pinch-hitters as replacements for pitchers.

“You run through players faster,” said Steve Boros, the Padres’ manager, “but it hurts us all equally so it doesn’t bother me. It would bother me if clubs we were competing with were using 25.”

The Padres can thank The Big Friar in the Sky that Al Davis is not in the National League West. He’d probably go with a 40-man roster, and dare to be sued.

However, these owners are together in this deal.

And so it came to pass that the Padres entered this season with a supposedly shallow bench made more shallow by this new and unwritten rule.

Except it wasn’t really all that weak.

“It is a fact,” said Boros, “that we are predominantly left-handed on the bench.”

A typical game would find left-handers Marvell Wynne, Dane Iorg, Tim Flannery and John Kruk on this bench along with right-handers Jerry Royster and Bruce Bochy. This is probably stretching the word typical, because Boros platoons at second and third and shuffles in the outfield. It’s really hard to tell whether the Padres have six regulars and eight reserves or 10 regulars and four reserves.

Obviously, this bench is vulnerable to left-handed pitching.

And what has happened thus far in this very young season?

Two games have been won by this bench with home runs in the Padres’ last at-bat, Wynne beating Cincinnati Sunday afternoon and Bochy beating the Dodgers Monday night.

Both of these home runs were hit against left-handed pitchers, that most dreaded of species.

Boros did not seem particularly surprised by either one of them.

In fact, being a nice guy caused Boros to be aware that a new Marvell Wynne might just be a marvelous power hitter. He just happened to go by Wynne’s hotel to give him a ride to the stadium Sunday morning. En route to the park, the conversation turned to baseball in the Dominican Winter League.

“He told me he’d hit six home runs down there this winter,” Boros said. “That may not sound like much, but those are huge ballparks.”

The revelation astonished Boros, because Wynne had hit all of nine home runs in his major league career. He hit two last year.

And he was to hit two Sunday, the first as a pinch-hitter off Tom Browning and the second off Joe Price. Both were left-handers.

This was interesting because Wynne figured to be one of those left-handed hitters who would be vulnerable to left-handed pitching.

Except Boros suspected this might not be true because a Dodger coach, of all people, had told him something interesting.

“Manny Mota told me Marvell is tough against left-handed pitching,” Boros said. “He stays in there better and concentrates.”

And so it was that a kind gesture, giving a player a ride to work, paid off for the nice guy manager.

Boros was looking for a hero Monday night and he found Bochy in the bullpen. He had Coach Harry Dunlop call and check on the condition of Bochy’s tender left knee.

“They said he could hit,” Boros recalled, “but he couldn’t run.”

This observation caused a bit of levity in the bullpen, because Bochy has never been able to run when in the best of health. He runs with what might be called a Clydesdale plod.

Boros sent Bochy to the plate and pitcher Dave Dravecky into the runway behind the dugout. Dravecky would be ready to serve as a pinch-runner.

He was not needed.

Dunlop was sitting on the bench next to Terry Kennedy when Bochy limped to the plate, and he turned to Kennedy with a prediction.

“He won’t have to run,” Dunlop said, “because he’s going to hit it out.”

Confidence was starting to run deep on this bench.

Bochy did hit it out. The pitcher was Ed Vande Berg, a left-hander.

Soon it will be rookie Kruk’s turn, and then maybe the veteran Iorg. This bench also features such unlikely pinch-hitting prospects as pitchers Eric Show and Mark Thurmond, who take extra hitting in case the 24-man rule causes Boros to exhaust his available batters. Indeed, Thurmond has already made a pinch-hitting appearance.

It seems that any man can be a star because it seems that this bench just isn’t as rickety as it might have looked.

“A hero a day,” said Terry Kennedy. “That’s the name of the game. Somebody different coming along to pick us up.”

It sounds like a good formula, but Kennedy isn’t fussy. Yesterday’s hero will be fine--and he doesn’t have to come off the bench.