Baseball Lore Lives on at Smedley’s Tavern : Diamond Nostalgia Is Always on Tap at S.D. Bar

Baseball lore is not on the menu at Smedley’s, but baseball stories are dished out at the tavern like hot dogs at the ballpark.

Like the one about the hex that Padres equipment man Whitey Wietelmann put on befuddled American League sluggers at the 1978 All-Star Game in San Diego.

Every baseball fan knows about the dominance of National League pitching in the last 24 All-Star games and the American League’s 3-21 record in that time. But recently two old-timers musing over a beer at Smedley’s Baseball Inn had a more fantastic tale to tell.

Wietelmann, 67, and a former National League infielder with Boston and Pittsburgh, is a favorite of fans who gather at the Gaslamp Quarter tavern and restaurant, where photos of old players line the walls like venerable icons.

As the old-timers tell it, Wietelmann succeeded in psyching out the American League hitters by switching balls during batting practice. Before the National League All-Stars took their swings, Wietelmann brought out a bucket of souped-up balls, like those used in Japanese leagues. Even little guys like Larry Bowa of the Phillies were hitting balls 20 rows deep, and Greg Luzinski, Bowa’s teammate, hit one that almost cleared the upper deck.

Red Sox slugger Jim Rice watched in awe, but before his American League team came up for batting practice, Wietelmann retrieved the bucket, leaving the American League only regulation balls, the old-timers recalled.

“That was before they brought in the fence,” one man said. “Rice and the others took their swings and were barely reaching the (warning) track. Talk about deflating the American League bats. . . .”

Final 1978 score: NL 7, AL 3.

An amused Andy Strasberg, Padres spokesman, confirmed the shenanigans and said that Wietelmann still enjoys an occasional laugh over it.

In addition to the dozens of photographs displayed around the tavern at 5th Avenue and Island Street, owners Bob Smedley Sr. and his son, Bob Jr., have included some carefully selected “genuine” Hall of Fame-caliber items.

Smedley’s is similar to Lefty O’Doul’s restaurant in San Francisco, named after a natural hitter who some argue has been cheated out of Hall of Fame recognition. (O’Doul played 11 years in the majors. He hit .349 lifetime and won two National League batting titles, hitting .398 in 1929, when he also led the league with 254 hits. Only George Sisler with 257 ever got more hits in a single season.)

Lefty’s is bigger and has a more extensive collection of baseball memorabilia that focuses almost exclusively on O’Doul’s career as a player and manager in the Pacific Coast League, including the Padres, and his stints with five major-league teams. Smedley’s mementos mostly detail the Padres’ history in the Pacific Coast League, before San Diego landed a National League club in 1969. But Smedley’s collection also includes some priceless artifacts that leave even the curators at Cooperstown’s Hall of Fame envious.

Among the many baseball friends of Bob Smedley Sr. is Don Larsen, the New York Yankee pitcher whose perfect game in the 1956 World Series is unparalleled in baseball history. Larsen, who played in the PCL, donated a pair of spikes and cap he wore and a bat he used during the 1956 season. They are proudly displayed behind the polished mahogany bar, below several photos of battery mate Yogi Berra running to Larsen and jumping into his arms after the final out.

“I don’t know why they’re not in the Hall. But we have them and I’m not about to give them away, to the Hall or anybody else,” Smedley said.

A spokesman for the Hall of Fame said the only memento it has from Larsen’s perfect game is Berra’s mitt.

Stashed in the basement of Smedley’s are a pair of oversized spikes worn by Hall of Famer Satchel Paige (“Don’t look back. Something may be gaining on you.”) and the fielder’s glove of another Hall of Famer, Rogers Hornsby. Hornsby, a second baseman, hit .358 lifetime and batted .400 or better three times in his career. But Paige once struck out Hornsby five times in an exhibition game.

“Satch’s cleats and Hornsby’s glove need to be cleaned up a bit,” Smedley said. “Besides, I’m running out of room here, and they’re too valuable to just pile anywhere.”

Hanging prominently near the door of the bar is Smedley’s favorite set of photographs--pictures of San Diegan Ted Williams, arguably the most natural hitter ever to play the game. Smedley’s partiality toward Williams’ pictures is understandable, as the two were teammates at Hoover High School.

“That’s my only claim to fame. I tell everybody that I taught Ted everything he knows about baseball,” Smedley said with a laugh. “Of course, he went on to Boston and the Hall of Fame, while I never got out of the sandlots.”

One picture shows a young, skinny Williams wearing a leather jacket and signing his first professional contract with the minor-league Padres. Others are close-ups of the tools that made Williams a great player: the grip on the bat; the smooth, effortless swing, and the piercing eyes that defined the strike zone like nobody else’s.

“Ted used to tell me when we were in high school, ‘Bob, I can count the stitches on the damned ball.’ I believe he could, and he didn’t mean that he could count them while holding the ball in his hand,” Smedley said.

In addition to pictures of a svelte Wietelmann, who played with the minor-league Padres before and after his major-league playing days ended in 1947, Smedley has dozens of photos of other Padres heroes from the minor-league days. The career of third baseman Bob Elliott is traced pictorially from his playing days in San Diego in the early 1930s until he ended his major-league career in 1953 with the White Sox.

Elliott, who was a good friend of Smedley’s, is also the subject of Smedley’s favorite baseball story. Long after Elliott’s major-league career ended and after his defensive skills had diminished noticeably, he was barnstorming in towns far removed from the major-league cities he had known for 15 years.

“Bob was in the twilight of his years then, and in one particular game made a couple of bad plays at third,” Smedley recalled. “This kid kept riding him and noted that Bob was old enough to be his father. When the inning was over, Bob walked over to the kid, tipped his hat and said, ‘Young man, I came through here 20 years ago. You’re right. I could very well be your father.’ ”

When Elliott died in 1966, his wife gave him a send-off that included an organist playing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.”

“There wasn’t a dry eye in the place,” Smedley said.

Smedley’s has been around since 1935, but not always by that name or at its current location. The bar was formerly called Carl’s Baseball Inn, after the original owner, Carl Parlapiano, who opened it at 16th and Island streets. The bar was a favorite haunt of Padres fans when the minor-league team played at Lane Field at the foot of Broadway.

Parlapiano started collecting most of the baseball memorabilia now on display, including the home plate that was rescued when the Padres moved to Westgate Park in Mission Valley in 1958. Smedley, a frequent patron at Carl’s, bought the bar from Parlapiano in 1975 and moved it to its current location in November.

According to Smedley, Parlapiano and O’Doul were good friends. Before O’Doul’s death, they had a deal whereby each restaurant owner would honor tickets for free drinks presented by patrons visiting from each other’s city.

Many of the bar’s regulars--Padres faithful who have supported baseball in San Diego even in the years when San Diego could be described as a bush-league town--are dying off. Smedley is hoping that the bar’s new location will attract a new breed of baseball fans.

He appears to be succeeding.

Still gathered in the bar are the old baseball purists who find satisfaction in simple things like a well-executed sacrifice, a second baseman who can make the pivot and the eternal symmetry of the diamond. But now the purists are being diluted by an often-younger group of fans who are entertained by the San Diego Chicken and thrilled by “the wave.”