The Padres Still Race, but Not for First Place

With the Padres these days, we have to hark back to that old saying we learned at grandpa’s knee.

If you don’t have anything nice to say, say it.

“Ugh,” you say.

“Aaargh,” you say.

“Yawn,” you say.

“Bring on football,” you say.

Or are you one of those perennial optimists, who insists it is still early and that strange things happen in this game. Do you draw hope from people like Bob Tway?

Forget it. What we are talking is moribund.

Anyone who thinks this season can be salvaged also believes you really can get carpets cleaned in five rooms for $29.95 and a car painted for $39.95. Anyone who believes this season can be turned also believes you can work four hours a day at your leisure and earn $4,000 on the side.

These same people would probably believe the Charger defense could pitch a shutout at the Dallas Cowboys. Oh, that happened? OK, miracles do happen.

But miracles do not come often, or the word would begin to defy its definition.

The Padres, after all, are playing baseball as if their trunks are packed with golf clubs, fishing gear and hunting equipment, and they cannot wait to use them. Is this season ever going to end?

And they have played this way all year.

I had not even filed my taxes, and already Manager Steve Boros was apologetically insisting that this really was not that bad a club. This has been a refrain (or a lament) that has echoed from the manager’s office all year, sounding more and more discouraged and despondent with each new but familiar failure.

And this was a year that began on such an upbeat note. That dastardly villain, Richard Hirschfield Williams, the man who seeks no love beyond the walls of his own home, left this organization in a lurch at the opening of spring training. There was glee in the clubhouse, because a Santa Claus with a heart-shaped face would replace this modern Attila.

Lo and behold, it turns out that these athletes cannot play for either a tough guy or a nice guy.

Does this raise the possibility that these athletes cannot play?

Or do they need to play for a schizophrenic? Do they need a nice guy who can be tough or a tough guy who can be nice? Perhaps the Padres’ next manager--and they will likely have a “next manager” by next year--should be recruited from an institution.

All along, I have gotten the impression that these guys think they can magically turn it on and suddenly get into the thick of the pennant race. How many times have you heard an athlete or athletes say they won a game or games because they decided they just had to do it? If it’s that easy, why don’t they just decide they have to do it right from the start?

It is much too late now.

These Padres have taken heart in the fact that it is only Houston in first place. Only these Padres are not going to catch those Astros.

Houston’s season, in fact, should be quite familiar to the Padres. They had just such a season in 1984, breezing along in first place while the National League was abuzz about what was happening in the other division. It was as if the world looked up in October and said, “OK, who are the Cubbies going to play now?”

I was reminded of this while watching the PGA on Monday. ABC flashed one of those graphics on the screen, touting its Monday Night Baseball.

“Most of the country will see Los Angeles,” said a voice in the booth, seemingly oblivious to the other team in the matchup.

“They’re playing Houston,” another voice prompted, “and Houston’s in first place.”

“But,” said a third voice, Dave Marr, I suspected, “no one goes to see Houston play.”

Dave Marr is from Houston. So much for respect.

It is time now to respect Houston. Just watch those guys go out and beat the New York Mets in the National League Championship Series.

And time also to give the Padres the respect they have earned. To this point, that would be very little respect.

Of course, the Padres are in a race. Just not the one they had in mind. They’re chasing dandelions rather than roses, stones rather than diamonds. They now are nip-and-tuck with Cincinnati and Atlanta, trying to keep from falling off the bottom rung of the ladder.

What has caused this distressing situation?

It’s really hard to find it in the numbers. A surprising number of individuals would seem to be having better seasons than they had in the championship year, and the hitting and pitching are statistically comparable. The Padres, in fact, have more hits, doubles, triples and home runs than their opponents, yet they have scored some 40 fewer runs.

Figure that.

The only answer is that this team is lacking in chemistry. This is not a definable chemical element, but rather a difficult, if not impossible, to assess element known as an intangible.

An intangible, according to the dictionary, is something one is incapable of touching. In that case, an intangible, to the Padres, is first place.