Bowa Named as Manager of Padres : Fiery Ex-Shortstop Replaces Boros After Year at Las Vegas

Pee Wee became a big league manager Tuesday for the San Diego Padres.

Pee Wee--for those who didn’t hang around the 1980 Philadelphia Phillies--is Lawrence Robert Bowa. He was the most obnoxious, loud-mouthed, hard-working player on that team. Almost daily, he’d walk up to the mountain that was teammate Greg Luzinski and say, “Hey, you fat hog! How many drinks you have last night? How many potato chips? Gonna run it off today?”

Luzinski would peer at this 5-foot 9-inch, Mickey Rooney-clone and say, “I don’t want to hurt you, wimp.” Their teammate, Pete Rose, would watch it all and laugh, and one day, he nicknamed Bowa “Pee Wee.”

It stuck.

And now Lawrence Robert Bowa, 40, is a little general. The Padres named him the successor to Steve Boros, who will stay in the organization and who, despite what is said, was replaced for being too nice. Boros, for instance, has been tossed out of only one big league game (for presenting an umpire with a video replay) and has been ejected just three times in his entire 50-year life.

Bowa beat that by the time he was 16. His language was so abusive at American Legion games that his mother would bring her own lawn chair and sit way out in right field so she wouldn’t have to hear. When the Phillies had a scout come and watch Bowa play a college doubleheader, Bowa was thrown out of both games.

He was cut from his high school team. Phillie scout Ed Bockman liked Bowa’s true grit and recommended that he be signed. Bockman rented a projector, brought film of Bowa to the Phillies’ Paul Owens and showed the highlight reel on a bedsheet because he didn’t have a movie screen.

Bowa was signed, and in Triple-A he taught himself to be a switch hitter. He made the major league roster. He made the All-Star game. He won two Gold Gloves at shortstop.

He was the first one to the park every day. He has never missed one infield practice. If the batting coach gave him five minutes in the cage instead of seven, he’d scream. Tug McGraw called him a “bleep-disturber.” He went on a radio talk show one day in 1980 and portrayed the Veterans Stadium fans as closest thing to a lynch mob.

The Phillies traded him to Chicago. The fans hated him there because he was part of General Manager Dallas Green’s new tradition, and they liked the old Cub tradition. Bowa was booed for a year before he finally exploded at a fan. In 1984, the Cubs won their division and were greeted by thousands of fans at the airport. But Bowa wouldn’t get off the team bus.

In 1985, the Cubs brought up a young shortstop named Shawon Dunston. Bowa wasn’t playing and got angry. He had a subtle way of letting coaches know, too. When he’d be out of the lineup for a day or so, he’d walk down the runway and say to no one in particular (but for a coach to hear), “I guess I look tired” or “I guess the computer broke today.”

Don Zimmer, the Cub third base coach, called him “the most selfish player I’ve ever seen.”

The Mets picked him up at the end of 1985. They offered him a $285,000 guaranteed contract to play in 1986, but he said no.

He wanted to manage, and took the job with the Padres’ Triple-A team in Las Vegas, leading it to the title.

Boros, replacing Dick Williams, couldn’t get the Padres going in 1986. Bowa was doing just the opposite at Las Vegas.

“To be honest, I think I came on a little too strong as far as kicking guys in the rear end,” Bowa said Tuesday. “There’s a fine line there. Some guys need to be stroked; some guys need to be kicked. I kicked everybody.

“And then I found out some guys were going the other way and weren’t progressing.”

These were tough times. Bowa, according to one Las Vegas player, had alienated the umpires so badly that the team never got the close calls. Also, Bowa was suspended for verbally abusing a female umpire.

But he toned it down in the second half of the season and taught his players intricate baseball secrets such as stealing a catcher’s signs. His players had to work hard, even in the mid-day 115-degree Las Vegas sun. If they were a minute late getting to the field, it was a $25 fine.

“I probably learned more than I ever have about myself and about baseball because of him,” said Triple-A pitcher Ed Wojna. “He ran things professionally. We were so mentally prepared. . . . If he can get the atmosphere and feeling we had in Las Vegas and bring it to the Padres, the team will be good.”

So here he is, at San Diego.

How happy were the Padre players Tuesday? Shortstop Garry Templeton told one teammate, “He could be a jerk when he was playing, but he’ll be a good manager.”