THE CANDY MAN : His Sweetest Season Still Hasn’t Guaranteed Ex-Dodger Maldonado a Starting Job in the Giants’ Outfield

Taking Candy from the Dodgers wasn’t exactly as easy as taking candy from a baby. But it was close.

For a .247-hitting backup catcher named Alex Trevino, the San Francisco Giants got Candy Maldonado, who turned out to be the best pinch-hitter in baseball for 1986 plus a power-hitting outfielder who drove in 85 runs plus the man voted the team’s most valuable player.

For four months, he was Manny Mota incarnate, part-time help that made a difference. On opening day, he hit a pinch triple that beat the Houston Astros. Two weeks later, he hit pinch home runs in two consecutive at-bats. On July 1, he tied a game against the Atlanta Braves with a ninth-inning pinch home run, then stayed in to deliver the decisive two-run single in the 10th.

Overall, Maldonado batted .425 coming off the bench, earning him a trip to New York in the off-season to accept the major league pinch-hitter-of-the-year trophy.

On Aug. 10, that type of late-inning production also earned Maldonado a spot in the regular lineup. You can’t keep a good bat down. When Jeffrey Leonard underwent surgery on an injured wrist in early August, Maldonado moved into San Francisco’s starting outfield.

For the next two months, he was Willie McCovey incarnate. From Aug. 1 on, in fewer than 220 at-bats, Maldonado hit 12 home runs and drove in 47 runs.

“He put up dramatic numbers,” Giant General Manager Al Rosen said.

Maldonado finished with 18 home runs, 85 RBIs and 31 doubles in just 405 at-bats. Dodger Vice President Al Campanis once said it would be like this. “Another Roberto Clemente,” Campanis proclaimed as a young Maldonado devastated pitching while he was in the Dodger farm system. “The first of 3,000,” Campanis noted when Maldonado stroked his first big-league hit in late 1981.

So how is it that Maldonado, at 26, now does his hitting by the dock of the Bay? How did the LA on his cap get changed to an SF?

It has something to do with the law of diminishing returns and fallen expectations and playing the wrong position at the wrong time. When Maldonado failed twice to break into the Dodger outfield, batting .268 and .225 in reserve roles during the 1984 and 1985 seasons, Campanis suddenly cashiered the experiment.

Campanis claims his trade of Maldonado to San Francisco was simply a matter of need. “We needed a good second-string catcher, which was especially important when Mike Scioscia went down,” he said. “I think Trevino really filled that spot.”

But Maldonado believes that the Dodgers gave up on him.

“Maybe the time I was there was too difficult,” Maldonado said. “All the places in the outfield were filled. They had Dusty Baker, Reggie Smith, Pedro Guerrero. I got little chance to play. I was a part-time player, playing only against left-handed pitchers.

“They said I couldn’t hit right-handers. Of course, when all you see is left-hander, left-hander, left-hander and then you go up against a right-hander with a hard slider, it’s going to be tough.”

Tougher still was sitting on the Dodger bench with all those bloated minor league credentials. In three seasons with Albuquerque, Maldonado had batted .335, .301 and .319.

“I was thinking, ‘Maybe I’m not the same prospect they thought I was going to be,’ ” Maldonado said. “You’d play against a lot of guys in Triple-A and you see them move up. They start to play regularly and you’re not. You think, ‘We used to play against each other and we were pretty similar, number-wise. Gee, maybe the player that was there is not there anymore.’ ”

Such a long shelf life dropped Maldonado’s market value to bargain-bin status. By the winter of ‘86, Maldonado, once the best and brightest of the Dodger prospects, could be had for a journeyman catcher.

“We got lucky,” Rosen said. “Sometimes a player sits around and he loses some of his enthusiasm and his skills. It happens many times. Then, he gets into a different environment and he thrives.

“When we got Candy, we didn’t know if he could play every day. That’s why he pinch-hit for us. But because of injuries, he got his chance to play every day and made his presence felt.”

Campanis still stands by his decision and says he’s waiting for Maldonado to do it again in 1987.

“I never have second thoughts about anything we do,” Campanis said. “Sometimes, a one-year shot isn’t the answer.

“Sometimes, change does people some good, but it’s my understanding that Roger Craig plans to use him as a back-up outfielder this year. That’s what we used him as.”

Roger Craig is the San Francisco manager. He has five capable outfielders--Maldonado, Leonard, Chili Davis, Eddie Milner and Dan Gladden--and has only three spots in his outfield. Finding room for Maldonado, he concedes, may require some creativity.

“I couldn’t tell you what our opening day outfield is going to be,” Craig said. “Candy got 405 at-bats last year and he’ll get more than that this year, but I don’t know where right now.

“He’s so valuable coming off the bench. But he can also get you 25 home runs and 100 RBIs if he plays every day and you need that, too, if you’re going to win.

“I don’t know. I hope I’m smart enough to figure out where he’s best at.”

Maldonado has a suggestion.

“I don’t want to be a pinch-hitter for any ballclub,” he said. “When I got the chance to play (every day) last August, I was the happiest ballplayer ever. I think I showed I can play.”

Working against Maldonado is the off-season acquisition of Milner, who gives San Francisco the defense and the base-stealing threat Maldonado cannot. “Candy doesn’t run the way he used to,” Rosen said.

The strong impression Maldonado made on the Giants as a pinch-hitter also doesn’t help matters. Willie Mays, a special assistant to Rosen, has said that Maldonado can make his biggest contribution in 1987 by coming off the bench.

Maldonado frowns when such an opinion is relayed to him.

“That’s a problem,” he said. “When you do good at something, people want to keep you there. Maybe when I’m 35, I’ll be more willing to just pinch-hit. But unless I start, I won’t be totally happy.”

A Giant clubhouse attendant walks up to Maldonado’s locker and interrupts the interview by handing Maldonado three video cassettes. Each is labeled, “GIANTS VS. DODGERS, 10-5-86.”

“It’s all there, both home runs, the postgame show,” the attendant tells him.

Maldonado takes them and holds in his hand the highlight of his baseball career. Against his old teammates last October, Maldonado drove in six runs on a pair of home runs--a grand slam off Orel Hershiser and a two-run shot off Balvino Galvez.

Reporters who cover the Giants still talk about how Maldonado milked that grand slam, taking in all of the ball’s flight from the batter’s box, running slowly around the bases and grinning and strutting as he made his way from third base to home.

Just so Al Campanis might notice.

“A lot of people ask me about that home run,” Maldonado said. “I hit it good and my reaction was to just watch the ball. You see Reggie Jackson do it. If Reggie Jackson hits a ball that good, he deserves to watch it. It’s only natural that, against your ex-teammates, you would want to sit and watch it.

“But on that last day, everything I ever wanted came together. I went over 80 RBIs, I went over 100 hits, Mike Krukow won his 20th game . . . “

And it was against the Dodgers.

“It’s a feeling every ballplayer who has ever been traded has,” Maldonado said. “I want to play good against the team that traded me. I want to show them, ‘I can play! I can play!’ ”

And in case the Dodgers have forgotten, he can always play that videotape for them.