With Bowa, Padres Have Taken to the Wearing of the Green

Candlestick Park’s grass is thick and deep, undoubtedly a styling mandated by the fact that Manager Roger Craig’s split-fingered pitchers figure to induce enemy batters to hit an inordinate number of ground balls.

A plush infield surface slows these ground balls and coaxes them meekly into fielders’ gloves.

This sparkling green expanse did something else on opening day.

It caused the Padres to disappear. Poof. Gone. They ran out onto the field and I never saw them again.

You see, this is the greenest of baseball teams. Not mean green and not jolly green. Simply inexperienced green.

At the end of spring training, in fact, Manager Larry Bowa complained that his Las Vegas club of a year ago played better than this parent club. This may be a case of the parents wearing the diapers.

Bowa, to be sure, is one of those inexperienced in his current endeavor. He is in his rookie season as a major league manager. As his remarks relative to Las Vegas would seem to indicate, he is leaning more toward mean green than jolly green.

Bowa’s problem, if it can be called a problem, is that he hates to lose. No one likes to lose, of course, but there is a difference between not liking to lose and hating to lose.

The disposition of a man who hates to lose will be severely tested in the summer of 1987.

A team such as this will be like a child finding his way through the earliest stages of discovering what life is all about. It will be alternately delightful and frightening. Bowa will have to watch it constantly lest it wander onto a freeway.

The heart of any team is its middle line of defense--catcher, second base, shortstop and center field. The Padres’ starters have 10 years and 108 days of experience at those four positions. That would not be too bad if shortstop Garry Templeton did not have 10 years and 57 days all by himself. The others were in grade school when Templeton played his first professional game.

And so, on opening day, Benito Santiago, 22, was catching and Joey Cora, 21, was at second base. Stan Jefferson, 24, will be the regular center fielder, but a tender ankle left him confined to the crib.

There will be thrills and spills with these young men.

It is no surprise that Santiago is where he is, though the Padres might have rushed him just a bit in their haste to dispatch the moody Terry Kennedy to the hinterlands of Baltimore. Kennedy’s defensive work was always average, and he became expendable when his offense slipped to that level as well. It was believed Santiago would provide immediate defensive improvement and develop into an offensive threat as well.

So it was go with green behind the plate.

Cora was given the second-base spot to lose in spring training, and he held it. He is not expected to hit much, just do little things right . . . the way Larry Bowa did them when he was a player.

Yes, it was go with green at second base.

Some of the inconsistency of youth was to manifest itself in that very first game. The box score will show that Cora had two hits and Santiago had one, and also that Cora stole a base and scored a run.

However, what the box score did not list was a sacrifice bunt for Joey Cora, mainly because he did not have one. When Santiago led off the 10th inning with a single, Cora was asked to bunt him along. He failed twice and the persistent Bowa ordered him to bunt again with two strikes. He bunted right to third baseman Chris Brown, who forced Santiago at second. Moments later, John Kruk’s single would have brought Santiago home with the tie-breaking run.

The way I figure it, the Padres would have been 4-3 winners in 10 innings. As it was, they lost, 4-3, in 12 innings.

When managers talk about little things and fundamentals, they are not merely rehashing worthless bits of out-dated philosophy. It is gospel.

And it is not just these rookies who give this club what might be called an unlikely look in 1987.

Looking back to October, these are some things I expected to see--or not see--on Opening Day:

--Carmelo Martinez traded and playing elsewhere.

--Eric Show traded and playing elsewhere.

--John Kruk in left field.

--Dave Dravecky in the starting rotation.

--Marvell Wynne sold or released and playing elsewhere.

--Kevin McReynolds in center field.

What did we find on opening day?

Martinez was in left field, Show was the starting pitcher, Dravecky was in the bullpen, McReynolds was with the New York Mets, Wynne was in center field and Kruk was pinch-hitting.

With this kind of foresight, keep me away from Rotisserie League baseball.

Who was on third? Kevin Mitchell, who played in 108 games for the Mets last year. Seven of those games were at third base.

With Martinez in left and Mitchell at third, the Padres somehow manage to be green even where they have experienced players.

The Padres opened with only three veterans stationed where I expected to find them--Templeton at short, Steve Garvey at first and Tony Gwynn in right field. And Garvey, of all people, was taken out for a defensive replacement, Martinez of all people, in the seventh inning.

Larry Bowa was not being mean green in the aftermath of the opener. In a matter-of-fact way, he was almost upbeat.

“They played as good as I can ask them to play,” he said. “They hustled and played hard. I wanted to win, but there was nothing to be angry about. We just got beat.”

As he talked, Larry Bowa was 41 years old. This team will put some years on him in the next six months. What these players must do, of course, is put some years on themselves in the next six months.