Padre Descent Began After a Starry Night

Is it just me? Have I spent too much time in front of computer terminals? Has my gray matter turned into a mass of so many microchips?

How many years ago did the Padres have seven players in the All-Star game . . . five of them starters?

Please tell me it was long ago. Or tell me I must have spent too much time on Fiesta Island over the weekend. Tell me I must be hallucinating.

The Padres with seven players on one National League All-Star team? Naw. No way. They went one decade with a mere 11 All-Star selections, and only one of them started. Seven in one game?

Stop laughing.

It happened only two years ago.

Does that seem possible? This ballclub, last in both the National League West and Andre Dawson’s heart, could not possibly have dominated the All-Star squad so recently. Could it?

It did.

The year was 1985, and that seems like only the day before yesterday. Nothing that recent can even qualify as a trivia question. That game was played a mere two years ago Thursday.

Indeed, the 1987 All-Star game serves as a rather stark reminder of how far the Padres have fallen and how quickly. As the game began early Tuesday evening in Oakland, only one Padre was on the premises. Tony Gwynn was sitting on the bench.

This was not the way it was at the start of the 1985 game in Minneapolis. Gwynn was in right field. Terry Kennedy was catching. Steve Garvey was at first base. Graig Nettles was at third base. LaMarr Hoyt was pitching. Garry Templeton was on the bench, and Rich Gossage was in the bullpen.

Two years ago, the Padres could have chartered an airliner to get their delegation to the midsummer classic. They could have done it with a Cessna this year.

What’s more, the Padres weren’t just there in 1985. They made an impact. Garvey and Kennedy had run-scoring singles, Templeton had a pinch-hit single, Gossage pitched the ninth inning of a 6-1 victory and Hoyt . . . tra la la . . . was the winning pitcher and most valuable player.

That one All-Star game, that one July afternoon, was the beginning of the end for the Padres as they were for such a brief but glorious period.

That was the end for the Padres as contenders in the National League West.

Only a year before, in fact, the Padres were National League champions. All of the 1985 All-Star representatives, except Hoyt, were members of that championship team.

Indeed, it was no hollow tribute that placed so many San Diego players in the All-Star game that summer. The Padres went into July looking very much as if they would repeat as champions of the National League West. They were four games ahead of Cincinnati on July 1.

Obviously, during the period of time when the All-Star voting was taking place, the Padres were a most high-profile team.

It showed.

Garvey was almost 500,000 votes ahead of New York’s Keith Hernandez at first base and Nettles was almost 300,000 ahead of Philadelphia’s Mike Schmidt at third. Kennedy finished second to New York’s Gary Carter at catcher, but started because Carter was injured. Gwynn finished second to Atlanta’s Dale Murphy and ahead of New York’s Darryl Strawberry among the three starting outfielders. Templeton was second to St. Louis’ Ozzie Smith at short.

There was a mixture of pride and euphoria hereabouts because it seemed the local heroes were riding the crest of the same wave that carried them past the Chicago Cubs a few months earlier in the National League Championship Series. The All-Star game merely reinforced the notion that there was a dominating new presence in National League baseball.

No one could have known it that Tuesday evening in Minnesota, but it was actually a last hurrah.

The cracks had begun to appear in the first two weeks of July. The Padres, in first place since May 6, slipped to second the Saturday before the All-Star break. They had very swiftly squandered a four-game lead.

Because the 1985 season ended so dismally, it is often forgotten how well it started. The fast start and even the overwhelming All-Star representation were ultimately obscured by the skid to third place, 12 games behind the champion Dodgers.

It has been downhill since.

Of the five Padres who started that All-Star game, only Gwynn remains. Hoyt is in South Carolina, trying to get into shape for a comeback after spending time in prison for drug offenses. Garvey is injured and out for the year, hoping someone will give him a chance to make a comeback in 1988. Nettles is playing for Atlanta, and doing well as a role player. Kennedy is playing for Baltimore, and doing well enough to be voted onto this year’s American League All-Star team.

The Padres?

This All-Star game, in a way, could well be considered another milestone for the franchise. It is the opposite of 1985 in that the Padres are at a nadir and looking up rather than at a peak and about to tumble.

Just as the 1985 All-Star game represented the end of the best of times for the Padres, and no one realized it, the 1987 All-Star break could well represent the end of the worst of times.