Sore Finger Forces Gwynn to Take His Cut : Surgery Today Will Keep the Padres’ Best Hitter Out for 4 to 6 Weeks

The night before he would decide to undergo finger surgery, Tony Gwynn, in his own way, prayed for a miracle.

For two hours, he sat up in his hotel bed, holding a bat.

He tried one grip, then another. There was pain. He tried swinging above the covers and underneath the lamp. There was pain.

He finally just clung to it, tighter, tighter still, hoping to suddenly feel like a .370 hitter again.

“I kept dreaming my finger would suddenly be better,” he said. “I was like, dreaming it didn’t hurt.”

A dream was as far as it would get. Gwynn nervously awoke Thursday morning and took batting practice against coach Sandy Alomar around noon. After 20 swings, it was decided.

The Padres’ best player will have tendon surgery on his malfunctioning left index finger tonight at Scripps Clinic and will be sidelined for four to six weeks. That could translate into one to three weeks of the regular season.

Adding to his and the Padres’ frustration, it was surgery he could have had on two earlier occasions--last fall and this winter. The first time, he chose to cure it with rest. The second time, he chose not to cure it at all and attempted to keep playing.

“I’ll admit it,” Gwynn said, “a lot of this is my own fault.”

Now the Padres, having one of their healthiest and most promising springs in recent history, have been cursed with a hole larger than even they could have dug for themselves.

“Tony’s recovery time all depends on what we find when we get in there,’ said Dr. H. Paul Hirshman of Scripps Clinic, who will be assisting a hand specialist, Dr. Merlin Hamer, with the operation. “If Tony were a college professor, he could be back at work the next day. But his case is different from everybody else.

“The point of incision will be tender for a while, and everybody who has ever played baseball knows even when your hand is feeling good, swinging a bat can be uncomfortable.”

The operation will take less than an hour and is commonly performed on an outpatient basis. But because Gwynn is having it done so late, he will stay overnight.

The symptoms: Gwynn’s finger is in constant pain, such that he cannot follow through on his swing. After wrapping it around a bat, he has trouble straightening it.

The cure, as described by Hirshman: “We’ll have a look at the tissue at the base of the index finger, where the tendon goes into a little tunnel. We may open that tunnel a little bit. And if any tissue around the tendon is inflamed, we may remove it.”

That may sound simple, but don’t try to convince Gwynn.

“I’m kind of lost,” he said Thursday afternoon as he wandered aimlessly around the visiting clubhouse underneath Phoenix Stadium while the Padres were losing, 13-10, to the A’s.

“You got to have doubts, I don’t care who you are. I know everybody is saying how easy it’s going to be, but it ain’t their hand going under the knife.”

It was 3 p.m. He had a scheduled 6 p.m. flight back to San Diego, and he had not yet taken off his uniform. He was playing old A’s tapes on a video recorder--”no reason”--while trying to figure out his future.

“I don’t know what happens now,” he said. “I’ve never had an operation in my life, ever. I don’t know what’s going to happen. To tell you the truth, I’m awfully nervous.”

So are the Padres.

“If the season started tomorrow,” Manager Larry Bowa said tightly, “Keith Moreland is in right, and Carmelo Martinez is in left. But we’re not starting tomorrow, so I can’t say for sure.”

Bowa was relatively calm considering that he had just lost last year’s major-league leading hitter and Gold Glove right fielder.

“I’m not expecting Tony at the start of the season,” he said. “I’m hearing four weeks, minimum. I’ve had hand injuries before, and they take awhile.”

Thus the spotlight shifts to Martinez.

“That’s what they got me for, insurance, and I have prepared myself for that,” said Martinez, who hit nearly 100 points less than Gwynn last season (.273) with 15 homers and 70 RBIs. “I am ready to step in.

“Tony is our big man, has been for years, but now we have to keep him out of our minds. We have to go with what we got.”

Other Padres remain unconvinced that Gwynn, 27, will miss enough to even threaten the team’s start.

“You know Tony. If there’s any way possible, he’ll be back next week,” said John Kruk, the Padre first baseman. “Tony thinks he can play in all kind of pain. If anybody can come back, it’s him.”

And once he does, it’s so hard to stop him. That’s the biggest reason the Padres face this problem.

It began last June when, for no apparent reason, the tendon in his index finger became swollen. Gwynn noticed it when, after releasing his grip on the bat, the finger would remain in a locked position.

Some say it was surely caused from years and years of constant swings. Gwynn takes hacks almost every day of the year, whether it is the day after the season ends or the day after Christmas. He may be baseball’s only player who sometimes takes batting practice after games.

“I don’t know if that’s what caused it; there’s a good chance we’ll never know,” Hirshman said. “But certainly, this can happen if you expose the finger to constant irritation over a long period of time.”

Because it still didn’t hurt, he played with it the rest of the season, hitting .386 from June on.

After the season, doctors re-examined the finger and presented Gwynn with the options of surgery or rest.

“Surgery is always a last option, and I had not rested it yet, so I wanted to see what happened with the rest,” Gwynn said.

For two months he rested, and he finally picked up a bat around Jan. 1.

Remembered Gwynn: “My first swing, I felt it. The problem was still there.”

Again doctors presented him with options: this time either to fix it or live with it.

“I figured, oh well, I played with it last year, I can play with it this year,” Gwynn said. “I figured it was just a bothersome thing I could handle.”

Said General Manager Jack McKeon: “You can never force a player to have an operation. The player is the only one who can tell if it’s bothering him. If he said he could play with it, we had to believe him. Knowing Tony like we do, we were sure he knew what he was talking about.”

This spring, for the first time, the finger locked constantly. Last Saturday, Gwynn took a shot of cortisone and two days off.

Wednesday against the Milwaukee Brewers, in his second game back after the shot, the finger suddenly began hurting so much that he could not even close his hand. He took himself out.

Now he might not be back until the middle of April. There have been better ways to start a season.

“I thought I could play with it, I really did. I’ve always done it before,” he said. “You just never think . . . “

In case you’re wondering, Tony Gwynn’s final spring training totals, with a finger that today will undergo anesthesia and a scalpel: four hits in seven at-bats for a .571 average with one home run.