Padre Notebook : Turn It Up: Besides Pitching, All He Wants to Do is Dance

After nine weeks out of town, just when the Padres are back and comfy and settling in for 13 home games in the next 18 days, now this:

Padre pitcher Mark Grant, he of the spiked blond hair and smile of a 12-year-old, has this problem. It’s with San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium. More precisely, it’s with the keepers of the sound system, which plays top 40 hits during batting practice.

He wants them to turn it up. Turn it loose. Put on their shouting shoes and all that.

“It’s got to be louder,” said Grant, the Padres’ concession to the existence of MTV. “A good sound system is a prerequisite for a big-league stadium. Right now, shagging balls in the outfield, you can barely hear it.”

Grants needs to hear, because Grant needs to dance. In the outfield. During batting practice. Get to the park early once and watch him.

Take last Wednesday, when he danced around right field doing everything, including an impressive moonwalk.

“I power-shag,” Grant said. “I dance and shag at the same time. It kills two birds with one stone. Anyone can just stand there and shag.”

According to Grant, his dances include The Chainsaw, The Lawn Mower and The Shopping Cart. On Wednesday, he actually flopped on his back with his legs in the air, as if preparing to break dance. But then he just lay there.

“Tony Gwynn was supposed to spin me,” Grant said. “It’s his fault.”

Said Gwynn: “A different drummer, man. An entirely different drummer.”

Asked if he was worried about getting hit with a ball during all this, Grant illuminated his point with physics.

“Hell, no, I’m not worried about balls,” he said. “Balls are soft.”

Quote of the Week: “Hey, try looking in your glove.”

Shouted by second baseman Randy Ready to first baseman John Kruk after Kruk dove on a ground ball in a game against the Dodgers, then couldn’t find the ball.

Surprise. It was indeed in his glove, and Kruk promptly threw home to save a run and start a double play.

Quote of Five Weeks Ago: “I don’t ever want to be in the middle of controversy again. I’ve been in the headlines enough. Right now, being in the background is right where I want to be.”

From a sincere Ed Whitson, midway through spring training. Whitson wasn’t talking much this week in the wake of his arrest last Sunday on suspicion of driving while intoxicated.

Worker of the Week: Reliever Greg Booker. Yeah, he pitched exactly two innings in seven days, but we aren’t just talking games here. We’re talking pitches.

Bullpen warmup pitches. Get-up-then-sit-down pitches. Because of the early shakiness of the starters, Booker was more active this week than the Dow Jones Industrials.

Can he help it if you didn’t notice?

“People don’t understand,” Booker said after he warmed up in nine of the club’s first 10 games, at least twice in nearly every game, and three times in some games. “People think if you don’t get in, you haven’t done anything. Wrong.

“No telling how many pitches you throw down there before something happens and they don’t need you and tell you to sit down.”

Booker, who has already iced his arm as much as any starting pitcher this year, is in this predicament because of the success of relievers Lance McCullers and Mark Davis, who didn’t allow a run all week. That much he understands.

“They’ve done so well, they deserve to get in,” Booker said. “I’ve got no problems with it at all.”

Although he’s not complaining, he could be. See, in the three games he has actually pitched this year, he entered with the Padres trailing by an average of 4.6 runs. All three games, naturally, they lost.

Counting all of last year, in Booker’s past 47 appearances, the Padres have lost 44 times. Nice stat. Booker lost only one of those himself, which defines his role in two words: mop up. Even now, despite the best spring training of his career, in which he allowed three runs with seven strikeouts in 12 innings.

And even though, so far in 5 innings this season, he has allowed three hits and no earned runs.

“Sure, you’d like to get a chance at saving a game. Everybody would,” he said, shrugging. “But whatever they want me to do, I’ll do.”

Say this much for Booker: He is an expert in the fine art of watching a game while warming up. Believe him, it is an art.

“If you have to warm up quick, you can’t watch much of it at first,” he said. “But after a while, you get to where you will watch one pitch, throw one pitch, watch the next, throw your next pitch.”

Sign of the Week: After San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium was left cold and damp from Thursday night’s storms, somebody didn’t use much tact in designing Friday’s nightly “Wheel of Fortune” scoreboard contest.

The correctly solved puzzle read R-A-I-N D-E-L-A-Y.

And you thought they booed Chris Brown . . .

Player of the Week: Keith Moreland, who, entering Saturday night’s game, had hit in every game this season (10), was 7 for 12 from last Sunday through Friday. He is hitting the ball so hard, even usually macho opponents are backing off.

Thursday afternoon, Moreland hit about a 200-m.p.h. line shot off Dodger third baseman Pedro Guerrero’s glove. It was ruled an error. After the game, Padre official scorer Bill Zavestoski asked Guerrero about the play (Zavestoski is one of league’s few scorers to go to such trouble).

Guerrero told him, in so many words, he was lucky the ball didn’t remove his face. Zavestoski changed the call to a hit. Moreland entered Saturday hitting .378, or 140 points higher than Tony Gwynn.

We leave behind the Padre opening week festivities with this final note: On Larry Bowa’s best opening day, in 1984 with the Chicago Cubs, he went 3 for 4 with two doubles against San Francisco. The pitcher? Current Padre Mark Davis.

“Yeah, he remembers,” Bowa said, laughing. “I’ve never said anything to him, but he remembers.”

Replied Davis: “I’m sorry, but Larry remembers a lot better than I do. All I remember is a lot of little fly balls that couldn’t quite make it to the outfield fence. If those were doubles, well, then I guess he hit doubles.”