HELD OVER : Mack’s Hit Show Stuck in Vegas

They watched him collect two hits back on April 7, on opening night against Tacoma. And he just kept hitting. Five games, 10 games, 15 consecutive games. They watched hitting as many of them had never seen hitting before: two-strike hitting, opposite-field hitting, marvelous hitting.

The more he hit, the more they searched for a frame of reference, the more they wanted to compare it to something.

Then one night in a hotel room in Calgary, a couple of members of the Padres’ triple-A Las Vegas Stars were watching a movie, “The Untouchables.” During one scene, Al Capone took a baseball bat and swung it through another man’s head.

Up jumped the Stars, clapping their hands and howling.

“That’s it,” several shouted. “That’s Shane Mack.”

And so it is that the hottest player paid by the San Diego Padres is not even a San Diego Padre.

Shane Mack, outfielder, 24, bushy Groucho Marx eyebrows and mustache, unfunny stare.

He grounded a single up the middle in the third inning Thursday to stretch his hitting streak to 25 games, every game in which he has played this season.

Shane Mack, now better known around the batting cage as “Al Capone.”

“He’s raking it,” said teammate Mike Brumley, who is doing a bit of gardening himself with a .422 average.

“He’s unbelievable,” teammate Brad Pounders said. “You see a guy go like this for five consecutive games, but 25 straight games ? He is head and shoulders above everybody in this league.

“It’s like Al Capone. I’m telling you, Al Capone just smoked that guy’s head.”

The only thing Shane Mack wields better than a bat these days is a question mark. As in, what the heck is he still doing here?

Don’t bring that up around here. These are the wrong people to ask.

“Nobody knows,” shortstop Gary Green said.

“‘Everybody is surprised,” Pounders said.

“Guys ask me why,” Mack said. “I don’t say anything.”

The Padres say the answer is simple. Mack needs to play every day; even he admits that. Until they give up on their newest center fielder, Shawn Abner--which could happen within a couple of weeks if he doesn’t turn around his .179 average--there are simply no starting outfield openings.

“Mack is going good. Leave him alone,” said Jack McKeon, the Padre general manager. “He’ll be here soon enough.”

Mack’s answer to their answer is equally simple: Fine. I’ll just pretend I’m there already.

His hitting streak has amazed teammates mostly because it has only made Mack work harder.

He has rented videos of Hank Aaron and Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio--fun-type videos for baseball junkies--and actually studied them. Slowed them down, freeze-framed them, checked out swings and stances. George Brett’s video. Steve Garvey’s video.

He has become the only Star to take batting practice after batting practice. He leaves the cage to work from a hitting tee next to the dugout.

He has made it clear that he wants to extend this streak not because he thinks it might be neat for his box-score collection. It’s because he knows even 50 games down here might not be good enough for one game up there.

“People wonder why I do a lot of work and worrying, even though I’ve hit in so many games,” said Mack, who has a .385 average with 5 homers and a team-leading 24 RBIs. “I learned last year what a big step it is from this pitching to big league pitching. So I try to prepare myself not for just these pitchers but for those pitchers.”

Las Vegas Manager Steve Smith put it differently.

“Shane knows it’s only a matter of time before he gets up there,” he said. “This time, he wants to be ready.”

Last season, a Chicago hotel, 6 a.m.

Padre shortstop Garry Templeton is awakened by a funny clanging sound. He climbs out of bed and walks slowly down the hallway, trying to pinpoint the source of the noise.

He ends up in Shane Mack’s room, where Mack is standing in his shorts, swinging a special metal bat.

“Templeton asked me what the heck I was doing,” Mack recalled. “I told him I had ordered breakfast and now I was working on my swing.”

The one thing everybody has known about Mack since he joined the Padres as a celebrated first-round pick and U.S. Olympian in 1984 is this: He cares about hitting.

This is a guy who, during pitching changes last season, would jog over from center field to right field and ask Tony Gwynn: “How did I look at the plate last time up? What do I need to do different?”

This is a guy who, after joining the Padres as a part-time player May 24, spent the rest of his rookie year literally worrying himself into a .239 batting funk.

“Last year, I worried so much, I panicked,” Mack said. “I would get down one strike and then swing at the next pitch, no matter how bad, because I was so worried about striking out. I would think about the position of my feet, my hands, my bat . . . and before I knew it, the ball was thrown past me.”

Sometimes maturity comes more quickly if it is forced. Such was the case on April 1 this year, when Padre Manager Larry Bowa called Mack into his office at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium and--no fooling--sent him to the minor leagues in favor of Abner. It was five days before the start of the big-league season. It was the last cut.

For a guy who entered the spring thinking he already had the club made, who hit a respectable .263 during the spring, it was a quiet shock.

“I didn’t say anything, but I was really upset,” Mack recalled.

The next thing he did was perhaps the most important thing he has done. He actually told Bowa, “I understand,” then packed up his truck and found the highway.

He stopped at his Cerritos home for a few minutes and stopped later at McDonald’s. And then, with his new stereo blasting the past out of his mind, he didn’t stop again until he had arrived in Las Vegas. The next day--ironically, in an exhibition game against the Padres--he was in the Stars’ lineup.

“During that drive, I realized I had to forget about what just happened and get off to a good start,” Mack recalled. “That’s what I needed, a good start.”

Funny how that works.

Not that his streak has hit this town like a heavyweight fight or anything. For one, it’s not even close to the Pacific Coast League record for consecutive games--anybody remember Joe DiMaggio’s 61 consecutive games in 1933 for the San Francisco Seals?

It may be near the Las Vegas record, but sometimes in the minor leagues, records are no more than hearsay.

“People say Fritz Connally hit in 26 straight games here in 1984, but that’s only a rumor we haven’t confirmed yet,” said Blair McDonald, Las Vegas media relations assistant. “Next thing you know, they’ll be saying Paul Bunyan holds the record.”

He is closing in on the modern-day baseball record for streaks at the start of a season, 34 games, set by St. Louis’ George Sisler in 1925. But that’s a major league record, and no minor league counterpart is on record.

It doesn’t worry Mack, who once had 16 consecutive hits for Gahr High in Cerritos. Twenty-five games down, no telling how many to go until the big leagues, he has decided to let somebody else do the worrying.

“I think the biggest difference is, this year I’ve stopped panicking,” Mack said, smiling. “This year, I look at the pitcher and, instead of me being nervous, I want him nervous. I think I’m going to put the pressure on him .”