Padre Notebook : Look for Next Trip to Send a Chill Through Players (They Wish)

The Padres have been talking about it for a week now. They probably will be talking about it until September. Even with the confidence already instilled in them by their new manager, Jack McKeon, some are still wondering if, in the late stages of this season, they can stand it.

McKeon’s cigar breath? A bases-loaded walk?

Nothing so exciting.

They’re talking about the weather. As in heat.

As in 100 degrees in the stands, 125 degrees on the artificial turf, metal cleats burning through shoes, Nestea commercials on the brain.

The players have begun talking about this, because immediately after the July 11-13 All-Star break, they will be thrown directly into it.

Begin with four games in the middle of July in St. Louis, which at that time is the most hot and humid spot in the world, or at least among places where people wear clothes. Those games include a Sunday afternoon affair July 17 that the Cardinal front office people might consider promoting as Prostration Day. Maybe they can hold a contest in which fans guess how far their seats are located from the face of the sun.

From St. Louis the Padres travel to crisp Pittsburgh, where at this time of year, you sticks your head inside a steel mill to cool off. Then it’s on to Chicago for four games that, big surprise here, will be afternoon games.

If there’s anything worse than all this, it’s the ensuing trip in the first two weeks of August. That’s when the Padres will be in cucumber-like Cincinnati and nippy Atlanta, where it rained boiling water during the Padres’ visit last weekend.

Midsummer heat: It makes players more than just hot.

“Let me tell you about the first time I played in St. Louis,” Tim Flannery recalled. “It was really hot, but I was starting at third base, and I was really pumped, so before the game I took 50 grounders on that (artificial turf).

“As I was walking toward the clubhouse, I passed out. I started the game lying on a trainer’s table.”

So it should be no wonder that most Padre players will do anything to battle the heat.

Garry Templeton, who spent five full seasons in St. Louis, used to put foil in his shoes.

“On the hot carpet, it keeps your metal cleats from burning your foot,” he said.

That’s only slightly less crazy than the lettuce Templeton used to wear on his head.

“Keeps your head cool,” he said, without a trace of a smile.

This is serious business. Ask Tony Gwynn, who smiles about almost anything but heat. His feet were so hot once, he came in between innings and soaked his feet--shoes and all--in a tub of ammonia water.

“Didn’t work,” Gwynn said. “Every time I came in the next inning, my foot was bone dry again, right down to my socks.”

McKeon once took Gwynn’s method a step further.

“I took a hose and filled the whole dugout with cold water,” he said. “My guys came in and stood around in that water between innings.”

Perhaps the most novel method of on-field air-conditioning was undertaken by Padre batting coach Amos Otis, who played for 14 years in scorching Kansas City.

“I would just go swimming,” Otis said.

No kidding? Where, in that big center-field fountain at Royals Stadium?

“No, in my mind,” Otis said. “I would lay in the clubhouse before the game and listen to music and think about cool things, like swimming. By the time I got on to the field, I would blank everything out. The heat never bothered me.”

He paused.

“Of course, I would go through three or four pairs of shoes a game, but heck, everybody did.”

Padre trainer Dick Dent said he helps his players battle heat by passing out supplement pills and encouraging as much liquid intake as possible. And he tells his manager to watch the Padres’ first starting pitcher of hot-weather series for endurance problems.

“After that first day, our pitchers are fine, but the first guy usually has trouble,” he said. “Nobody is used to the temperature yet, and he has to do the most.”

Other than that, Dent, who encountered a bit of heat in the Cambodian jungles as an Army lieutenant a few years back, is not about to go grocery shopping for aluminum foil or fresh vegetables.

“I think a lot of that heat stuff is overblown,” he said. “I think the heat can be just one more excuse for some guys. I think with a little help, if you are mentally tough, it’s not going to bother you.

“Think about it. How come this same heat never bothers Little Leaguers?”

Tony Gwynn Story of the Week: Leave it to the Padres’ best player to pull the most humble act this season. A day after he stood on home plate and watched a foul ball blow fair and into a flyout at San Francisco’s Candlestick Park--a common occurrence there--Gwynn showed up in McKeon’s office.

He told McKeon he was fining himself $200 for lack of hustle.

“Had to do it,” Gwynn said later. “There was no excuse for watching that ball, I don’t care how foul it looked.”

“Never seen it before,” McKeon said.

What, a player watching his foul ball?

“No, a player fining himself. Especially a player like Tony.”

And You Always Thought, Baseball Gloves, What’s the Big Deal?:

Of all the things that happened before and during last Monday’s game in Cincinnati--a fight between Padres, a batting-order mixup by Red Manager Pete Rose--perhaps the most mysterious happened to pitcher Dennis Rasmussen.

In the middle of the game, he suddenly walked off the mound and threw his brown glove into the dugout. While everyone wondered whether he had already had enough of this Padre madness and was quitting, suddenly a black glove was thrown back to him from the dugout.

He put it on, walked back toward the mound, was accosted by the umpires, then turned and threw that glove back into the dugout in exchange for a different brown glove.

What on earth . . .

“My glove broke,” Rasmussen said. “It was the same glove I have had since I signed in 1980. It finally busted.

“They threw me out Mark Davis’ black glove, but I guess the rule is, pitchers can’t change the color of their gloves during a game. So then they threw me Dave Leiper’s glove, and everything was fine.”

Well, not quite. The incident scared Davis so much that he immediately ordered another black glove. You see, he has the only black glove on the team.

“‘So what happens when I’m pitching and I break mine?” Davis asked. “What do the rules say about that?”

Even if he could use his other glove, a brown model, for the sake of the game, he shouldn’t. It’s the kind you buy in the big bins at the discount stores. On the side is stamped ‘Blemished.’

“Got a great deal on it at a Rawlings store,” he said. “You can always get good deals on gloves that have something wrong with them.”