Bowa’s Back in Town Causing a Stir : Some Cheer, Some Jeer as Former Padre Manager Returns

Monday, 3:15 p.m. A stern-faced, bare-chested man is on the mound at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium, throwing early batting practice to the Philadelphia Phillies.

Padre pitcher Greg Booker steps on to the field for his early run. He does a double take.

That guy on the mound, that’s his manager. No, wait, it isn’t his manager. Or is it?

“It was weird,” Booker said later. “So many times when he was with the Padres, I would come to run and he’d be there, pitching to our hitters. And all of sudden, there he is again.”

No, Larry Bowa is no longer the Padre boss. But as Monday proved, old managers never die, they just pitch batting practice to a different set of uniforms.

The loved, hated and always controversial former Padre manager came “home” as third base coach of the Philadelphia Phillies, a job he took Aug. 11, 2 1/2 months after being fired from the Padres. He had spent less than two seasons here--two nerve-racking seasons--in which he went 81-127 (a .389 percentage). A tenure that may have seemed like an eternity to some, but not to others.

“No, it doesn’t feel weird being here. I wasn’t here long enough to feel weird,” he said after the early batting practice session and before a barrage of photographers captured his every move around the batting cage in a Phillies’ uniform.

“It wasn’t like I was here for 10 years or anything. I was here one year and 30 days.”

There was more nostalgia than he would admit, as one by one, his coaches came on to the field early to watch him pitch, hurling both insults and greetings.

“Hey,” yelled pitching coach Pat Dobson, “get a little sun on that body.”

After he left the mound, Bowa met with those coaches behind the batting cage in an unusual, but not uncomfortable, scene.

“The coaches, they are the ones that care about me, and the ones I care about,” Bowa said. “They are the professionals.”

And the rest of the Padres? Bowa talked and joked with several players an hour before the game, and one player one minute before the game.

“As soon as the game starts, I’m going to tell Larry that I don’t want to get too close to him, in case the guy isn’t a good shot,” promised third baseman Randy Ready.

The fans, who filled local newspapers with letters of outrage after Bowa was fired, greeted him with a mix of boos and cheers, throwing in an insulting Chub Feeney T-shirt.

As Bowa was leaving the field after the top of the first inning, La Jolla businessman Littleton Waller rushed to the first row of the box seats and threw him a white shirt with black letters emblazoned across the chest reading “SCRUB CHUB CLUB,” followed by a somewhat vulgar description of the Padre president.

“We had to give Larry one, because he was the inspiration,” said Waller, who designed the shirt after Bowa was fired in a New York hotel on a spring Saturday morning amid great name-calling and finger-pointing. Bowa was upset because Feeney arrived in town on Friday night to fire him, but waited until the morning after a 2-0 win over the New York Mets to do so.

“Like I’ve said before, I have no qualms about the firing, but about the way it was done,” Bowa said. “Getting fired happens all the time in baseball, but there’s a professional way to get it done, and the Padres didn’t do it professionally.”

Bowa said that with the Phillies he is learning more about managerial professionalism.

“I’m sure I’ll be learning, I’m learning things already under (Phillies Manager) Lee Elia,” he said. “Some of the things that have happened over here--Mike Schmidt, Von Hayes, Shane Rawley out with injury--are enough to make a man jump off a bridge. From him, I’m learning to keep my cool.”

Elia said the Padres could learn much from Bowa.

“If you take playing the infield, situational defense and baserunning, Larry is an expert at all three,” said Elia, whose bosses will likely retain Bowa at least through next season. “He’s definitely going to help us.”

Just as Bowa feels he helped the Padres, who entered Monday with a 44-33 record under McKeon since his ouster. Much of the Padres’ success has been because of good fundamentals and defense, two things Bowa constantly stressed during his time here.

“I knew these guys would do well, it was only a matter of time,” Bowa said. “They are fundamentally sound, and Jack McKeon had nothing to do with fundamentals. They lead the league in defense, and that was something we constantly worked on.

“The difference is, they have Dennis Rasmussen and a healthy Tony Gwynn now and I didn’t. That’s the difference.”