Kroc Should Cast Her Vote for the Freeman-McKeon Ticket

Only 2 shopping days until Election Day ’88.

Only 2 thinking days to make decisions shaping the future.

Have you studied the candidates?

Maybe I can help.

I have one particular campaign in mind, and it is not the one most folks have been watching.

Instead, I will deal with a local presidential campaign. It has to do with the national pastime rather than national politics, and that is a whole lot more fun.

In this campaign, which has neither defined candidates nor debates, I cast my vote for the ticket of Dick Freeman and Jack McKeon.

Obviously, this is the little matter of determining who will succeed Ballard Smith as president of the Padres. (They had an alleged president for a while, but I can’t put a finger on what his name was.)

Freeman, the incumbent interim president, and McKeon, the general manager/manager, have an advantage over the candidates in that other election. Their platform is based on what they have been doing for the last few weeks, not what they have been saying.

Of course, Freeman is the only one who is playing out of position, so to speak. He has been executive vice president and chief operating officer since April 21, 1986, serving previously as chief financial officer. He is only doing his duty and filling a position someone else may ultimately get.

McKeon is doing what he has always done but seemingly doing it better and bolder.

Why?

Because these two guys work well together.

No longer encumbered by a do-nothing ghost of a club president, McKeon worked with Freeman to fine-tune trades that brought slugger Jack Clark and starting pitcher Walt Terrell to the Padres in less time than it takes Kirk Gibson to grow a 5 o’clock shadow.

The general manager gets the limelight and the credit when such deals are consummated, as will always be the case, but the general manager can only work within atmosphere created by the club president, interim or permanent. It’s doubtful that either of these deals could have been accomplished so quickly, if at all, with the previous administration.

This was a case of McKeon knowing what to do with players and Freeman knowing what to do with numbers. In this day of contracts as convoluted as tax forms, the numbers guy has to work with the personnel guy to get things done.

And that underscores the strength in taking this fellow Freeman and stripping the interim from the title and making him club president . . . period.

Why look further than a guy who is already in place? Who do they want? Lee Iacocca?

What’s more, Dick Freeman is familiar to the community and with the community. In fact, he came from the community, moving to the Padres after being treasurer of a local savings and loan. He came to San Diego while in the Navy, and isn’t that a familiar scenario hereabouts?

Promote Freeman, and the Padres don’t have to hope they are getting a guy who will involve himself in community affairs. He already is involved with the Boy Scout/Good Scout luncheon, as chairman in fact, as well as being a board member of the San Diego and Imperial County chapter of the March of Dimes and a member of the La Jolla Rotary Club.

These seemingly boring details sound like a recitation from the media guide and, in truth, they are. But involvement is important.

One of the problems with the invisible man who vacated the position was that he was never in tune with the community, with a possible exception of a few restaurants. To get a feel for what he knew about San Diego, it was only necessary to peruse his expense accountings.

Freeman’s idea of a 3-martini lunch, I suspect, would be the number of cocktails consumed by, say, 15 or 20 people. That’s three martinis total, not each.

This is a business first and foremost and play later sort of fellow.

In essence, Freeman is a San Diego guy . . . though not a high-profile San Diego guy. He is quiet but not introverted. He stays in the background but remains accessible. Simply, he is the guy in the shadows of the owner’s box, not the guy “waving” over the front rail.

These two guys together make a perfect ticket, a hotter ticket, in their own way, than either party is offering Tuesday.

Dick Freeman knows business and the business of baseball, and he is a man of and for San Diego.

Jack McKeon knows baseball.

Let these guys work together and what we’re talking is inflation . . . in the win column.

Of course, this is not what might be called a general election. The “electoral college” begins and ends with owner Joan Kroc. She can do no better than to look within and stay with what she already has.

In this election, the vote should be easy.

Dick Freeman 1, Field 0.