Padre Fans Wishing They Could Receive April for Christmas

Excuse me, but could someone please tell me whether the Chargers are still playing?

Is the season over, or what?

They seem to have disappeared from San Diego’s conversational landscape. If they are still playing, you could not prove it by anything I have heard of late.

In fact, what I have been experiencing might be called April in December.

No one, and I mean no one, is talking about anything but baseball. Baseball! Even the weather feels like spring . . . or maybe summer.

Indeed, for Padre fans, these fall and winter months cannot possibly pass quickly enough. As far as they are concerned, the goal posts can come down and the foul poles can go up any time. Like right now.

Padre fans would like to go straight to April . . . without passing New Year’s Eve.

Boom! Jack Clark is a Padre.

Zap! Walt Terrell is a Padre.

Wow! Bruce Hurst is a Padre.

Whoa! Dale Murphy might be a Padre.

Why not just go straight to October and get the World Series under way?

Obviously, Joan Kroc, Dick Freeman and Jack McKeon are tired of not being party to a pennant race. The team the Padres will be putting on the field in 1989 already appears superior to the team that won the National League pennant in 1984.

Let’s look at ‘em . . .

Starting pitching--Eric Show and Ed Whitson are pushes, though I suspect Show is on the verge of the kind of year that will make the ’89 Show superior to the ’84 Show. And I’ll give Bruce Hurst, Dennis Rasmussen and Walt Terrell a substantial edge over Andy Hawkins, Mark Thurmond and Tim Lollar.

Relief pitching--Rich Gossage and Mark Davis are a push.

Catching--I’ll take Benito Santiago over Terry Kennedy on defense alone.

First base--Would it be blasphemy hereabouts to suggest that Jack Clark will have more impact in ’89 than The Garv had in ‘84? He will.

Second base--Another vote for ‘89, Roberto Alomar an easy choice over Alan Wiggins.

Shortstop--OK, so maybe the ’84 Tempy was probably better than the ’89 Tempy is likely to be, but all the ’89 Tempy will be asked to do is play solid defense and get on base enough to get the pitcher out of the way.

Third base--It would seem logical to assume that Graig Nettles gives ’84 an edge over the platoon of Randy Ready and Tim Flannery, but Nettles hit .228 and drove in 65 runs. I’m not so sure Tandy Readery might not be able to match that.

Outfield--Tony Gwynn and Carmelo Martinez would be pushes with ‘84, and Kevin McReynolds would give ’84 the edge at the other position.

In the big picture, it is obvious that the ’89 Padres will be superior to the ’84 pennant winners. And this does not take into account the possibility, a strong possibility, that McKeon will make further moves, such as the Murphy move, to further improve at third base, the outfield and maybe even shortstop.

All of this, of course, is why the Padres are generating so much baseball talk at this most unlikely time of the year.

The Hurst Scenario alone had the community on the edge of its seat for days. It seemed for so long that it was so likely that he would be coming to San Diego that it eventually started to be more like an unobtainable fantasy.

And then came Wednesday night’s Nightmare on Peachtree Street, when it looked as if Hurst was going to end up anywhere but San Diego.

This was to be a night when Kroc and Freeman made the commitment to go for broke, though Kroc is never likely to know exactly what that word means. They did the ironing they needed to do to get the wrinkles out of the contract, and Freeman, the interim prez, stayed with it until 4 a.m. to get the job done.

Should Kroc hire someone other than Freeman as permanent club president, the guy has a chance to be elected executive of the year for duties performed in a position he no longer holds. Or McKeon might be the first in history to be executive of the year and manager of the year.

In the aftermath of the Hurst signing, Padre fans marveled at their good fortune . . . but accepted it a little bit like kids who realize that there are still unwrapped packages under the tree.

What they are wondering is, what next? Or rather, who next? And when?

The Freeman-McKeon tag team is obviously not done wrestling with this roster. Dale Murphy is available, and so are a number of other players who would fit nicely in the local pinstripes.

Let the Padres make one more acquisition such as the ones they have made already, and they will be drawing 30,000 fans for their Monday, Wednesday and Friday calisthenics. The 1989 season, after all, cannot really get here soon enough.