Padres’ Terrell: ‘Simple, Quiet, Easy as Can Be’

Funny thing about this new Padre who has been overlooked in all the fuss over Jack Clark and Bruce Hurst. He’s darn near impossible to overlook.

Walt Terrell is the only Padre who sits in front of his locker for a full 2 hours after practice, sits alone, maybe staring at a newspaper on the floor, maybe staring into a shoe.

“I like ballparks,” the pitcher says. “Just being at ballparks.”

When he finally dresses, Terrell is the only Padre--maybe the only modern man under age 35--who still wears real “blue” blue jeans. No acid wash, no French cut, no crease. You see them and your first question is not “Why?” Your first question is, “They still make these?”

“To me,” he says, “why buy something that’s already faded?”

Terrell is also the only Padre who has worn the same pair of cleats for the past two seasons. He donates his yearly supply to his high school team back in Indiana.

“I’m not like some players,” he said. “I don’t need 10,000 pairs.”

This is a man in need of little. Terrell is the only Padre to spend the first seven years of his life without indoor plumbing, and the first nine without a phone. He is the only Padre to go on food stamps within the past 10 years. His first car was a Chrysler LeBaron, which came cheap because it had been repossessed. His first real house, located in an exclusive Detroit suburb, was purchased in 10 minutes when he finally made enough money to get rid of the LeBaron.

“We drove past it, my wife said she liked it, so I said, ‘I guess that means we’ll buy it,’ ” he said. “We went out back and told the guy and he said, ‘It’s yours.’ I said, ‘Good.’ ”

That’s as dramatic as life gets for a 30-year-old admitted former “redneck” who has gone unnoticed perhaps because he talks and acts less like Clark or Hurst than John Cougar Mellencamp.

“Ain’t much here,” he says of himself, in a voice still containing a trace of Hoosier drawl despite big-league stops in both New York (Mets) and Detroit. “I like things as simple, quiet, easy as can be.”

The Padres disagree with the first part of that quote. In Terrell, who they acquired from Detroit Oct. 28 for malcontents Chris Brown and Keith Moreland, they see plenty. They see one of only 10 pitchers to have worked 200 or more innings for five consecutive years. They see one of only eight pitchers who won at least 15 games a season during a three-year stretch from 1985-87.

That streak was broken last year when Terrell went 7-16. But last year, the Padres saw a guy who was backed by only 33 runs in those 16 losses, who still had an earned-run average of under 4.00 (3.97) and who still finished sixth in the American League with with 11 complete games despite missing the first month of the season with strained ankle ligaments.

“What we understand,” infielder Tim Flannery said, “is that here is a guy who will take the ball every fifth day, regardless. He’s not going to take himself out with a sore this or that. He’ll be there for you when you need him.”

What the Padres understand about Terrell mostly comes from other people, for so far Terrell has said little. He is unfailingly polite but undeniably opposed to any conjugation of the verb ‘schmooze.’ There will be time to make friends. There will be at least 162 games. He will have at least 30 scheduled starts. He plans on making every one of them.

“I know one thing,” said Terrell, a six-year veteran. “You can get the tar beat out of you just as easily when you are feeling good as when you are feeling bad. So what the hell, when it is your turn to pitch, you might as well show up.”

Underneath this simple approach is a simple realization that he, as with anybody, is lucky to be pitching at all.

“I appreciate all I have very much,” he said. “I appreciate it very, very, very much.”

Back home in Indiana, in the Ohio River city of Jeffersonville, his father worked at the General Electric plant painting dishwashers. His mother was a seamstress. He grew up in a rural home with no phone, no indoor toilets and the only available water coming from a pump in the back yard.

“I used to go down the street to my friend’s house so I could sit in his indoor bathroom,” Terrell said. “But you never know you are missing something unless you have it, so I never really missed anything. It wasn’t a terrible childhood or anything.”

By the time he was a top high school athlete, he was blessed with all the modern conveniences: indoor bathrooms, a phone and a rebellious temper.

“A tough kid, would stand up to anybody,” recalled his high school coach, Don Poole, in a telephone interview from Jeffersonville.

“A redneck,” Terrell said.

One game during his senior year, in front of several professional scouts, he threw one tantrum too many.

“He was a little wild that day, and one of our coaches was yelling at him to throw strikes,” Poole recalled. “All of a sudden from the mound, he yelled back, ‘You don’t like it, you get somebody else out here.’ ”

It is not known which scouts heard what, but Terrell got no offers coming out of high school. He didn’t sign a contract until four years later, in 1980, when he was drafted by Texas in the 33rd round out of tiny Morehead State University in the hills of Eastern Kentucky. He received a $3,000 bonus and $600 a month, and he and his new wife, Karen, and baby daughter Ryan went on food stamps.

“Didn’t feel bad,” Terrell said. “Needed to eat.”

Pitching with a work ethic and desperation partially fueled by those hard times, Terrell surprised the scouts and made the big leagues full time with the New York Mets in 1983. Since then, with basically a sinking fastball and slider, he has continued to surprise. And be surprised.

He said it was “hard to believe” that in October he was suddenly traded from Sparky Anderson’s happy Detroit clubhouse, where he had spent four years, but a part of Terrell always will be vulnerable. He still believes baseball players should play hard every day. He is making $775,000, but he still believes money should never be a factor. He still believe s in the way baseball, and Walt Terrell, used to be.

“I’ll never show you emotion except for one thing,” Terrell said. “When I see loafing. There is no excuse at all-- zip --for loafing. We are paid a damn lot of money to do something we did as kids, and the least we can do is try. You don’t try, you burn me.”

That said, Terrell paused to note that his father was still painting dishwashers down at the factory.

“Maybe,” he asked, “you could fit somewhere in that article that people should be keep buying dishwashers?”

Padre Notes

On Thursday, Atlanta scout Wes Westrum began his two-week stay with the Padres, during which he will check on outfielder John Kruk’s right knee and the development of outfielders Shawn Abner, Shane Mack, Thomas Howard and Gerald Clark. If Kruk looks healthy, and any of the outfielders impress, the way will be paved for a deal that would bring Atlanta slugger Dale Murphy to San Diego from catcher Sandy Alomar Jr., Kruk and one or two of the outfielders. Westrum has a deadline of March 15, when Murphy has requested a resolution to his situation. “The biggest thing I’m looking at is injuries,” Westrum said, referring to Kruk. “We don’t want to get a crippled horse.”