They Hit It Off Over Mutual Interest in Hitting It Out

Spring training interviews can be tedious and repetitive and often become exercises in cliches formulated by Connie Mack and passed through generations of managers and players.

Jack McKeon was in the midst of one of those “talking head” television conversations a few days ago when the sportscaster triggered a nerve.

The subject was catchers, and just what a pleasant predicament the Padres were in because they have two such outstanding young catchers in Benito Santiago and Sandy Alomar Jr.

The stock answer is that it is, indeed, a pleasant problem, having two such fine young men.

It was not McKeon’s answer.

“ Two outstanding young catchers?” he blustered. “Are you kidding? We have three outstanding young catchers.”

Most of the next few minutes were spent discussing Mark Parent, this spring’s outsider who is in reality an insider. It can be etched in any of the boulders strewn on this moonscape that Parent will be on the roster opening day, and Alomar will not.

However, for much of spring training, Parent has been anonymous and seemingly forgotten . . . except maybe by Jack Clark.

Mark Parent, the 27-year-old backup catcher, and Jack Clark, the 33-year-old superstar first baseman, have forged an unlikely relationship. They are the Crunch Buddies, who spend hours talking about hitting and then go out and pound baseballs into the desert sands.

Clark, of course, is known for his power. He has 256 career homers, including season highs of 25, 26, 27, 35 and 27. For Clark, six home runs in a month would be more typical than exceptional.

Parent has six home runs in his career, all of them last year when he backed up Santiago and spent his first full season in the major leagues.

What was significant about those six home runs was that they came in only 119 at-bats. That figured to one home run for every 19.8 times at-bats. Parent had the lowest home run-to-at-bat ratio on the club.

So what we have here, in essence, is the two most powerful Padre hitters talking baseball, one a star and the other an understudy.

“It’s baseball season,” Parent said. “What else is there to talk about?”

But you won’t find these guys talking about the intricacies of infield play or how to align the outfield or the execution of the hit-and-run or how many miles pitchers should run between starts.

“We talk just hitting,” Parent said. “We can talk for hours and hours.”

Parent came back from yet another season of winter ball this spring and found his locker next to Clark’s at the Padres’ Yuma training complex. He had a few questions for his new teammate, not that he really knew what to expect in terms of answers.

“A lot of times you ask people for help, and they say, ‘You’re all right,’ and go on their way,” he said. “I ask Jack, and what he has to say might be brutal, but he’ll tell me. I respect a guy like that.”

Clark, for his part, found it refreshing to find a youngster so receptive to learning. If Parent had been bashful about asking for advice, Clark might well have been bashful about offering.

“I don’t like to see somebody doing something wrong,” he said, “but I’m not very pushy either.”

And so it was that the geography of a clubhouse created a common ground for a common interest . . . the bashing of baseballs. They would sit in front of those lockers gripping bats and cocking their wrists and occasionally jumping to their feet and getting into stances.

“I told him he shouldn’t try to hit like me,” Clark said, “because I’m an awkward hitter.”

That being case, Clark should probably be giving awkward lessons.

“There’s a lot of repetition,” Parent said. “We talk a lot about the mental side of the game, what to think about when you’re ahead in the count and how to approach it when you’re behind in the count. Sometimes we talk for a half an hour and end up back where we started.”

Much of the conversation, Parent said, is reinforcement of and expansion on things he has been told by Amos Otis, the hitting coach.

“Amos,” Parent said, “just can’t be out there in the clubhouse talking to everyone all the time.”

But Jack Clark’s locker is right there.

“You just can’t teach yourself when you’re doing something the wrong way,” Clark said, “because you can’t adjust what you often can’t see. And talking to Mark helps me too, because it helps me think about hitting and what I should be doing.”

These Crunch Buddies were in the same group at a morning workout at Scottsdale Community College, and it seemed the air must have been lighter or the fences closer or the bats made of atomic wood. They put on a fireworks show of their own.

Tim Flannery, coming to bat with the next group, stepped to the plate and called to the batting practice pitcher: “Hey, throw me some of the same baseballs those guys were using.”

He couldn’t.

They were gone.