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Padre Notebook : Players Have Trouble Meeting Excessive Fan Demand

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Yuma has been good to the Padres this spring, what with a record attendance of 69,541 for 12 home games (eight sellouts, including 6,284 Saturday). The Padres rewarded the fans with a 10-2 home record, capped with Saturday’s 4-2 victory over the Chicago Cubs in the Yuma finale.

But according to a couple of Padres, there comes a point where the fan interest here can be too much.

Witness the crowds that milled around the clubhouses, which are a short walk from Desert Sun Stadium and other practice fields. The Padres have been swarmed for autographs and thus have had difficulty moving about during their daily work.

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The inconvenience turned into a real problem for Tony Gwynn one recent evening, when he was attempting to reach his car around 10:30 after a night game. He was immediately mobbed. Having signed autographs for more than an hour before the game, Gwynn said, he was tired and wanted to return to the hotel and his family.

“So I told everybody I was sorry, but I couldn’t sign right now,” Gwynn said. “And then all of a sudden this lady starts screaming at me. Cusses me out. Calls me every name in the book. Tells me, ‘The reason the Padres aren’t going anywhere is because Tony Gwynn has his nose in the air.’ I don’t say nothing, I just keep walking.”

The next day, the security guard at the Padres clubhouse door told Gwynn the woman was planning on suing him for cursing her. This set Gwynn off.

“I just want to tell people, they have to understand, you can’t please everybody,” said Gwynn, who repeated that he never said one word to the woman and would welcome a chance to prove it in court. Some members of the Padre organization say they haven’t heard mild-mannered Gwynn cuss this spring.

“If one lady is going to be like that, I might as well be a jerk to everybody,” Gwynn said. “Well, I won’t be a jerk. But sometimes it makes you wonder.”

According to Padre Manager Jack McKeon, the growing crowds are a problem for which there is no solution.

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“You love that attention, you want that,” he said. “It’s just that it’s so hard for us to move around. Everybody who has ever criticized us for not signing every autograph should try to walk through that mob.”

In a fitting example of the Padres’ good spring luck, they drove out of town Saturday just as the area was hit with the spring’s first rainstorm.

The victory over the Cubs came thanks to seven good innings from pitcher Bruce Hurst (three runs, eight strikeouts) and RBIs from Jack Clark (single), John Kruk (single) and Carmelo Martinez (fly out).

Ending their 21st spring here, the Padres traveled to Palm Springs, where they will play four games before returning to San Diego Thursday for their annual game against San Diego State. Fans at that game will receive an early peek at one new Padre: Hurst will be the starter.

They travel to Las Vegas for games against the Seattle Mariners (Friday) and the triple-A Las Vegas Stars (Saturday). They return to San Diego for good next Saturday night, less than two days before the season opener April 3 against San Francisco in San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium.

It was not an uneventful move from Yuma, as if moving an entire big league operation can ever be easy. First, a fan offered an unusual parting gift late Friday night when he drove his truck through the left-field fence at one of the practice fields and crashed into some batting cages, mutilating them.

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Saturday morning, the moving truck hired to transport all the equipment was more than two hours late. The same outfit was an hour late bringing the equipment from San Diego to Yuma because the driver went to the wrong field.

Wanted for next year: a moving company that can get it right.

Padre Notes

The final game began with Arizona Governor Rose Mofford throwing out the first ball to Manager Jack McKeon, who promptly dropped it and made her throw it again. . . . Outfielder Shane Mack will accompany the team to Palm Springs to receive a cortisone injection in his sore right elbow, which has been diagnosed as containing bone chips. He will still probably start the season on the disabled list.

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