Garvey Goes to Bat for Talk Radio

With a headset cradling his ears and a mike at his lips, former baseball star Steve Garvey stepped up to the plate of talk radio before dawn Monday and, when he emerged 3 1/2 hours later, not a hair on his gleaming chestnut head appeared out of place. For that matter, barely an emotion or an opinion seemed ruffled either.

Garvey, who has had his share of controversy in recent months involving charges of two out-of-wedlock paternities, sounded about as smooth and seamless as he looked in a fresh white shirt and red tie speckled with figures of tennis players. The 40-year-old celebrity, who has been hired to woo the baby-boom audience to XTRA-AM by hosting a weekday talk show from 5:30 to 9 a.m., was aided by a bevy of friendly, prearranged call-in guests, including Los Angeles Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda, who called him “a wonderful person.”

“I wasn’t doing anything at that hour of the morning anyway,” Garvey said at one point of his early-to-bed, early-to-rise regimen. “It gets your energy level up.”

If Garvey’s voice was low and perhaps a bit tired as he launched “XTRA Morning Update with Garvey and Co.” at 5:30, within the hour he sounded peppy as he did the lead-in for news updates about embattled Cincinnati Reds manager Pete Rose and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s latest “haunting problem with Chappaquiddick.” (The jury foreman from the 20-year-old case was quoted in Newsweek as saying “there was a cover-up” to save Kennedy’s political career.)

Garvey, who retired from baseball before the 1988 season after an 18-year career as a first baseman with the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Diego Padres, said after his first XTRA show that he had “always thought politics would be four to six years down the road” once he finished playing baseball, and that that ambition still holds. He has expressed interest in seeking the Republican nomination for a U.S. Senate seat. Garvey is also founder and chairman of Garvey Marketing Group, a La Jolla-based sports marketing firm.

“I thought this would just be a nice forum for me to express my views and to share insights and knowledge,” he said of the radio show. “. . . Gosh, this is the chance every day for me to start my day with a challenge.”

He said the format of the show would be split “60/40” between sports and entertainment interviews, and noted that he would like to do on-air profiles of “the Kevin Costners, the Emma Samms and the Jane Seymours.”

On his first day out, it was mostly baseball and sports that he talked about, giving equal time to Lasorda and Padres outfielder Tony Gwynn. But Garvey expressed few of his own opinions.

Speaking with XTRA sports director Lee Hamilton, for example, who said he believes Rose “damaged himself at the gambling tables of America” and compared Rose’s alleged gambling activities to the Chicago White Sox scandals of 1919, Garvey limited himself to asking questions. At one point he asked about the value of taking the testimony of “convicted felons” against Rose. But at another he noted “how important it is to keep the game clean.” And when Lasorda had talked about the Reds fans mounting banners at their stadium in support of Rose, Garvey simply listened.

When an interviewer later mentioned that it was hard to tell what he really felt, Garvey said with a broad grin, “Oh, good,” explaining that he intended to offer his opinions only when asked.

Off the air, he did just that. Garvey said that if Rose bet on baseball, he should be suspended “for a year,” but if he bet on his team, he should be “banned for a lifetime.” He added that there “should be due process.”

Garvey also disclosed off the air, in response to a question, that he is the father of a San Diego woman’s 4-month-old daughter, which had been one of the two paternity charges against him. He said he is providing for the child. Garvey has two adolescent daughters from his marriage to Cyndy Garvey.

He declined to comment about an alleged paternity involving the pregnancy of an Atlanta television editor to whom he had been engaged.

Several months ago, Garvey married interior decorator Candace Thomas, who has two daughters from a former marriage. A black Mercedes station wagon, bearing plates “Th Garvs,” sat at the front of the radio station’s building.

If sports was the dominant theme--including in-studio guest Scott Hamilton, an Olympic gold medalist in ice-skating--Garvey’s personal life clearly was the program’s sub-text.

Talking to Tom Brookshire, a former pro-football player with the Philadelphia Eagles and now a sportscaster for all-sports radio station WIP in Philadelphia, Garvey said matter-of-factly that “the press takes off on, they take advantage of people like us who are straightforward and honest.”

A pre-taped interview with Bob Hope had an edge of innuendo as Hope noted, speaking of massages, that he has “a masseur here (Burbank), a masseur in Palm Springs and a masseur on the way.” Garvey, later acknowledging the innuendo with a nod, insisted he did not mind.

He seemed a bit uncomfortable on the air when a caller identified as John from Newport Beach said he was on Garvey’s side in his personal battles. “I know this is going to strike a chord,” John began, then compared Garvey’s situation to that of Boston Red Sox third baseman Wade Boggs, who is being sued for palimony by his former girlfriend.

John said press reports about Garvey’s personal problems are “entirely unfair” when an athlete’s “performance on the field” is “exemplary.” But then John added that he didn’t know how to treat Garvey, considering that Garvey has now become part of the media himself.

“OK, I can go both ways,” Garvey responded dryly.

Garvey’s worst moments came toward the end of his morning. KFMB-TV morning host Jerry G. Bishop, whose interview with Garvey was simulcast on both XTRA and his own “Sun-Up San Diego” show, started with welcoming chit-chat, then threw a verbal curve ball. Saying it was time to get serious, Bishop asked how Garvey felt about all the attention to his personal life, including those jokes about Garvey that Hope delivered at the Oscar ceremonies in March.

Rather adroitly, Garvey told Bishop that when Hope said to him, “You provided a lot of great material for me,” he replied simply, “It’s a pleasure.”

He added that after a while, “you got to keep perspective” and indicated that he has no problems with his listeners. “I love the public,” Garvey said.

The two hosts went back to talking about Garvey’s program but Bishop had one more lick to go. “A belated happy Father’s Day,” Bishop said, signing off.