Bip Roberts Checks Out; Padres Play Two Today

The disheveled middle-aged woman slowly walked down the hallway at San Francisco General Hospital with a respirator at her side. She was looking for a cigarette.

She mumbled a few words, pointing at the right side of her neck to three large slashes, apparently from a knife fight. Before she had a chance to explain, an orderly rushed over to take her back to her room, instructing her never to leave again without permission.

Later, a man walked by with wires connecting him to a machine on a cart. He said nothing, stopping only to glare at the four boisterous kids in the waiting room.

This was the Coronary Care Unit, where sounds are muffled, faces are grim and, in many cases, hope is waning.

When the door to room 5-E swung open at 3:40 Saturday afternoon, Bip Roberts kept walking, took the elevator down five floors, signed his exit papers, walked out, took a deep breath and blurted out:

“Man, it sure feels good to get the hell out of there.”

Roberts, considered the Padres’ most valuable player during their surge into pennant contention, was suffering from an apparent viral infection when he was carried off the field in a stretcher and rushed to the hospital Friday night during the Padres’ game against the San Francisco Giants.

Roberts underwent a series of tests through Saturday afternoon to determine if he had had a mild heart attack, but they all proved negative. An EKG revealed that everything was normal, his heart was fine.

Appearing weary and feeling weak, Roberts was scheduled to take a flight to San Diego later Saturday and will be examined again today by the Padre team doctors at the Scripps Clinic. He’s hoping to join the team Tuesday in Cincinnati when the Padres open a three-game series.

“It’s possible that he has a viral infection,” said Dr. Paul Hirshman of the Padre medical team. “A virus can affect the chest-wall or lungs and cause severe chest-pain without affecting the heart.”

Still, with Roberts showing symptoms of a heart attack, the Padres took no chances. They carried him off the field in a stretcher, rushed him to the emergency room and then, in the words of Roberts, doctors “poked and prodded me all night long.”

There he was less than 24 hours later, on a gloomy, dreary Saturday afternoon in which rain postponed the scheduled game between the Padres and the Giants, lifting the spirits of everyone around him.

Teammates Mark Davis and Jerald Clark, who stopped by to visit, were laughing after Roberts told them of his earlier phone conversation with Padre Manager Jack McKeon, who asked if this was going a bit too far to get a day off.

He told them all about the fruit and juices that Glenda Templeton, wife of Padre shortstop Garry, brought him.

He spoke of his phone converations with teammates Dennis Rasmussen and Bruce Hurst.

He told them how he actually had more company than he knew what to do with, particularly with his family living just across the bay in Oakland.

He said he would be praying Saturday night for more rain, hoping that today’s doubleheader at 12:05 p.m. would be washed away as well, making sure that he hadn’t missed a thing.

Then the laughter and jokes stopped. Roberts turned serious and let them in on a secret.

He had never been so scared in his life.

Oh, sure, he has had plenty of injuries. He has been bothered the past four days by a soreness in his left rib cage that refuses to go away. And he saw his friend, Dave Leiper, fight for his breath this season while pitching in a game.

But he never figured anything like this would happen to him. He’s just 25. He has a wife and a family. He couldn’t die now, could he?

“I didn’t know what was happening to me,” he said, “I thought I was having a heart attack. I just couldn’t breathe.

“Man, I was scared. I had all of the symptoms of a heart attack. But after they took an EKG and compared it to the one I had at Scripps, they ruled that out. Thank God.”

Said Davis: “You were scared? How about us? You scared the living daylights out of us. We didn’t know what was going on.”

From the time Roberts was carried off the field in the fifth inning of the Padres’ 5-3 victory until game-time Saturday, Roberts still was the talk of the clubhouse.

It perhaps was fortunate for the Padres that it rained. Who can concentrate on a pennant race when your buddy is in a strange hospital with a mysterious ailment?

More rain is expected today, which could push back the doubleheader until Monday, when each team is off. The Giants could schedule just one game Monday afternoon and then play the other, only if needed, at the end of the season.

“It’s all right by me,” McKeon said. “We’ll play them whenever they want, wherever they want. Besides, the longer we wait, the better chance we’ll have of having Bip back.”

After undergoing tests and further examination today, Roberts said he’ll take the first flight out as soon as he gets the OK. He’ll do anything, he said, just not to be lying in a room again with the sign outside the door reading:

Visiting Hours: 2-8

15 minutes every hour

No more than two visitors at a time.

“I’m so glad to leave this place,” Roberts said, “that right now, all I want to do is go home. Home sweet home.