Yuma’s Caught in the Middle : Baseball: To the folks on this side of the lockout, who’s right and who’s wrong isn’t the issue. They just want the Padres there as soon as possible.

No one has ever accused this place of being paradise. Yet not since the territorial prison closed and lynching went out of fashion has this town been engulfed by such an ugly mood.

It’s a time of year when townsfolk here are proud to be Yumans, but you can’t step inside a restaurant or bar these days without listening to them grieve.

A cold snap has hit the city, dropping the overnight lows to 30 . . . the price of tomatoes has reached $2.99 a pound . . . Yuma High School was upset in the first round of the divisional basketball tournament . . . even hard drugs have infiltrated the town, with a man sentenced just Thursday for possession of four Salem cigarettes laced with cocaine.

“People are pretty upset right now,” said Joe Catonzaro, 32, an airport manager. “Everyone’s blaming our problems on one thing, and only one thing, and it’s making us pretty damn mad.”

Yes sir, one look at the marquee at the Ray Kroc Baseball Complex these days lets everyone in town see what they already know to be the root of all their ills.

Standing high above the ground for all of Yuma to see, the marquee for god’s sake, is publicizing a tool sale, a gun show and an Italy travelogue.

Nowhere to be found are the words: San Diego Padres Spring Training.

“It’s enough to make you sick,” said Bill Kreitler, 35, manager of the Hungry Hunter restaurant.

Yuma’s most prominent residents, the ones who live there six weeks every spring, are nowhere to be found.

The Padres remain at home with the rest of baseball’s 26 major league teams, locked out of spring training until a settlement is reached on a collective bargaining agreement between the owners and the players.

The townsfolks don’t know who’s right or who’s wrong in the stalled negotiations between players and owners, nor do they much care. They just continue reading the local sports section and watching the news religiously, hoping to find anything that hints the Padres will be coming to town.

“I really don’t know who’s at fault here,” said Jack Mielke, owner of Jack and Rosie’s steakhouse, “but I know Yuma’s going to take the brunt of it. We’re going to be the ones suffering.”

The Padres originally were due in town Saturday to report for spring training, with their first scheduled workout today in front of hundreds, perhaps a thousand, gleeful fans.

Instead, 70 rooms at the Park Inn International hotel, the Padres’ headquarters, have been freed up until further notice.

The only ones using the ball park these days are the Padre minor league players and the Yakult Swallows, a Japanese professional team. The Padre clubhouse remains virtually empty, used only by a handful of minor league coaches, with two clubhouse attendants living in the back.

Mayor Bob Tippett says it’s too early for anyone to panic, but already there are signs of economic catastrophe, and everyone is being hit.

“Doomsday is not here,” he said, “but we are very concerned.”

The city has already cancelled “Meet the Padres Night,” an affair sponsored by the Caballeros de Yuma, the city’s booster group. Total estimated loss: $20,000.

The Padres’ annual intra-squad benefit game, scheduled for Feb. 25, is not cancelled but now has evolved into a game between the Swallows and the Padres’ minor league players. The benefit game still will cost $2 for admission and parking, but no one is expecting the usual crowd of 4,000 to watch the hitting exploits of Kazushigee Nagashima and Alberto Mateos instead of Tony Gwynn and Jack Clark.

Keep it a secret from these distraught Yumans, but it’s now almost a certainty that the first week of spring-training games will be cancelled, costing the Caballeros an estimated $119,200 in revenue from the games alone.

You see, although a possible settlement could be reached next week, baseball officials said that camps probably won’t open until at least a week later, providing time for equipment and players to arrive.

“I would think we’d need at least 10 days of workouts before we could start playing games,” said Jack McKeon, Padre manager and vice president of baseball operations.

In the meantime, the city of Yuma can only wait, hope, and pray.

Each day of the lockout is costing this town thousands of dollars, and although it’s too depressing to Tippett to sit down and calculate the exact amount each day, a study has recently been completed to project the total loss of revenue for complete cancellation of spring-training.

“It’s eight million dollars,” Tippett said, “and for a city like ours, that loss would be devastating.”

Perhaps Todd Craig, owner of The Crossing Restaurant, typified every Yuma businessman’s sentiments when he said, “You know, I used to love the game of baseball. Now I hate it.”

HEY BUDDY, CAN YOU SPARE A QUARTER?

Drew Parra grimaces as the two Marines leave their bar stools. He scrapes the change off the counter top, drops it into his tip container, and scowls when he examines the contents.

Oh, there are a few scattered dollar bills, but unless he plans to spend his free time playing video games, the quarters represent nothing more than chump change.

“This is a military town,” he said, “and you know these Marines don’t tip. You can’t find too many people in town who do. In this town, they think tipping is a town in China.”

Parra, who has been bartender at the Shilo Inn the past four years, normally could shrug off his disgust. After all, Valentine’s Day has passed, and in this town that means only one thing:

The Padres, with their $51.50 worth of meal money each day and fat checkbooks, soon will be rolling into town ready to saturate Yuma’s economy.

But Parra, along with every bartender, waitress, restaurant owner, hotel manager and businessman in town, knows this year is different.

“This is just killing us,” Parra said. “This is our biggest time of year. I mean, once they leave here, that’s the last time we’ll have any business until September.

“Every businessman in town counts on this month.”

And just how much more can Parra usually expect to receive in tips when the Padres are in town?

“I’d rather not say,” Parra said.

Three hundred?

“More.”

Five hundred?

“More.”

One thousand?

“You’re getting closer, but that’s all I’m going to say.”

Of course, Parra confesses, once Goose Gossage left the Padres, everyone’s wallet suffered.

“Goose would just sit here with a stack of twenties and order Cuervo Gold and Miller Lite’s,” Parra said, his eyes glistening thinking back to the good ol’ days.

“We were all curious to see what it’d be like this year, because last year, they cooled it a little bit. They had a new manager (McKeon), and I guess they wanted to make a good first impression.

“But before, man, they partied big time.”

I JUST WANT A GOOD NIGHT’S SLEEP

Gail Larsen, the reservationist at the Park Inn International where the Padres are supposed to stay, has 70 rooms awaiting the Padres for Friday, Feb. 23. It has been no problem pushing the reservations back a week from the original schedule, but any further delay, she says, could be a nightmare.

The hotel is booked solid throughout March, but if spring training is delayed, and that first week of games is cancelled, she expects the hotel to become a ghost town.

“We figure about 95 percent of our 164 rooms are filled with Padre players and fans,” she said. “Everyone wants to stay here so they can rub elbows with the players. And so far, we haven’t had one single solitary cancellation.

“But if this thing is delayed any longer or, God forbid, spring training is cancelled, I’ll have a screaming fit. I’m having a headache as it is, because I really don’t know what rooms I have to sell, and what rooms I don’t. This whole thing is driving me goofy.

“I’ll tell you what: If they don’t get this thing settled, I’m going to take the next month and a half off to get psychiatric help.”

Total expected loss of revenue per night in hotel rooms alone at the Park Inn International: $10,500.

But while this spring-training drought might be leading every hotel owner to the closest watering hole to drown his or her depression, there are some visitors who look positively at the surplus of rooms.

“Hey, I’m glad the Padres aren’t here,” said a man who called himself only Prosper, hoping to con a few of the local citizens to play pool with him at Johnny’s Other Place. “I’m staying at the Motel 6 now, but if the Padres were here, man, I’d be sleeping on the streets.”

HEY, GUYS, IF YOU REALLY WANT TO COME . . .

Tippett sits in the stands of the empty Desert Sun Stadium, admiring the recent work of the Caballeros, of which he is president. The Caballeros have spent $140,000 out of their own pockets the past few months to renovate the complex, putting in a new outfield fence, a new warning track, a backstop, foul poles and electrical outlets behind the pitching mounds for pitching machines, among other improvements.

It’s the first stage of a $2 million project, Tippett said, in which they will provide the Padres with new locker room facilities, a new office complex and other amenities to keep the Padres in town.

But for the time being, everything is being put on hold while the club is being sold. Tippett doesn’t want to take the chance of making the improvements and having the new owner take the Padres out of Yuma when their lease expires in 1991.

“This is a time where we can show off,” Tippett said, “being one of just 26 cities that can boast it has a major league team. But there’s not a whole lot to brag about right now.

“I just wish this whole thing would get settled. At least, I wish we could have the guys here working out.”

Tippett stopped, then came across what he perceived to be a brilliant idea. Hey, the Ray Kroc Complex is a public facility, isn’t it? It’s unconstitutional to keep anyone from using a public facility, isn’t it? No one’s seen a security guard around, have they?

“Hey, I’m not going to be the one to tell Tony Gwynn he can’t use our batting cages,” Tippett said, smiling coyly. “He’s more than welcome. He can bring his friends, too.”

HEY GUYS, RIGHT NOW, YOU’RE THE SHOW

Let’s see, there is Tom Romenesko, the Padre director of player development. There’s Priscilla Oppenheimer, administrator of minor league operations. And, oh yeah, Whitey Wietelmann and Bob Doty of the clubhouse staff. That’s it, as far as the Padres’ major league personnel in Yuma.

Joining them Monday will be McKeon, Bill Beck, assistant to McKeon, and secretary Linda Barron, but all others from the Padre front office are forbidden in camp by directive of the owners’ Player Relations Committee. Even Doc Mattei, the Padre traveling secretary, was forced to leave the camp Thursday.

“The hardest part is the uncertainty of what’s going on,” Romenesko said. “I must get asked 15 times a day about the latest in negotiations, and I tell them I know as much as anyone else, just what I read in the paper.

“The only advantage I can see now is that the laundry gets done quicker.”

Said Doty: “There’s not a whole lot I can do right now but just wait, like everyone else.”

In the meantime, fans are relegated to watching the Japanese and Padre minor leaguers. Few bother with the opportunity. On Friday, there were a total of six fans in the bleachers.

The biggest group is the Japanese media, which has 82 reporters and photographers in camp to scrutinize their team’s spring training.

“It’s always like this,” said Luigi Nakajima, an executive with Yakult. “We finished fourth last year, but we’re very popular.”

Hmm, so do the baseball fans in Japan also become irate when there’s a lockout?

“What’s a lockout?” he asked.

Sorry, but like the folks in Yuma say, you don’t want to know.