Great Expectations Pitched at Benes : Baseball: His idols are now his peers so he feels comfortable and ready to help the Padres.

OK, so the baseball cards he buys each season are now for his son, instead of himself.

So he still maintains a reverence for the players he idolized growing up, only now, he tries not to think about it when he’s on the mound.

So he finds it incredible to believe that he’s actually teammates with Jack Clark, Bruce Hurst, Tony Gwynn, and Garry Templeton, but finally has worked up the courage to talk with them like they’re everyday people, or something.

It was Thursday when Benes’ first big-league training camp came to a close, but as he drove off in his car to San Diego, the memories of these past 2 1/2 weeks forever will remain.

For the first time in his life, Andy Benes feels like a major-league baseball player.

Even if he still does have to ask his wife each morning if it’s really true.

Benes, who will pitch today in the Padres’ intrasquad game at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium, left camp Thursday as the No. 3 starter in the rotation.

A year ago he was in Wichita pitching for the Padres’ double-A team. In 1988, he was pitching for Evansville University. Just three years before that, he was in high school.

As Padre outfielder Fred Lynn can tell you, it’s a rather strange feeling to find out that the year he won the American League MVP award in 1975, little Andy Benes was in third grade.

“I’m telling you, it makes you feel real old all of a sudden,” Lynn said.

Of course, you don’t expect 22-year-old kids to be one of the aces of your pitching staff, either.

Oh, the Padre front-office and coaching staff never will publicly admit it. There’s no need to put any further pressure on the kid, they say. But secretly, they wouldn’t be surprised to see Benes become a 20-game winner.

This season.

“This might sound kind of funny, since this is going to be his first full season in the big leagues,” said Gary Lance, Benes’ pitching coach at Wichita, “but I’m going to predict right now that Andy’s going to be one of the greatest pitchers in the game.”

Wow, you mean he’ll be right there alongside Bret Saberhagen, Dwight Gooden, Roger Clemens, and all of the other great pitchers in the big-leagues today?

“No,” Lance said, “I’m talking about being one of best pitchers who have ever played this game.”

Gulp.

“I’m telling you, all of the ingredients are there,” Lance said. “And barring an unforeseen injury or something, I don’t see why Andy won’t be an All-Star pitcher and a Cy Young pitcher for many, many years.”

And to think, virtually every time he steps on the mound, he’s facing a batter whose baseball card is sitting at his home in Evansville, Ind., wondering if he’d ever get to meet them.

Catcher Benito Santiago watched Benes walk by him the other day in the clubhouse, but couldn’t resist throwing a couple of barbs his way for winning first-place prize of $735 in the NCAA pool.

“Hey, man, what are you doing winning the pool?” Santiago teased. “You got lucky. What do you know about basketball?”

Benes looked at him straight in the face, and said: “I just did my homework son, that’s all, just did my homework.” He then strutted away without cracking smile, while Santiago filled the air with laughter.

If the same incident had occurred last season, Benes wouldn’t have said so much as a word. After all, he was a rookie. And rookies aren’t supposed to talk back to veterans, much less retaliate, even if he’s 6-foot-6, weighing 235 pounds.

But this year, with all of 54 days of major-league experience under his belt, is different. Benes feels like a part of the team. He belongs.

No longer is he an intruder in the Padre clubhouse, imagining resentment around him. He’s one of them now, and as vital a factor in their success as anyone.

“It’s a whole different feeling,” Benes said. “There was a whole lot of anxiety when I was up last year.”

Benes had the best spring of any Padre pitcher. He was 2-0 with a 2.25 ERA, yielding eight hits and one walk in eight innings. He’ll pitch again for real Wednesday against the Dodgers, a team that looked absolutely foolish against him.

Benes had the rotten luck of being matched against Orel Hershiser in each of his two starts against the Dodgers. But it didn’t matter.

Benes defeated the Dodgers and Hershiser, 1-0, each time. His cumulative line: 15 innings, 6 hits, 0 runs, 7 walks and 13 strikeouts; 2-0, 0.00 ERA.

“The Dodgers found out in a hurry just what he could do,” said Padre pitching coach Pat Dobson. “The rest of the league may start finding out, too.”

The expectations encompassing Benes are enormous. Maybe too much. This is, after all, just a kid.

Funny, if it were anyone else, the Padres would be a bit worried. But this is Andy Benes. And as anyone who knows him will tell you, he’s different from any other 22-year-old you’ll ever meet.

“There are times when I’m thinking this guy is just too good to be true,” said Lance, now the Padres’ triple-A pitching coach in Las Vegas. “You think to yourself, ‘He’s got to change with success, right? No one can stay like this.’

“But there’s something so special about him, that one day I’d very much like to meet his parents, and just tell them what kind of son they raised.

“That’s why I think he’s going to have so much successs in this game. The talent obviously is there, but it’s there for a lot of guys in this game, and it never emerges.

“But with Andy, he wants to be successful. He wants to improve, and learn so much, that he’s just as anxious now as the first day he showed up in Wichita.

“He was invincible then. I mean, there were times when it was hard to conceive somebody scoring off him. And you talk about pressure. It was unbelievable. I was at Huntsville with (Jose) Canseco there, and it was no comparison to the media attention. That’s why I believe now he can handle anything.”

Benes got his crash course the night of May 4, 1989. Benes lost a game to El Paso, the first of his professional career. He had allowed just four hits and one earned run in eight innings, but all that seemed to matter was that he lost.

“Man, did they ever let me have it,” Benes said. “I couldn’t believe it. I said, ‘Hey, I’m not some super human-being that’s going to win every game. I’m going to put my best effort forward, and if I lose, that’s just part of baseball.’

“That philosophy has really helped me up here. I know I’m not going to win every game I pitch. It’s impossible. But I want to make sure I hold up my end of the bargain, too. I don’t want my age to be a factor.”

That should be the last of anyone’s worries. Benes always was the mature boy in his school classes, his parents say, and now that he has a wife and 17-month old son, well, he has no choice.

The only time he actually showed his age, friends and family say, is last season when he became frustrated at not being called up earlier to at least Las Vegas. What made it worse, he said, was that Angel pitcher Jim Abbott, his teammate from the Olympics, was in the midst of being a smash success in the big leagues.

“My wife finally set me straight,” Benes said. “She said, ‘You’re not Jim Abbott. You’re not with the Angels. You’re Andy Benes. And you’re in Wichita. So go pitch.”

Two months later, Benes was called up to the big leagues. He lost his first two games, and on Aug. 23 in Philadelphia, won his first big-league game. He went on and posted a six-game winning streak, and finished in a tie for fifth in the National League Rookie of the Year balloting.

Everything was going so well, in fact, that Benes’ friends and teammates told him it’s time to buy a house. So he and wife went shopping for homes in September, found one in the $250,000-range that suited them perfectly, agreed to buy it, but when it came down to sign the papers, Benes just couldn’t do it.

“That’s a lot of money for me to start shelling out,” said Benes, who will earn $130,000 this season. “People can say what they want about my future, but I know a career can end at any time. Plus, I knew with the possibility of the lockout, I might not even get paid.

“People tease me about being conservative, saying I should go out and spend my money because it will keep coming in, but I know not to count on anything. Maybe that’s being too cautious, but that’s me.”

Padre Notes

The Padres (10-2) assured themselves of their best spring-training winning percentage in franchise history Thursday with an 8-7 victory over the Angels. It was their eighth consecutive victory, seventh come-from-behind. It also assured the Padres of the best record in the Cactus League for the second consecutive season. Yet, Padre Manager Jack McKeon down-played their record, saying: “It doesn’t mean a thing right now. Now, if that meant we could go 10-2 at the start of the season, that would be another thing.” . . . Padre pitcher Eric Show, who underwent back surgery last August, completed his spring without a hint of back trouble. He was 1-0 this spring with a 4.15 ERA, yielding 17 hits in 13 innings. “I haven’t really been happy with the results,” Show said, “but I’m real happy with the way I’m pitching. My back feels great.”