This Team May Need More Than a Few Meetings

Presto! Poof . . . as in Puff the Magic Meeting.

The Padres have put all their troubles behind them in one 50-minute meeting of the minds.

Sure.

I suppose they also put their dentures under their pillows at night and expect the tooth fairy to leave them winning lottery tickets or new contracts, whichever might be worth more.

In truth, I have never heard of a meeting turning a week around, much less a season.

In the aftermath, I am always amused by the rhetoric. Suddenly, the air is clear and everyone is going to play hard and play with intensity and play with concentration.

Wow! Look out NL West!

However, if the opposite has been the case for the season’s first seven weeks, and that’s exactly what these guys seem to be telling us, I would suggest refunds are in order. Both the club and the fans should be getting some money back.

Get serious.

The genesis of this closed-door confrontation would appear to have been remarks made this week in a New York newspaper by Mike Pagliarulo, heretofore known to the public as a .200-hitting platoon infielder rather than a philosophical and motivational force within the clubhouse.

Pagliarulo talked of a player he did not name who cared more about his statistics than the outcome of games.

“He doesn’t give a . . . about this team,” Pagliarulo said, “and that’s weak.”

It was rather transparent that Tony Gwynn was the subject of this criticism. Pagliarulo has never, to my knowledge, denied it.

The reaction in the community was predictably outrage. Mike Pagliarulo rip Tony Gwynn? Are you kidding? Who’s he kidding? Who’s Mike Pagliarulo? Is he still with the team? If so, why?

Credibility? The public reacted as it would to a drunk at a piano bar saying Neil Diamond can’t sing.

Indeed, when the Padres return home next Thursday, Pagliarulo will likely be vilified. A guy who takes verbal shots at Tony Gwynn, a teammate no less, will be about as popular hereabouts as a traffic jam.

However, for all of the furor Pagliarulo’s audacity has caused, the fact remains that the troubling issue should be more what was said rather than who said it.

Pagliarulo’s perceptions quite likely represent a more widespread undercurrent of feeling. He did not come to these conclusions unilaterally. There were others on this team who regarded Gwynn exactly as Pagliarulo described him, including a “team leader” who said much the same thing during spring training but refused to go on the record.

Though it seems ludicrous that anyone would suggest that Gwynn is not a team guy, that’s not the point. It’s a matter more of perception than reality. If even a small segment of the team felt that way, it would be enough to throw the chemistry of the club out of whack.

Something, to be sure, has not been right with this underachieving club for the first seven weeks of the season. It would be naive and simplistic, though, to suggest that the feelings of one or two or even five players about Tony Gwynn have turned the early part of this season upside down.

It would also seem a bit opportunistic for any such group of players to use Gwynn as a scapegoat.

I have heard whispers about Gwynn being obsessed with individual statistical success, but I haven’t seen it. Over the course of his major league career, I have talked with him after exhilarating wins and heart-breaking losses, and he has always struck me as a guy who stays on an even keel and does not get too up or too down. I have never noticed mood swings according to how he personally played.

During the fall of 1989, when the Padres were making their belated run at the San Francisco Giants, Gwynn was also making a run at his fourth batting title. He was doing so with a painful foot injury that could only hurt him in the quest for the batting title. Had that been all that was at stake, I submit that he would have taken occasional days off to give his foot a rest. He didn’t.

It is true that Gwynn cannot be classified as a team leader, at least in a vocal sense. He never has been and probably never will be. That’s not in his makeup.

However, some of his critics might learn from his work ethic. No one on the club works any harder, or maybe even as hard, at trying to improve than this guy with a career average of .332, if Pagliarulo and Co. will excuse the intrusion of an individual statistic. What’s more, he came to the major leagues an average right fielder with a poor arm and developed into a three-time Gold Glove winner.

If it seems I am suggesting that Pagliarulo’s criticism of Gwynn was unfounded, understand once again that the perceptions of anyone outside the clubhouse are irrelevant in a situation such as this.

But also understand that I am skeptical of the notion that a team meeting can clear this poison out of the system and turn this into a back-slapping, happy family.

We’ll see.