COMMENTARY : The Padres’ Season Is Half Bad at Break

You’re Tom Werner.

You can’t believe this is happening.

Actually, you felt a bit queasy about the Padres the day you officially became owner and heard on the radio that your All-Star catcher, Benito Santiago, suffered a broken left foreman and would be out for six weeks.

But how were you to know things would go this bad?

How were you to know that the Padres would go into the tank, losing nine of 11 games, and 17 of the past 24 games, dropping out of the pennant race by the All-Star break?

How were you to know that your manager, Jack McKeon, would come to your office this past Monday and request to come upstairs as soon as possible and assume the sole job as vice/president baseball operations?

How were you to know that most of your players are so outraged over the team’s lackadaisical play that it’s no longer fun for them to even come to the ballpark any more? You listen to them say:

“We’re dead, we’re totally dead,” Padre starter Dennis Rasmussen said. “It’s like we’re going through the motions. We don’t have any fire. It’s just like we sit there, waiting for something bad to happen.

“It’s a joke.”

Padre starter Bruce Hurst said: “Look at us, there’s no emotion in here whatsoever. Guys come in here, put on their uniforms, throw their gloves on the field, and leave.

“I’ve got to be honest with you, it’s tough seeing what’s going on right now.”

Rasmussen and Hurst are among about a dozen players who are throughly disgusted with the Padres’ carefree attitude. But after you and your partners talked with many of the players during last Sunday’s team party, you’ve already gotten that inside scoop.

And you thought you had troubles on the set of “Roseanne?”

“Right now,” you say, “I feel like my insides are being ripped out with every defeat.

“I have to be calmer with defeats. I’m very competitive personally, and this is very hard. I’m very frustrated as a fan, and owner, that we haven’t seen them play to our potential.”

Maybe, you think, you should have listened to friends and family who spent weeks trying to talk you out of this silly notion of buying the Padres. Now that you think back, the only one who was really in favor of you shelling out more than $20 million for the right to be chairman of the Padres was your 13-year-old-son, Teddy.

But you wouldn’t listen, would you? You’ve always liked a challenge, and dammit, you were going to make this work. You could envision yourself on national TV, along with your 14 partners, accepting the World Series trophy from Fay Vincent. Man, this would be a bigger thrill than taking Cosby to the top of the charts.

Now, you have this mess.

You’re thankful for a friend such as Russell Goldsmith, who went into this venture with you as one of three vice chairmen. You talk to Goldsmith daily, and together, try to soothe each other’s fears. You discuss a plan of attack with each other to make this a first-class organization, but you’ll go about this quietly, and slowly.

There already are things that have caught your attention in the front office, and you’re learning more and more each day about your employees.

You remember the first day you toured your front office, looked around, and immediately thought to yourself how few blacks were among your 100 full-time employees. Incredibly, there is not a single black in a high-profile administrative position. This must change.

You find it rather curious that one of your front office officials is a sports memorabilia collector. When Dodger pitcher Orel Hershiser set the major league record two years ago at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium for pitching 59 scoreless innings, you’ve been told that that same official was on the field tearing out the pitching rubber for his own collection. That stuff belongs in Cooperstown, not in the basement of somebody’s house.

It’s gotten so bad that your star player, Tony Gwynn, actually is shelling out his own money for bats this year. Instead of watching the bats being sold for $100 a pop in memorabilia stores, Gwynn makes sure his discarded bats go to charity.

You’ve got another vice president who doesn’t know how to keep score at baseball games. Really. You’re still wondering what he does to fill his 40-hour work week.

The president, Dick Freeman, you’ve decided, will stay. He not only has a contract through this year, but just a few months before you took over, an agreement was signed that will keep him on the payroll for about $225,000 through 1991.

Freeman has assured you that the club will once again make money. Although attendance is declining because of the club’s play, you’re still on pace to sell 2.3 million tickets, the same amount as a year ago when the Padres made a franchise-record $4.5 million.

The break-even point is between 2 million and 2.1 million tickets, but you know that considering your payroll likely will increase by about $7 million next season, you’ll need to sell about 2.5 million tickets to break even.

You and your partners know the only way to increase attendance, and elevate the current full season-ticket base from 10,500, is to improve the product on the field.

You can make wholesale trades, as Jack McKeon, your manager and vice president/baseball operations, suggests. He already has told you about talks he has had with the Kansas City Royals, as recently as this week, about the possibility of acquiring reliever Mark Davis and either outfielder Bo Jackson or Danny Tartabull. It would cost you at least center fielder Joe Carter, and probably at least another player.

McKeon is pushing hard for you to agree to take back Davis in a trade. You know all about Davis. He’s the man who saved 44 games last year for the Padres, won a Cy Young award, turned down a four-year, $12 million contract with San Diego, signed with the Kansas City Royals for an extra million, and has flopped so badly that even the sedate fans of Kansas City are booing him unmercifully.

McKeon and Pat Dobson, Padre pitching coach, have convinced you that that they could turn Davis around, but you’re not about to take on a contract like that. Maybe if the Royals would eat about half of the contract, you might think about it, but you’d be the laughingstock of the industry to take him back with that contract.

There are plenty of other moves that McKeon is considering. First baseman Jack Clark, who’s making $2 million now and likely will receive a raise in arbitration this winter, is prime trade bait to an American League team. Starter Bruce Hurst could go in the right deal. And, heck, now that you think about it, the only players McKeon told you that are untouchable are starter Andy Benes, second baseman Roberto Alomar and catcher Benito Santiago. It’s highly unlikely McKeon would ever trade All-Star outfielder Tony Gwynn because of the violent public reaction, but hey, if he was overwhelmed. . . .

You listen in reverence as McKeon speaks. This man is legendary in the game of baseball with his wheeling and dealing. Nothing is sacred with him. When he gets bored, he’ll even make imaginary trades involving other teams.

“When we came in here and bought the club,” you say, “amongst other things, we were buying the services of Jack McKeon. In my mind, Jack McKeon is the guy who can turn this around.”

You are optimistic because the Padres historically always wait until the second half to perform well. Why, under McKeon, the Padres have a .619 winning percentage (91-56) after the All-Star break the past two years. Of course, it never was good enough to win the division, but this is no time to get picky.

Deep inside, though, you wonder if you’re only kidding yourself in thinking that this team is capable of putting together such a run. You hardly consider yourself a baseball expert, but you’ve seen Pony League teams with better defense than this one.

This defense is so bad that there already have been 44 errors among the quartet of shortstop Garry Templeton, second baseman Alomar, third baseman Mike Pagliarulo and center fielder Carter. And this doesn’t even count the balls they don’t reach. To put this feat in perspective, the San Francisco Giants’ entire team has made only 46 errors.

The bullpen duo of Craig Lefferts and Greg Harris are worn out. Of course, what do you expect when they’ve already made 71 appearances and have pitched in 111 2/3 innings?

The offense has been anemic. Of their 42 defeats this season, just 10 times have the Padres scored more than three runs. In fact, they’ve scored more than three runs in just two of their past 11 games.

Is it really the team’s fault, you wonder? Or it is the manager’s?

Yes, you told McKeon on Monday that he will stay downstairs as manager for the remainder of the season, but what you didn’t say was that you’re carefully monitoring the situation. Right now you’re familiarizing yourself with top managerial candidates in the game, and have already heard plenty about Don Baylor of Milwaukee and Hal McRae of Montreal.

Why, just mention Baylor’s name around former Red Sox players Calvin Schiraldi and Hurst, and they’ll talk for hours how they respect him more than anyone in baseball. Mention McRae’s name around George Brett, Frank White and Willie Wilson in Kansas City, and they’ll tell you how their club might be different if he never had turned down the Royals’ managerial job in 1987.

There also are former managers floating around, such as Jim Fregosi of the St. Louis Cardinal organization, Hal Lanier of Philadelphia, Davey Johnson, formerly of the Mets, and Pat Corrales of Atlanta. And right here on your coaching staff you have Pat Dobson, who manages in the off-season in the Senior League, and Greg Riddoch, either of whom you could turn to as interim managers for the remainder of the season while you evaluate whether they’re right for the job.

And, oh, you couldn’t help thinking Friday what a coup it would be to bring Whitey Herzog to San Diego as manager in 1991. Could you imagine a 1-2 punch of McKeon in the front office and Herzog on the field? And you thought Cosby and Roseanne were a powerful combo.

Still, you want to be careful. This is going to be a very important decision in your regime, and one that could be instrumental in the future of your franchise. You’re not about to let anyone force you into making a quick decision on this.

For all you know, it could be impossible to ever have a winner again here. It’s as if there’s something in the air that makes people forget about playing baseball in San Diego. It is rather bizarre, isn’t it, that third baseman Mike Schmidt and Herzog each announced their mid-season retirements with their teams in San Diego?

Certainly, something is wrong with this team. You find it odd that the Padres actually are a much-better team on the road, 16-17, than at home, 21-25.. You find it odd that the team seldom takes infield before games, and extra-hitting always is optional. You find it odd that members of this team have lost track of how many outs there are in an inning, or the count, at least five times this season. And you find it odd that most of the players would like to see fines levied against themselves for mental blunders or violations of team rules.

“A guy starts getting fines, and after a couple of times, it starts to sink in,” Padre veteran Ed Whitson said. “That’ll wake some guys up. It’s not that tough seeing signs. It’s not that tough to know how many outs there are in an inning. Hell, just turn around and look at the scoreboard. It’s not that tough to follow rules around here.”

Instead, nothing is said, at least publicly in front of the players. At first, the lack of discipline began irritating some of the players to such a point where they called a team meeting in May in New York. They were going to police themselves. That worked for a while, but now, veterans say, the situation has deteriorated to a point of no-return.

Why is it that one player was allowed to sit on the bench Tuesday against the Pittsburgh Pirates with only a sweat top on, and only went to get fully dressed when notified he would pinch-hit? Why is it that more and more players are not even bothering to stick around to watch the game any more, and retreat to the clubhouse when removed from the game? Why are players allowed to show up at the ballpark five minutes before batting practice without being publicly reprimanded? Why is it that players frequently are missing signs from third-base coach Sandy Alomar and first-base coach Amos Otis, sometimes to the point where the coaching staff wonders if it’s done purposely?

Maybe then, you begin to understand, you’re taking these defeats much tougher than most of the players. Heck, with the exception of the usual three to four players night after night, the clubhouse empties faster than a firehouse on call.

Now you know what Clark means when he says, “It’s like we’re all going different directions right now. We’ve got to get ourselves focused, and for whatever reason, that’s just not happening.”

These days the only bond among the players is that they believe they have the talent to field a championship team. Oh, maybe it’s too late to catch the Cincinnati Reds, but they know deep inside there’s far too much talent in the clubhouse to be playing like this. Instead of shuffling players, they’d like to see a new approach by McKeon, or a new man sitting in his chair.

McKeon has heard suggestions before, and stealing the line of his buddy, Chicago Cub Manager Don Zimmer, says, “How come last year I was a genius, and this year I’m a dummy.’ I’m the same guy aren’t I?

“I can’t pitch for the guys, or come up to the plate and hit the runner in. I’m doing everything I can, knocking my head against the wall for answers.”

It’s now up to you to make the choice. Do you want to take the chance the Padres will jell in the second half under McKeon, and leave everything status quo? Do you want to bring McKeon into the front office immediately instead of waiting until the off-season, and let Dobson or Riddoch take a crack at the job on an interim basis, with the full understanding that you still might hire outside? Or do you want to immediately hire someone from another organization?

The problems are just beginning, causing you to scratch your head trying to remember who the wise guy was who ever told you that it was going to be fun owning a major league baseball team.

Oh yeah.

Thanks a lot, Teddy.

Remember the car you were promised on your 16th birthday, well, the way I’m feeling right now, that vehicle’s going to be consisting of two wheels and spokes.

But, uh, Ted, before you leave the house, you wouldn’t have any ideas on managers, would you?