Riddoch Sees Plenty as Padres Lose in 15

So, you wanted to manage in the big leagues, huh?

Greg Riddoch, making his major league debut as the Padres’ 13th manager, found out for himself just why these guys have receding hairlines and dark circles under their eyes while watching his team lose, 4-3, in 15 innings to the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Let’s see now, the Padres blew one pickoff play . . . one player was picked off . . . two were caught stealing . . . two signs were missed . . . they squandered 10 shutout innings of relief and 11 base hits . . . and they took four hours 19 minutes to lose.

Hey, nobody said this was going to be easy.

“I feel bad losing, because we all wanted to go out and play so well for Greg,” said Tony Gwynn, who missed on a diving attempt to catch Jeff King’s line drive into the right-field corner, which scored Dan Bilardello from second in the 15th.

“You want to go out there and get the monkey off his back right away. And we tried. We tried too hard. Even when we were down, 3-0, we knew we could come back, and we didn’t quit. It just wasn’t enough.

“But I think you could see there was a big difference tonight. There was a lot of intensity out there. We did what we needed to do. We fell short, but the effort was there.

‘You didn’t see that stuff last week.”

Riddoch, who has slept just 10 hours in the past four days since Padre chairman Tom Werner telephoned him about becoming manager, obviously was disappointed in the outcome but not distraught. He’s not a miracle worker. This will take time.

It’s just a question of how long.

“What an opening night, huh?” Riddoch said. “I wasn’t disappointed for myself, but for the team. The way we battled back and didn’t quit, I wanted the game for them. They deserved it.

“For myself, I could just use a good night’s sleep right about now. I’m exhausted.”

Still, when Riddoch left Three Rivers Stadium in the wee hours Friday morning, with his first lineup card in hand, he had reason to be pleased.

The Padres showed more emotion in the first inning alone than they did in the entire past month when starter Andy Benes took exception to Barry Bonds standing at home plate watching his three-run homer clear the right field fence and made Sid Bream pay the price by hitting him in the back of the knee.

Bream began walking toward the mound. Benes started coming toward him. Both benches emptied. There was pushing. Lots of cursing. Finger-pointing. Yeah, good old-fashioned baseball.

“When I saw them coming out of the dugout,” Benes said, “I wasn’t just going to go back to the mound and watch. I was aggravated, and I wanted to address a few people.”

During the exchange, Pirate third baseman Bobby Bonilla grabbed at Benes’ glove, which caused a slight twinge in Benes’ left shoulder. Benes said he had difficulty throwing his fastball after that, and he left the game in the fifth inning.

“Aw, I’ll be all right,” Benes said. “It was kind of fun, really.”

The Padres, after a solo homer by Gwynn in the fourth inning and a run-scoring single by Bip Roberts in the fifth, tied the game in the eighth on Eddie Williams’ two-out bloop single. They managed to have a baserunner in each of the next seven innings, but in typical Padre style, they failed to score, losing for the 11th time in the past 13 games.

Perhaps Riddoch knew it was a bad omen Thursday when he filled out the lineup card and instead of writing Smiley (John) for Pittsburgh’s starter, he wrote down Smith.

“You know, I knew who was pitching,” Riddoch said, “but when I wrote down the S and M, someone came in and interrupted me, and I wrote down the wrong name.

“The guys kidded me pretty good about that one.”

Yes, Riddoch said, this stuff is going to take some getting used to.

Really, it all started to hit him after the press conference Wednesday that introduced him as manager. He boarded the team bus to the airport, and as he started to walk toward the back, he remembered that the manager’s seat on the bus always is the first one, right side.

On the four-hour flight to Pittsburgh, he thought about all the changes he wanted to implement and never really thought what it all would mean to him until he reached the team hotel. He entered his room, turned on the lights, and the message light on his phone was blinking.

Riddoch telephoned the operator to ask for his messages and thought it a bit odd when she asked, “Do you want them over the phone, or do you want them brought up to you?”

Riddoch told her that he’d take them down over the phone, began writing them down and had filled up three sheets of scrap paper when he said, “Uh, just how many messages are there?”

Operator: “Well, let me put it this way, we’re about a third of the way through them.”

Final count: 55.

“I think I heard from about every friend I have, and you know what?” Riddoch said, “I think they were happier for me than I was. I had a friend, Dean Taylor of the commissioner’s office, who called me today and said, ‘Yesterday was the happiest day of my life.’ ”

There were telegrams and more telephone messages awaiting Riddoch at the ballpark. He heard from Cincinnati Red center fielder Eric Davis, whom he managed in Eugene, Ore., in the Northwest League. He received a congratulatory visit from Pirate General Manager Larry Doughty. Russ Nixon, former Atlanta manager, and his wife sent a telegram.

And during the day, players stopped in his office to personally congratulate him, with most leaving the same message as left fielder Bip Roberts:

“Go get them, skip. We’re going to bust our . . . for you, you know that. We know you’re going to do great.”

Riddoch, a popular choice among the players to manage this club, made it clear in an hour-long team meeting before the game that he plans to be the same guy they’ve known for the past three years, but there will be changes.

He implemented a fine system, with the players’ approval, that will cost from $5 to $100 for various offenses. Riddoch said a few fines will be levied after Thursday’s performance. The money will be used for the Children’s Hospital in San Diego, Riddoch said, laughing at the suggestion that if a fine system had been implemented for the first half of the season, there would be a new wing in the Padres’ name.

Instead of having infield practice once or twice a week, it will be every day until further notice, in an attempt to improve a defense that has committed more errors than 24 major league teams.

There also will be extra hitting scheduled almost every day, with a regimented schedule that Riddoch will monitor. When a team is batting .207 over the past 12 games, scoring three or fewer runs in 10 of them, it’s no time to sit back and wait for miracles.

“I’m not saying what happened before is right, or is wrong,” Riddoch said, “but this is Greg’s way. This is the way I want to do things. I want to do things conducive to my personality.”

Riddoch also expressed to his players that he’s not about to change. He’ll still go on fishing trips with Jack Clark and Ed Whitson. He’ll still have an occasional beers with the player. And Thursday afternoon, there was Riddoch answering the clubhouse phone confirming a pizza delivery, asking the players how many wanted pepperoni and who wanted sausage.

Mark Parent and Mike Pagliarulo, wanting to see for themselves if Riddoch’s new title was going to change him, dropped by his office before game and asked if he’d stop what he was doing and set up baseballs on the batting tees for them.

Riddoch looked up, saw the smiles on their faces, and in mock anger said: “Get out of here. I’m the skip, now.”

Parent and Pagliarulo walked away laughing, while Parent began singing, “Don’t go changin’.”

No sir, the only thing that will be changing, Riddoch said, is the Padres’ record. It’s too good of a team, he said, to be playing like this. Oh, don’t expect them to catch Cincinnati, he said, but there’s no reason to believe it won’t again have a second-half surge.

“It still might take me a couple of weeks to get everything organized the way I want,” Riddoch said, “but it’ll come. If we can find a level to play at consistently, we can be successful.”

Padre Notes

It was like opening day all over again, the Padre players said, considering all of the personnel changes that have taken place. Let’s see, since they last convened Sunday, they have a new manager (Greg Riddoch), a new first base coach (Rob Picciolo), a new batting coach (Jack Maloof), a new pitcher (Derek Lilliquist), a new backup catcher (Tom Lampkin) and a new third baseman (Eddie Williams). Other than that, it was just an ordinary All-Star break. . . . Williams, on finding out that he was batting fourth in the lineup: “Hey, that doesn’t surprise me. I know I can hit. It’s not a fluke. I’m up here now, and I don’t plan on going back.”

PADRES AT A GLANCE Scorecard

FIRST INNING

Pirates--Backman singled to left. Bell struck out. Van Slyke walked. Bonilla popped to shortstop. Bonds homered to right, his 16th. Bream was hit by pitch. LaValliere flied to right. Three runs, two hits, one left. Pirates 3, Padres 0.

FOURTH INNING

Padres--Gwynn homered to right, his third. Clark grounded to third. Williams doubled to left. Alomar struck out. Carter struck out. One run, two hits, one left. Pirates 3, Padres 1.

FIFTH INNING

Padres--With one out, Parent doubled to left. Benes struck out. Roberts singled to right, Parent scoring. Gwynn flied to right. One run, two hits, one left.

EIGHTH INNING

Padres--Roberts walked. Gwynn grounded to second, Roberts stopping at second. Belinda relieved Smiley. Clark grounded to second, Roberts taking third. Williams singled to right, Roberts scoring. Alomar struck out. One run, one hit, one left. Pirates 3, Padres 3.

15TH INNING

Pirates--Bilardello walked. Lind sacrificed. Belliard struck out. King singled to right, Bilardello scoring. One run, one hit, one left. Pirates 4, Padres 3.