JOAN KROC’S FAREWELL : Her Last Big Game’s Tonight : She says she won’t really miss owners’ ‘good-old-boys network,’ but the fans and the magic of 1984 won’t be forgotten.

After all these years, the one image of Joan Kroc that will not go away is that of her standing on the pitcher’s mound in front of a sellout San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium crowd, in full Padre uniform, smiling for all the world like a little girl in her first Easter dress.

There she was, ready to throw out the first ball in the first National League playoff game in San Diego, standing tall and thinking about her late husband, Ray. His initials--”RAK”--were on the sleeve of her jersey, on her heart and on the sleeves of all the Padres waiting to take the field. How she missed him, and how she ached for him to be able to share in all this glory.

Now it was time for her to throw the pitch and let the show begin. She wound up. So excited. So nervous. So alone.

There were other images and other times, not many as festive and several more dismal, and tonight at the stadium, before the Padres play the Houston Astros, some of these memories will flash across the DiamondVision scoreboard during a salute to Kroc, the former Padre owner.

Click.

The 1984 playoffs. Steve Garvey’s Cub-busting home run. The clubhouse scene. Pandemonium. The World Series.

Click.

Joan and Ray, looking like high school sweethearts. The love story. The baseball. The 1978 All-Star Game. The trip around the field in a golf cart during a party for Ray’s 80th birthday before a game on Oct. 2, 1982.

Click.

Joan Kroc standing on the infield, in full baseball uniform from the Padre cap on her head to the stirrups on her feet.

“It was like the little girl in her coming out,” said Beth Benes, general counsel for the Padres since 1983.

The Padres, having lost two in Chicago, were one game from elimination. Kroc was in Chicago to see it all, and when the team returned to San Diego and landed in the midst of pennant fever, Kroc caught a whiff of it. Caught a whiff? It almost choked her.

So, that Thursday--Oct. 4, 1984--Kroc placed a call to Andy Strasberg, Padre director of marketing. She was scheduled to throw out the first ball that night, and Strasberg could sense the enthusiasm in her voice. But he didn’t expect what came next.

“Andy, what would you think if I threw out the first ball in a Padres uniform?” she asked him.

“Mrs. Kroc, you would do that?” Strasberg asked back.

“Sure. But don’t let anybody know. I’ll wear a long coat and take it off at the last minute. You’ve got to get me a uniform.”

“What size?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never worn a uniform before.”

So Strasberg raced down to the Padre clubhouse and got a bat boy’s uniform. He drove to her La Jolla office, walked in and gave it to her.

“This is great,” she said.

And she excitedly started to unbutton her blouse.

“I didn’t know what to do,” Strasberg said. “I was as excited as she was, then I realized what was happening.

“I started looking for an opportunity to excuse myself. She got to a certain point and said, ‘You better turn around.’ ”

The Padres won, 7-1, on a night that remains one of Kroc’s fondest memories.

“I had more fun with that than I can tell you,” she said. “That was just great.”

Two more victories over the Cubs and the jubilation of the franchise’s first trip to the World Series would soon be overtaken by four losses in five games to the Detroit Tigers. Never mind. Because 1984 was the year San Diego learned dreams can come true, and it was the year Joan Kroc learned what pennant fever can do to a city.

“It was marvelous,” she said. “I think we’ll all remember that forever. I hope it’s not the last time, and I don’t think it will be. Hope springs eternal.”

You could hear a smile in her voice as she spoke. It is six years later, six years worth of trying somehow, anyhow, to capture that magic once again. But in sports, you also learn that no matter how hard you work, you can’t orchestrate a year such as 1984. You do what you can, hope the players get the job done and let the pieces fall where they may.

Since 1984, Kroc has seen, among other things: her team unable to repeat as a division winner (1985); her manager, Dick Williams, quit on the first day of spring training (1986); her first attempt to sell the Padres turn into a disaster (1987); her daughter divorce her son-in-law, Ballard Smith, and Smith resign as Padre president (1987); her choice as Smith’s successor, Chub Feeney, make an obscene gesture to fans--on Fan Appreciation night--and subsequently resign (1988), and her good friend Bart Giamatti become NL president, commissioner of baseball and then suddenly pass away (1989).

She has learned to love a team that she inherited when Ray Kroc passed away on Jan. 14, 1984. She has laughed and cried, had some good times and bad and finally, in the end, decided that she did her best, and what it comes down to in her mind is this: “Baseball is no place for a lady.”

“It’s a good-old-boys network,” she said. “I’m not crying now. I can accept that. I’m not going to be like a salmon and swim upstream the rest of my life. It’s time for me to enjoy my beautiful new boat and my grandchildren.”

She made that decision once before, in 1987. She thought she had the team sold to George Argyros, then owner of the Seattle Mariners. Argyros was suggested to her by Peter Ueberroth, Giamatti’s predecessor. This is the guy for you, Ueberroth told Kroc and Benes. He has all kinds of loose change. He’s already in baseball. No problem.

“I had never heard of George Argyros, I’m sorry to tell you,” Kroc said. “I had heard of the Seattle Mariners, and I certainly trusted Mr. Ueberroth.

“You know the story. When I discovered that (Argyros) had a bad reputation, and the fans were unhappy, I pulled the plug.”

It was one of her most disillusioning moments as an owner. She trusted Ueberroth, and why not? He was the commissioner.

This is the first time she recalls thinking that this was no game for a woman. Still . . .

“I got $35 million more for the club by waiting,” she said. “And I had some fun times in the interim.”

President Dick Freeman still remembers the day Kroc came to the Padre offices and told employees she had decided to keep the team. She was a born-again owner, she said. Her enthusiasm had returned.

“I don’t know if it was a sense of loyalty to the Krocs or what,” Freeman said. “There was a real warm feeling that day. She was going to keep the team.”

Kroc, Freeman and Smith went downstairs to the clubhouse to tell the players, and Kroc hugged Tony Gwynn.

“It was a real nice day,” Freeman said.

There would be others. There would be trips to New York and Atlanta aboard Kroc’s private plane for a handful of Padre front office employees and friends. They would all go out to lunch, then dinner, then the ballgame.

There would be the time two summers ago that Kroc received a letter from a retirement home in El Cajon asking if the Padres had a used television the home could have. Kroc made arrangements to deliver the television and then called Cox Cable and had Padre cable telecasts piped into the home. A few days later, she stopped by the stadium, picked up a box of Padre baseball caps and took them out to the home herself.

There would be Kroc’s friendship with Marge Schott, owner of the Cincinnati Reds and the only other female owner in baseball. While in Japan last winter, Schott had her picture taken in front of a Japanese McDonald’s and sent it to Kroc.

“She’s a super lady,” Schott said. “We’re both widows--but I don’t own McDonald’s.”

Schott was in San Diego last summer with the Reds, and she stayed at Kroc’s home. When she is here, Schott tells her team that if they beat the Padres, she will buy them some food from McDonald’s. It’s an odd yet perfect friendship. The loud, chain-smoking Schott and the reserved, proper Kroc. Two widows. Two dog-lovers. Baseball. Schott complimented an outfit Kroc’s daughter, Linda, was wearing last summer, and Kroc had one sent to Schott.

Later last summer, when the Padres were in Cincinnati, Kroc paid a visit to Schott. Kroc got a tour of Schott’s home in Indian Hills, Ohio, and then Schott took Kroc out back to where she raises cows.

“Boys,” Schott began, “here’s the lady who grinds you up.”

Said Schott: “I thought she was going to hit me.”

Then, on Sept. 1 last summer, Giamatti suffered a fatal heart attack. Kroc had gotten to know Giamatti when he was the NL president, and he advised her as the sale of the Padres to Argyros unraveled. She told him she was getting out of baseball. He talked with her. She decided to give it another go. Then, baseball lost him. And Kroc lost much of her zest for the game. Once again, a feeling overcame her: This is no place for a woman.

“I still feel, had Bart been here, we wouldn’t have gone through all this monkey business (the lockout) this spring,” Kroc said. “We’ll never know. I had tremendous admiration for him . . .

“If it hadn’t been for Bart, the team would have stayed up for sale. His integrity . . . I think we lost a treasure with him. He was always there whenever I needed to talk. He was always there.”

The last time she saw Giamatti was last summer in Cooperstown, about a month before he passed away. She had purchased a letter written from President John F. Kennedy to Jackie Robinson, and she gave it to the Hall of Fame.

The letter fit right in with what Kroc had earlier told Giamatti. Some day, she told him, she hoped to hire a black manager and a black president.

“I felt very strongly about that,” she said. After Feeney resigned, Kroc said she quietly searched for a black president. In the end, though, she said she didn’t find anyone with whom she felt comfortable.

“No, I’m sorry to tell you, I didn’t (hire a black president),” Kroc said. “I felt there wasn’t anyone better than who we had (Dick Freeman).

“I was concerned, and I certainly hope they’ll be getting more blacks in executive positions in baseball.”

Kroc again decided to sell the Padres shortly after Giamatti died, during the final three weeks of last season. This, she told herself, was it. Word got out last Oct. 18.

“I had decided that if we did well, I would put them up for sale,” she said. “I’ve never looked back on that decision as incorrect. I could never have sold them if they were going the way they are this year. That’s not the Kroc way. You never walk away when you’re down.

“I was praying that the team would do well so I could walk away with dignity. If the team didn’t do well, I would have hung on.

“I figured if the we finished first, or a strong second, that I would sell. Not one person knew. I made a pact that I would go to every game I could. I was diligent. I thought I would nurse it right until the end.”

Sometime after the Padres had been put on the market, Kroc gave Schott a call. They talked, and had a few laughs. You should sell, too, Kroc told her, half-kidding. It’s a man’s game.

“Who would be left to aggravate the grand old men of baseball?” Schott replied. And they had a few more laughs.

It wouldn’t be long until a group led by Tom Werner purchased the Padres for $75 million. And on June 15, his group took over, ending an era in San Diego that had begun when Ray Kroc stepped in and saved the club just before it was set to move to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 25, 1974.

Already, there are changes. During the Kroc era, players were not allowed to wear beards. Now, pitcher Calvin Schiraldi is growing one. In 1986, Joan Kroc took alcohol out of the clubhouse and, figuring fair is fair, also pulled it out of the owner’s box. Today, alcohol is available in the owner’s box, and beer may be in the clubhouse soon.

Joan Kroc chuckles at that. Not that she objects to alcohol in the owner’s box, but it reminds her of former Padre pitcher Goose Gossage’s thoughts on the subject. He was the guy who, upon hearing beer was being taken out of the clubhouse late in the 1986 season, publicly ripped Kroc by saying that she was “poisoning the world with her hamburgers.” Gossage was subsequently suspended but not before ruining the Alaskan cruise Kroc was enjoying.

“As I look back on that, it’s funny,” Kroc said. “At the time, I was frustrated, and it hurt me for Ray. Ray sweated a lot of blood so I could pay Goose’s paycheck. To this day, I think the world of Goose, and we’re friends.”

She adds: “Goose was a teddy bear, but he just lost it.”

But now, none of it is Joan Kroc’s worry. Maybe that’s why it ended up eating at her so. Because she was conscientious, and that made her worry. Now . . . a player wants to renegotiate his contract? Ha! On to Europe. They want to fire the manager? Ha! On to San Francisco. They want beer in the clubhouse? Ha! Onto the boat.

She wants to travel and play with her grandchildren, and do things an enthusiastic, rich, 61-year-old grandmother normally does. But now, her itinerary tells her that she needs to be in the spotlight with the Padres one final night.

Time is already marching on. Dennis Walsh, who has served as maitre d’ in the owner’s box since Ray Kroc purchased the club in 1974, will not be there tonight. He and his wife have a vacation scheduled to Oregon and, well, you know how sticky those airlines can get when you try to change a non-refundable ticket.

Walsh already said his goodbys to Joan Kroc, anyway. That was on June 8, her last night in the box, amid a sea of tears and hugs.

“I’ll say we were (crying),” Walsh said. “She was beautiful.”

His voice quivered.

“I said, ‘Listen, don’t you forget me.’ ”

For 16 years, Walsh served Joan Kroc. When she was with Ray and then when she was alone. Mostly, when she ate dinner in the box, he served her prime rib--medium well--and diet soda.

It figures that the Houston Astros are in town tonight. The symmetry is nice. They defeated the Padres, 9-5, in the Kroc’s first home opener on April 9, 1974. That was also Walsh’s first night in the owner’s box, and what he remembers most is being approached by Ray Kroc, who had a seemingly innocent question.

“Dennis, where’s the public address system?” Kroc asked.

“Over there,” Walsh replied.

“Bring me to it.”

So Walsh walked Ray Kroc to the press box, showed him where it was and started back to the owner’s box. When he got there, Buzzie Bavasi, Padre president at the time, was waiting.

“What the hell did you do?” Bavasi demanded.

“Why, what happened?” Walsh asked.

“Didn’t you hear what Ray said?”

Walsh had missed it. While he was walking back to the owner’s box, Kroc unleashed his now legendary tirade, saying, among other things:

“I have never seen such stupid ballplaying in my life.”

During the speech, a streaker leaped over the left-field fence.

Joan was at the Krocs’ winter home in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., at the time, and she heard about the scene on the news. Ray telephoned her late, after the game.

“Honey, wasn’t that awful?” Ray asked.

“Yes, I’m sorry, Ray,” Joan replied, waiting for him to explain how he could even think of dissecting the team over the public-address system.

“Can you imagine, a streaker? The guy was a Marine.”

“How do you know that, Ray?”

“I could tell by his crew cut.”

About a month later, then-Commissioner Bowie Kuhn visited the Krocs in Ft. Lauderdale to extract a personal apology for the tirade. The Krocs took him out on their boat and then to a nice restaurant.

“Ray apologized profusely,” Joan said. “And then he said, ‘And if I ever do it again, I’ll apologize again.’ ”

Ray Kroc was always more of a fan than an owner, anyway. He was the type of person who let you know how he felt about everything--especially players. The kind of guy you would sit next to in the bleachers.

“He bought the team rather impulsively,” Joan Kroc said. “He called me one day and said, ‘Honey, what would you think if I bought the Padres?’ They were a relatively new team. I had heard of the Dodgers and Cubs, but never the Padres.”

The Cubs were always Ray’s dream, but the Wrigley family would never sell the team. Finally, when Philip K. Wrigley passed away in 1981, the family was looking to dissolve the estate, and Kroc was contacted. But by then he had purchased the Padres, and the Krocs had moved from Chicago to San Diego in 1976.

Three years later, on Aug. 23, 1979, Kroc was fined $100,000 by Kuhn for tampering when he publicly talked, before they became free agents, about a couple of players he would like to acquire--Graig Nettles and Joe Morgan.

“He never got over that,” Joan Kroc said. “He was always up-front and honest, and he didn’t know that rule. It nearly broke his heart. It was a severe fine.”

But that was vintage Ray Kroc. The fan.

Maybe that’s why, as she steps into the shadow cast by the Padre spotlight, it will make Joan Kroc sad to say goodby to the fans. Those are the people she will miss the most. People such as Dennis Walsh, and Tony Seaman.

Tony will be there tonight. He is just 12 but developed a friendship with Kroc early last season. Seaman’s mother, June, works at a concession stand in the stadium, and Tony was with her one night when he saw Kroc leaving the stadium. He approached her and asked how he could be a bat boy.

She gave him a number to call, and he did. The answer came back: He was too young.

But Kroc had also told Tony to call her secretary whenever he needed tickets and to stop by her box and say hello whenever he was in the park. So he took her up on it.

He would arrive about the third inning, he said, to give her time to get settled, and stay until the eighth, then go find his mother for the ride home. During their time together, the owner and the boy would talk about school and baseball and whatever else struck them. Kroc wanted to make sure he was keeping his grades up; Tony didn’t want to let his friend down.

“He’s a darling little boy,” Kroc said. “Anytime he’s in the park, he knocks on the door. That’s who I’ll miss.”

Tony was also with her on June 8, the last home game she attended as owner of the team. He helped Joan move some things out afterward, carrying a sketch of Ray and Joan to her car on their way out of the stadium.

“He just loves her dearly,” June Seaman said. “She’s like a mother and a grandmother figure to him all in one. . . . He just fell in love with her from the point of introduction.

“He was heartbroken when she sold the team. He told me, ‘Mom, I won’t be able to see Mrs. Kroc anymore.’ ”

Tony will be receiving a season ticket to next year’s games, courtesy of Kroc.

Funny thing is, Joan Kroc never thought about selling the team after Ray passed away in 1984. The Padres immediately dedicated the season to his memory, and what was she supposed to do? She became involved, and she learned.

Soon, she found herself standing on a pitcher’s mound, dressed in a full uniform and, well, who would have ever believed this?

She still has the uniform. It hangs in her fur closet. Every so often, she gets it out for her grandchildren.

Cincinnati was in town earlier this week, and Schott made the trip.

Monday night, the two of them were sitting in the front row, just above the Reds’ dugout. Kroc was asked if this was the first time she had sat in the stands.

“It’s the first time in the visitor’s box,” she said.

The sentence was wrapped in irony, and the beauty of it was, none of it dawned on her. She was laughing and talking and clapping, just a visitor now.

She had done the best she could. Now it was time to enjoy herself.