Riddoch Brushes Off Clark Rips

The telephone rang early Sunday morning, and it never stopped. Just about the time one conversation would end, the phone would ring again. There were newspaper reporters calling. There were radio stations. Even a TV camera crew stopped by the house.

“Well,” Padre Manager Greg Riddoch said, “what a miserable day this turned out to be.”

Riddoch, returning to his Greeley, Colo., home, after attending an out-of-town baseball clinic, spent most of his day answering questions about first baseman Jack Clark’s accusations.

It was Clark, who in a published interview in Sunday’s Times, criticized Riddoch for his managerial skills, accused him of being responsible for most of the club’s 31 firings and castigated his character.

“It’s very disappointing to hear,” Riddoch said, “and it’s very, very unfair. On one hand, you consider the source. It’s not like this is the first time he’s done something like this.

“But it still hurts.”

Perhaps the most painful part of the accusations, Riddoch said, is that he considered Clark a friend. When Riddoch was a first-base coach, the two frequently would get together for lunch, they would talk for hours with each other in the clubhouse, and Riddoch once even visited Clark and his family at his Danville, Calif., home.

“We’ve spent so many hours together, and now, after all that, this is what he thinks of me,” Riddoch said. “I considered us friends. But now, all of a sudden, I’m supposed to be different, I’m conniving, I’m sneaky.

“It just doesn’t wash with me. But I’m not going to stoop to his level and get into a verbal war.

“All this does is just make you work harder to prove you’re a good solid person. I’ll put my reputation, and whatever I do, on the line.”

Riddoch, in fact, has been praised by his former players. Eric Davis, Cincinnati Reds outfielder, says Riddoch is responsible for his rise to stardom. Danny Tartabull, Kansas City Royal outfielder, said that Riddoch is one of the primary reasons he wants to be traded to the Padres.

“I don’t believe for a minute I’m a bad person,” Riddoch said. “People who know me, they know what kind of person I am.”

And although Clark harshly criticized Riddoch’s managerial skills, saying many of the veterans agreed with him, Riddoch says his confidence refuses to wane. He believes he’s a good manager and will improve with experience. And once he has the team for the entire season, able to implement his own ideas and philosophy, he says he’ll prove it.

“You know, I’ve never had any problems with a player in my 25 years of coaching,” Riddoch said, “and now this. But I’m not going to let it change me. Not at all.

“I believe in what I do.

“I always will.”