Nearly a Priest, Now a Padre : Baseball: Ex-seminarian Joe McIlvaine has faced many tough decisions in his life. And in one winter as Padre general manager, he made some controversial ones.

Letters of protest continue to filter into hisoffice. Whispers of contempt swirl behind his back. Former employees, players and agents take their finest jabs.

The weather certainly is more pleasant, the streets might be cleaner and there’s not a subway in sight, but even after fleeing the streets of New York for the beaches of Southern California, Joe McIlvaine still is waiting to discover paradise.

In less than five months on the job as executive vice president and general manager of the Padres, McIlvaine has stirred up more folks around these parts than, well, Roseanne Barr.

Let’s see now, 31 Padre front-office employees, scouts and coaches have been fired . . . Roberto Alomar, a potential Hall of Fame second baseman, and Joe Carter, perhaps the most popular player in the Padre clubhouse, have been traded . . . All-Star catcher Benito Santiago is so enraged by salary negotiations he threatens to go to free agency after the 1992 season . . . Big-name free agents were not pursued . . . And no one in his right mind is predicting his Padres will finish higher than fourth in the National League West.

“I don’t think I’ll be running for mayor any time soon,” McIlvaine said.

McIlvaine, 43 but with a youthful face and a thick head of hair, realizes he has managed to make a formidable list of adversaries. This is a community that absolutely abhors change, even if it means hanging onto an airport that is more suited for Duluth, Minn., than the sixth-largest city in the country. And now here comes a stranger, riding into town and dismantling the local franchise.

The last sports executive to rile up San Diego like this was Donald Sterling.

“I don’t think it helps either that I’m perceived as being from New York,” said McIlvaine, “even though I spent 21 years of my life in Philadelphia and eight years in Florida. I don’t think people take kindly to New Yorkers.”

McIlvaine, although sensitive to his public perception, refuses to allow any hostilities to hinder his decision-making. You talk to his friends and associates, and they’ll tell you he’s one of the most genuine, forthright persons they’ve ever met. But he’s not here to win any popularity contests. He’s not here to have his ego stroked by the media. He’s here to bring this city a winner.

The only time he has even allowed public sentiment to perhaps affect his judgment was this past week, when he provided All-Star outfielder Tony Gwynn with a guaranteed three-year, $12.25 million contract, although McIlvaine wanted to guarantee only two of the seasons.

“He certainly has shown he’s not afraid to take a chance,” said Bill Lajoie, McIlvaine’s first manager, who retired a month ago as the Detroit Tigers’ general manager. “He came in there and made a lot of changes very quickly. I think he surprised some people in this industry with some of the big moves.”

Sure, several of his decisions have proven to be quite unpopular. And, if he moves the Padres from their spring-training site in Yuma to the Phoenix area, doubling the drive for Padre fans, another shipment of letters will be flooding his office.

Yet, after the gut-wrenching decision he made in 1969, a time when he was only 21, every move he makes in baseball seems rather trivial.

Nothing was trivial about the way Joseph Peter McIlvaine originally plotted his life. He would become an ordained priest, answering to a higher authority than the baseball commissioner.

But there was something about this crazy game that refused to leave him alone.

McIlvaine grew up on Hampden Avenue in Narbeth, Pa., outside Philadelphia. Just like virtually every other Irish-Catholic kid in the area, he spent his Sundays at St. Margaret Catholic Church.

Still, it was baseball that commanded most of his attention. He was playing ball by the time he was 8 and always was a pitcher. In his first organized season in elementary school, his father recalls, McIlvaine pitched in all eight games on the schedule. The team went 8-0.

“He spent every waking moment involved in baseball,” said McIlvaine’s brother, Paul, 41. “He’d get up in the morning, go to the ballpark, and get in a pick-up game. In the afternoon, he’d play in his organized league game. He’d come home for dinner, and then he and his brothers would play that baseball board game with all of the statistics until it was time for bed.

“I actually thought there was something wrong with me for awhile because I only liked to play a game every few days.”

Paul McIlvaine gave up baseball at the age of 14 to become a professional opera singer, and he also is an associate dean of the System Management College in Fort Belvoir, Va.

The youngest brother, Fran, 39, became a lawyer, and now is a U.S. district attorney in Laredo, Texas.

And Joe, well, all he ever wanted to be was a major league pitcher. But by the time he graduated from high school, he was 6 feet tall but weighed only 130 pounds. There wasn’t a baseball scout to be found.

The only college expressing interest was the St. Charles Diocesan Seminary in Philadelphia. They saw a perfect candidate. He was intelligent, having learned Latin and Spanish in high school. He was wholesome. And, most important, he had convinced himself that he wanted to be a priest.

You should have seen Joe and Minnie McIlvaine when their oldest son informed him of his decision to enter the seminary. They couldn’t stop bragging. A priest, what could be a more honorable occupation?

It was a delightful situation. Joe went to the seminary for nine months and pitched semi-pro ball in the summer. This arrangement continued for the next four years, but each summer he pitched, he was a little bigger than the last. McIlvaine grew to 6-6, 170 pounds by his third year in the seminary.

He also was drastically improving as a pitcher. Scouts started arriving with their speed guns. Then in January 1969, McIlvaine was informed that he was drafted by the Tigers in the sixth round.

This is when he dropped to his knees, asking for guidance. Sorry, Joe, he was told, this is your decision.

“I think people have the perception that angels come down and sit on your shoulder and say, ‘You’re going to be a priest,’ ” McIlvaine said. “It doesn’t work that way.

“As hard as I tried, I think I told myself I wasn’t giving this 100%. You have to be honest with yourself. When you’re dealing with higher powers . . . well, you don’t cheat higher powers.

“It really takes a commitment. You have to be celibate. You’re giving up marriage. You don’t have children. I don’t think I was committed to making those sacrifices.

On June 3, 1969, McIlvaine walked out of the St. Charles Seminary forever, leaving with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and a minor in classics. He was going to Bristol, Va., site of the Tigers’ rookie league team.

He entered the world of professional baseball, and not once did he look back.

“I don’t think the family was terribly excited with the decision,” said his father, “but we understood. We weren’t going to do what Irish-Catholic families from Ireland did 50 years ago and throw him out of our home for leaving the seminary and call him a heathen.

“To tell you the truth, with his love for the game, I wasn’t surprised at all to see what he did.”

When McIlvaine packed his bags for Bristol, he told his family that he’d invest five years of his life to make the major leagues or find another occupation. The five years went quickly. McIlvaine was a decent minor league pitcher, going 9-6 with a 1.57 ERA one year at Lakeland, but he was a long way from setting foot in the major leagues.

At the end of the five years, he sat down one day with his Clinton, Iowa, manager, a fellow by the name of Jim Leyland. McIlvaine assessed his skills and asked Leyland if he agreed that he should call it a career.

“That might have been his first scouting decision,” Leyland said, “and I think he hit it on the head.”

McIlvaine had been teaching English and Spanish during the off-seasons, but he told Marty, whom he married in 1973, that he wasn’t prepared to leave the game entirely. He and his father prepared two dozen resumes and sent them to all but one major league baseball organization.

“He really didn’t want to have anything to do with Cleveland,” his father said.

Baltimore was the only team that even granted him an interview. He was going to be a baseball scout for $8,000 a year. He scouted for seven years, in three organizations, never making more than $18,000 a year.

Did he complain?

“You kidding? Joe was in heaven,” Marty McIlvaine said. “I think he had been scouting when he was 9. He loved every minute of it.

“He still does. He already went to Los Angeles to scout a high school game, and one night he was watching a college game on TV. Just give him a game, and Joe’s happy.”

McIlvaine was also perfectly content during his 10 years with the New York Mets, joining them in November, 1980 as their scouting director, eventually becoming their vice president/baseball operations in 1985. He was told that he would be the man who eventually would replace Frank Cashen as the Mets’ chief operating officer, and McIlvaine was willing to wait.

But on June 18, 1989, the day the Mets traded Lenny Dykstra and Roger McDowell to the Philadelphia Phillies for Juan Samuel, McIlvaine’s world began changing. It turned out to be a horrible trade for the Mets, and the tabloids reminded everyone daily.

Never mind that Met Manager Davey Johnson constantly was whining to McIlvaine to get rid of Dykstra. Never mind that McIlvaine was the same guy who had virtually stolen Howard Johnson, Sid Fernandez, David Cone, Keith Hernandez, Ron Darling, Walt Terrell, Bobby Ojeda and Kevin McReynolds in trades with other clubs. In New York, you’re only as good as your last trade.

“Our manager was pleading with me for two years to get rid of (Dykstra),” McIlvaine said. “We had two center fielders, and it was like he wanted (the front office) to solve his problems. I’ll admit it was a bad trade, but it’s like everyone had forgotten what we had done in the past. It didn’t seem fair.”

Said Al Harazin, Met senior vice president: “The criticism was not only harsh, but it was cruel. Joe took it hard. I think the ’86 championship team had become mythical in a way, and trading someone off that team, and not being able to repeat again, there was a lot of frustration.”

You can imagine the pain McIlvaine felt when Timmy, his 9-year-old son, came home from school telling him that the other kids were teasing him about the trade. You can imagine the frustration of constantly being nagged about the trade on talk shows and in the newspapers. But only McIlvaine knows the anger he felt the day a newspaper columnist berated him, saying, “This is a guy who once gave up God for baseball.”

“That was the lowest,” Marty McIlvaine said. “Joe’s very intense about his religion. He didn’t give up the seminary, religion or anything else for baseball.

“That was the first time I had seen Joe truly angry.”

McIlvaine was sitting with scouts in Philadelphia the weekend of Sept. 7-9, when he was informed that Tom Werner, the Padres’ new managing general partner, had been refused permission to interview him for their general manager job. McIlvaine took offense. Sure, he had turned down plenty of other job opportunities, but he at least wanted the courtesy of being allowed to interview. He wanted to talk to Frank Cashen.

“I went in the next week and told Frank that I’d like to be considered for the job,” McIlvaine said. “He was taken aback. I think he was hurt because he thought I was going to be the one taking his place in New York.

“The Mets offered me a three-year contract because my contract was up in December, but I just wanted to check this out.”

Said McIlvaine’s father: “Joe’s much more charitable than I am. I know Joe wouldn’t approve of me talking like this, but it wasn’t right that Joe had to find out about the job indirectly. It’s not right to stand in a man’s way to move on. That’s dirty pool in my book.

“Joe used to always say, ‘I’m going to be the GM of the Mets when Frank retires.’ I’d always say, ‘But when Joe? How much longer? What’s the timetable?’

“I don’t think Joe ever knew.”

The Padres already had interviewed about six candidates for the position, but none had McIlvaine’s qualifications. They were delighted he agreed to be interviewed. He took a flight to Los Angeles two days after Jack McKeon was fired Sept. 23 and was picked up at the airport by Werner.

“Quite honestly, I was coming out to interview them,” McIlvaine said. “I needed assurances that they wanted to win. I knew I could get the job if I wanted it.

“I wanted to make sure this was going to be hush-hush and very secretive, and Tom assured me it would be. Well, we drive to Tom’s house, and there are TV trucks and TV cameras all over the place. It was unbelievable. I said, ‘What kind of secret meeting is this?’

“As it turned out, they were filming the movie of the week at the house next door.”

They talked into the night and, before he went to bed, McIlvaine was offered the job. They played golf the next afternoon and Werner’s only complaint was, “Make sure you put long pants on next time so I don’t have to see those (spindly) legs.”

McIlvaine took a flight back to New York along with a five-year contract offer. The financial details, which turned out to be a total package worth more than $2.5 million, would be worked out later.

McIlvaine decided on the return flight he wanted the job. It was what he always dreamed. He loved the City of San Diego. He was going to have complete autonomy.

But the final decision was going to belong to Marty. He had been moving the family on his whim for the past 17 years. They had taken only four vacations. This time, Marty and the three kids were going to decide whether they wanted to be uprooted.

“I really liked where we were living in New York,” Marty said. “All of our family was just 2 1/2 hours away in Philadelphia. It was really tough to take the children from the relatives.

“Joe loves me so much, that I knew if I said no, we wouldn’t have moved. But I loved him too much to say no.”

The decision shocked the Mets’ front office. Insiders in the Met organization claim that Fred Wilpon, Mets’ co-owner, is furious at Werner for stealing McIlvaine, particularly considering that Wilpon helped Werner’s group receive approval from major league owners last June. Werner pleads innocent, since he received Cashen’s consent.

“I think the only thing we reminded Joe about,” said Fran McIlvaine, “was the Roseanne Barr thing. We all got a laugh over that.”

Barr’s rendition of the national anthem disturbed Paul McIlvaine so much that he wrote a letter to the editor of the New Haven (Conn.) Register. There are 19,000 opera singers who emerge each year, he said, and surely the Padres shouldn’t have to resort to comedy actresses.

So guess who’s planning to come out this year and show just how it’s done?

“I told Joe I’ll be there,” Paul McIlvaine said.

It doesn’t matter that at least a half-dozen of the 31 firings took place before McIlvaine’s arrival. No one seems to care that many of the firings occurred simply because of recommendations made to McIlvaine. He’s been labeled, in his own words, “The Hatchet Man.”

Now, it seems, everyone’s waiting for the ax to fall on Manager Greg Riddoch. It’ll be only a matter of time, critics say, before McIlvaine will want to hire his own man--say Clint Hurdle, Jim Riggleman or Mike Cubbage--for that job too.

“I just want the best possible people in this organization, and that includes Greg Riddoch,” McIlvaine said. “He’ll get every single opportunity in the world to be a big league manager. I want him to be successful. That’s why I hired experienced people around him, to give him the best opportunity possible.

“I feel bad about what happened before. I empathize for the people I had to let go. You’re often affecting people’s lives. But we had to have a new attitude and be free of the sins of the past.”

Now, McIlvaine simply is imploring patience. He has a plan to rebuild through a farm system that has not produced a front-line major-league position player through the draft since Kevin McReynolds and Tony Gwynn in 1981. Perhaps it was an indictment of the previous regime that, of the 14 scouts who were fired by the Padres over the last two years, only one was rehired by another big-league organization.

Although he truly believes the Padres will be a contender this season, he knows it’s silly to carry hopes any further. But he doesn’t see any reason they can’t be a championship-caliber team by at least 1993.

“I have a very little ego in this, unlike my predecessor,” McIlvaine said, “but I know the buck stops here now. I have the final say.

“Simply what I want to do is establish the best organization in all of baseball.

“I know I’m prepared for this job.

“I know I can do it.

“Now I’m planning to prove it.”