It’s Too Soon to Light a Firing Under Greg Riddoch

Trivia Time: Who holds the record for most times fired as a major league manager?

A. Dick Williams

B. Billy Martin

C. John McNamara

D. Greg Riddoch

If you’ve been paying attention, you know the answer is D.

Wait a minute, you say, Greg Riddoch has only had one major league managerial job.

Right, I say, but how many times has he been fired from that one?

So far this summer, he has been fired by writers, fired by broadcasters, fired by fans and maybe even fired by peanut vendors. I have heard that he should be fired, should have been fired or will be fired. I hope he doesn’t have anything fastened to his office walls.

What is the problem here?

Does he abuse his shortstop or kick his pitching coach or use Bruce Hurst as a pinch-hitter? Does he cheat on his taxes or bet on the Dodgers? Did he applaud Roseanne Barr?

The most popular theory seems to be that he isn’t Joe McIlvaine’s guy. He was hired before McIlvaine became the general manager. Joe McIlvaine should have his own guy in the dugout.

If this theory holds water, everyone in this country with a new boss coming aboard should be prepared to head for a soup kitchen.

What does that have to do with anything?

What’s more, who did hire Riddoch anyway? He was hired by Tom Werner, the managing general partner. I believe Werner outranks McIlvaine in the organizational chart. McIlvaine’s going to walk into Werner’s office and say: “Bad hire, boss. I’m gonna make a change and fix it for you.”

This leaves me wondering exactly what Greg Riddoch has done to merit all this talk about getting canned.

Dearly departed players such as Jack Clark and Garry Templeton have taken shots at him.

So what?

When Jack Clark’s mouth gets in to gear, it’s usually three time zones ahead of when his brain follows. You can take what he says with a grain of salt substitute. It doesn’t even merit the real thing.

As for Templeton, it wasn’t exactly a Pentagonesque secret that he and Riddoch got along about as well as George Steinbrenner and any commissioner. When Templeton left this bridge behind, you knew he would torch it.

I hear constant complaints from fans about things Riddoch does or doesn’t do. He leaves this pitcher in too long or takes that pitcher out too soon or brings in this guy instead of that guy or plays this guy instead of that guy or hits this guy here instead of there. Yawn.

There is not a manager in the history of the game who hasn’t done or wouldn’t have done most of the same things Riddoch has done. Casey Stengel, for example, was a bafflingly unorthodox manager. Try and figure some of the things he did. And since English was a second language to him, he couldn’t explain them either. Yet he was a genius with the Yankees, when he had the players, and a buffoon with the Mets, when he didn’t.

That, precisely, is the biggest difference between one manager and another.

Talent . . . and not his talent.

Try winning a game of chess with five pawns, a bishop and a queen against a guy who has all his pieces in place. That’s what Riddoch has been trying to do.

These Padres came into the season looking more like a colander than a baseball team. They figured to finish fifth, mainly because Houston was there to hold them up.

And then things got worse.

A shallow team beset with holes was depleted by injuries. This was a little like Twiggy losing 30 pounds. There was almost less than nothing left.

This team was suddenly like a puppet without strings. It should have collapsed into a forlorn heap. It should have slipped so far out of first place, or the first division, that it couldn’t find it with radar.

Given that this team was not going to be very good, it has gone through all this adversity without becoming a real bad team.

Yet all these rumblings and grumblings persist about Greg Riddoch being out of here.

I visited him in his office Thursday, expecting to find cardboard boxes stacked in a corner, airline schedules on his desk and maybe help wanted ads folded next to his telephone.

Instead, he was as affable as a guy headed for an office party.

“Hey,” he said, “that’s just talk. I don’t pay any attention to it. It’s not hard on me at all.”

Fine, but . . .

“I feel great about what we’ve done,” he said. “We’ve have had more than 40 players in uniform and 20 pitchers in uniform and we’re five games under .500 in fourth place. We were picked to finish fifth or sixth with a healthy team. And this was supposed to be the first year or a rebuilding program. Why all of the sudden is everyone getting judgmental about winning, anyway?”

Folks do that sort of thing, right or wrong.

In this case, it’s wrong.

I’m not saying Greg Riddoch will not be fired. I’m not even saying he should or should not be fired. I’m just saying all this talk is misplaced with more than two months to go in a season which can hardly be called a disappointment in terms of both what was expected and what has transpired.

Let’s put the rope away and play out the string instead.