All-Star Game Not Party for All : Baseball: Return of game to San Diego means some hard for organizers.

Throwing an All-Star Game is like throwing a party.

You need organization. Beer. A guest list. Timing. Food. Entertainment. And it helps if the police are on your side.

It can make you crazy. Particularly late at night.

“I was so into the All-Star game in 1978 that, two days before the game, I got up in the middle of the night and started to leave the house,” said Andy Strasberg, San Diego’s All-Star coordinator and the only Padre employee who worked on the game when it was last here, in 1978.

Strasberg continued: “My wife asked me, ‘Where are you going?’ I said, ‘I’m taking Dave Winfield and Rollie Fingers to the All-Star press conference.’

“She convinced me that, if I waited until 8 a.m., I may have a better chance for success.

“I had never sleep-walked before.”

See? Crazy.

And it doesn’t start with Monday’s opening day.

San Diego’s All-Star Summer actually started in a Kansas City hotel in 1989, when the Padres made their official presentation to major league baseball. Give us the game, the Padres said, and we’ll give you something to remember.

It used to be that the All-Star Game was awarded to cities on a rotating basis. San Diego’s turn was to be in 2004.

But in 1988, baseball changed the rules so that cities were allowed to make a pitch each year for the game.

So the Padres started in April 1989 by piecing together the official presentation. They called the mayor’s office. They called other members of the community to show baseball that the city was just as interested in hosting the game as the Padres.

Hotels. The police department. Transportation people.

On Sept. 7, 1989, National League President Bill White called Strasberg and gave him the news.

And baseball’s All-Star Game Manual is an All-Star blueprint that is probably 150 pages long.

And you want specific?

“7.1.3 Public Relations Workrooms

Public Relations Workrooms should be set up at both the primary hotel and the ballpark.

At the ballpark, the room should be set up by Saturday at noon with the following:

6 IBM Correcting Selectric III typewriters (10-pitch Courier 72 fonts)

2 heavy-duty, high-speed copiers (ex: Xerox 1090) with the following paper:

LEGAL-SIZE WHITE 14 reams

BLUE 14 reams

PINK 14 reams

GREEN 14 reams

YELLOW 8 reams”

Not that the Padres were intimidated.

“This is not work,” Strasberg said. “It is not work. I mean, it isn’t. There are a lot of hours involved, but this is a joy. This is a celebration of baseball.”

And details.

A few of the things on the Padre All-Star planner:

Ticket takers. Ushers. Medical services. Security. Decorations. Transportation. Hotel accommodations. Tickets. Programs. Pre-game. Airport coordination. Legalities. Closed-circuit televisions for the media. All on a grander scale than your normal mid-August game against the Houston Astros.

David Dziedzic, major league baseball’s director of special events, has already made a couple of trips to San Diego. He will make a few more between now and July.

His job, basically, is to oversee the Padre organizational efforts and act as a liaison between them and baseball.

“It’s no easy task, especially when the ballpark is publicly owned,” Dziedzic said. “There is involvement with the Padres, the city, separate Padre security and San Diego police. The police are involved in the traffic flow. There are a lot of different entities involved. That’s what makes it a challenge.”

Having hosted the game in 1978, the Padres have memories to borrow. For example, the All-Star workout on Monday, the day before the game, is open to the public. The Padres were the first ones to do that, and it went over so well that it is now done each summer.

This year, the Monday schedule includes an old-timers’ game, National League and American League workouts and a home run derby.

And on Monday night, major league baseball and the Padres host the All-Star Gala, a party in Balboa Park for 2,400 people--including sponsors, friends of major league baseball, dignitaries, the media and others.

“To me, as a baseball fan, the next best thing to having a World Series has got to be to have the All-Star Game,” Strasberg said. “We figure that 85% of the stadium will be filled with San Diegans.”

The last figures major league baseball has available from All-Star games, according to the San Diego Convention of Visitors’ Bureau, are from the 1988 game in Cincinnati. That year, it was estimated that the Cincinnati economy was boosted by about $21.3 million because of the game, with approximately 16,500 out-of-town visitors.

That, though, was before FanFest, which was started last year in Toronto and will continue this year from July 10 through 14 at the San Diego Convention Center. FanFest, which is expected to bring in more out-of-town visitors, is a theme-park kind of atmosphere that includes a traveling Hall of Fame display, baseball games, ballpark food, baseball card exhibits and other baseball-related displays.

All of this adds to the planning, which explains why Strasberg and Doug Duennes, director of stadium operations, have racked up nearly as many frequent flier miles as Bill Clinton in preparation for this summer’s game.

They have been to the All-Star games the past two years in Toronto and Chicago and they went to the NHL All-Star game in Chicago last winter.

Duennes went to the Super Bowl in 1991 and Strasberg has been to two NBA All-Star games.

“Just to see how they set things up, whether they’re different or better,” Duennes said. “See things that are fun that we could incorporate.”

One idea they hope to borrow came from the NHL game. Various NHL team mascots attended, and the Padres are in the process of attempting to incorporate that idea for this summer’s game.

Something else they are looking to incorporate is a sane television schedule.

The Padres’ game with Philadelphia on the Friday night before the All-Star Game is one of ESPN’s games. On Saturday, CBS is televising the Padre-Phillie game. The same two teams are on ESPN’s Sunday night schedule.

And ESPN is televising Monday’s home run derby; CBS is back on Tuesday with the big game.

Neither the Padres nor Dziedzic can remember that much television exposure for a city leading up to the All-Star game.

“We’re looking at five straight days of baseball programming coming out of here,” Dziedzic said. “And we know that approximately 60 million people watch the All-Star game.”

So, do the two networks shuffle their trucks in and out of the stadium on a day to day basis? Or do the Padres try to talk them into using the same trucks and equipment?

Those matters still ahve to be resolved.

The CBS people will be in San Diego for a walk-through later this month, at which time they will decide such things as camera locations, broadcast booth location, telephone hookups . . . the list goes on.

You can begin to plan three years in advance, but one of the things you plan on is that the questions will continue right through July 14.

Several involved said that there have been no major problems so far. The biggest worries are two things they cannot control.

First, the Padres are at home for 17 of 21 days leading up to the All-Star Game. That makes it difficult to get the stadium ready.

“We have a game Sunday night at 5:05 p.m., and it should be over about 8 or 8:30,” Strasberg said. “Then, we’ve got to transform the stadium to open up the following morning for the All-Star workout. Clean out the lockers, dress up the stadium and the gates open (Monday) at 11 a.m.”

Said Duennes: “Counting the workout and the All-Star game, we have 13 straight events at the ballpark. The biggest challenge will be trying to keep the staff fresh. As the home stand winds down, people get beleaguered, and now we will say to them, ‘We want you to be at your best.’

“Myself and the staff will be working close to around the clock.”

And, of course, one wild card is unique to baseball’s All-Star game.

Weather. No other sport needs to worry about rain.

“In 1988, at the Cincinnati All-Star game, the workout was rained out,” Dziedzic said. “We had opened the park, sold admission--which was going to charity--and it rained all day. We had to turn all of those fans away.”

The Padres, of course, have included weather in their planning.

“I have assured major league baseball,” Strasberg said, “that (rain) is not going to happen.

“Not in San Diego in July.”

His hands were behind his desk.

His fingers were probably crossed.