Myers’ Return Rains on Reds’ Celebration

The banks of the Ohio River were awash with a red tide Monday. Red was the color d’jour. The long winter was over because the hometown team was back in town to open the baseball season.

That’s what opening days are all about in places where snow falls and drives the natives to caves for a few months of hibernation. It is an occasion to blossom and acknowledge that blue skies and green grass were back.

They do that hereabouts by celebrating the return of the Cincinnati Reds.

They do it with downtown parades and they do it with pregame shows that are more reminiscent of a county fair than a major league extravaganza. It is what makes these folks happy, and that is fine.

What did not make them happy was the return of an ex-Red. This guy came along wearing the alien blue and orange of the San Diego Padres. He closed the opener by slamming the door on the local nine and preserving a 4-3 Padre victory.

His name was Randy Myers.

He was the latest and last of a succession of heroes who made this afternoon as nice for the Padres as it was dreary for the Reds. He followed such predictable Padre headliners as Tony Gwynn, RBI double and superb catch in right field; Fred McGriff, home run; and Darrin Jackson, game-winning home run. Those Padres were all villains, to be sure, to the Reds’ faithful.

However, there is no villain nastier than a--that’s right--nasty villain.

Myers had been one of the Reds’ Nasty Boys coming out of the bullpen before he was traded to the Padres in the off-season for Bip Roberts.

It was not Myers’ fault that he was traded, and it was not Myers’ fault that fate brought him back to Riverfront Stadium for his first game with his new team against his old team.

It was fated, as might be expected, that the crowd of 55,356, the largest ever to watch the Padres on opening day, should boo him rather soundly as he took the mound for the bottom of the ninth.

“I didn’t hear it,” he said later, much later in fact. “I had a job to do.”

More than an hour passed before Myers surfaced in the Padre clubhouse to face the assembled media, most of whom were from the Cincinnati area. Four television cameras awaited him as well as perhaps 15 to 18 writers. Something about returning home to successfully confront his past had an appealing story line to it.

Besides, Myers is a particularly interesting character who takes the mound with a bow-legged swagger, wears camouflage clothes and uses a grenade case as somewhat of an attache. You don’t know whether to call him intense or maniacal. If he’s a bulldog, he has the wild-eyed look of a rabid bulldog.

As the minutes ticked by with most of the Padres gone and Myers still in absentia, teammate Larry Andersen offered a clue: “He’s probably out running down grenades.”

Or maybe he was in the machine shop getting his screws tightened.

“He’s kinda crazy,” said Benito Santiago, the catcher, “but you’ve gotta let him go. He’s gonna save us some games.”

Another teammate, who shall remain nameless, pulled me off to the side and said: “Don’t let him tell you this was just another game. He came into the locker room and said, ‘Well, those guys aren’t going to go wire-to-wire, are they?’ ”

Finally, Randy Myers arrived in the locker room, wearing a sock as a bandanna, his usual high-top shoes and a violet, tattered NYU sweat shirt. Apparently, lifting weights could not wait. He does it twice a day. More fodder for a macho image.

“I look at it as just another game,” he said. “My job is to go out and beat them. I’ll do whatever my team needs from me. If they told me they wanted me to be a starting pitcher, I’d prepare for that. I’d be a backup, backup outfielder, a backup, backup first baseman, a backup, backup catcher. Whatever they want.”

Wait a minute, I said, what about what the teammate said he said about the Reds not going wire-to-wire?

“I didn’t say that,” he protested. “Must have been someone else.”

This was a first. Writers are always accused of misquoting people, unfairly of course, but this time a player was the culprit. I suspect, as is usually the case, the person being quoted said exactly what he said he didn’t say.

Throughout the interview, as wave after wave of questions hit him, he remained consistent with his insistence that this was no special game for him. Getting his first Padre save to spoil the Reds’ home opener was all in a day’s work.

“Hey,” he said, “my nickname is Mr. Mellow.”

Sure, and Mr. Peepers is the Raging Bull.

Brian Prilaman, the Padres’ equipment manager, came by the locker and whispered something in Myers’ ear.

“It’s in there,” Myers said, gesturing toward the grenade case.

“Are you nuts?” Prilaman said, aghast. “You think I’m going to get in there you’re crazy.”

There’s that word again.