However the Padres Perform, Remember, It Could Be Wurst

The Padres have their home opener Thursday night, and there is much discussion about their mix of new and old employees.

Can recent hires Gary Sheffield and Randy Myers produce up to expectations? Can family retainers Tony Gwynn and Benito Santiago continue their marvels?

As much fun as such jockish speculation may be, it misses the over-arching significance of this particular opening night: To wit, sausage is appearing once again at San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium.

For reasons that surpass understanding, sausage has been missing from stadium concession stands in recent years. Service America Corp., the concessionaire, had benched the Polish Dog.

Now the PD is back, and, for atonement, Service America also will peddle Jody Maroni Sausage from three special carts on the plaza and field levels.

Available for consumption (at $3.75 per) will be Jody’s fennel-spiked Italian chicken sausage and Jody’s rice-beef-pork Lousiana hot-link sausage. Much acclaimed, both.

Regard a review last May of Dodger Stadium fare in the food section of The Times:

“The best food in the park--the best food in any park, I suspect--is a sausage from . . . Jody Maroni.”

Jody Maroni is Jordan Monkarsh, 39, a butcher’s son who studied comparative literature at UC Berkeley. He started making his own gourmet sausage and selling it from a cart on the Venice boardwalk.

He hawked like a carnival barker. He opened a restaurant (Jody Maroni’s Sausage Kingdom) in Venice and has since spread his carts to Dodger Stadium, the L.A. Coliseum and L.A. airport.

Of his Italian chicken sausage, he notes, “It’s a sausage product without the guilt.” That is, less fat and fewer calories.

Is there an athletic connection here?

Listen to Maroni/Monkarsh, who will man a cart on Opening Night, on what happened when he started selling this season at the L.A. Sports Arena: “The Clippers starting doing much better once they got Jody Maroni.”

If the lowly Clippers are susceptible to the curative powers of sausage, who’s to say the Padres are beyond hope?

Don’t Bother Trying to Butter Him Up

People, popcorn, politics.

* Orville Redenbacher, who lives in Coronado, prefers not to sign autographs.

So he hands out stick-on patches: “I Met Orville Redenbacher, the Popcorn King.”

* Political groups are getting more specialized.

The invitation for an Escondido fund-raiser for the senatorial campaign of Rep. William E. Danneymeyer (R-Fullerton) shows that he’s endorsed by “Jews for Preservation of Firearm Ownership.”

* Plans by the San Diego Natural History Museum to retrieve a buried whale carcass from Coronado Island have been postponed due to “unanticipated complications.”

Namely: the stench.

Or as the museum tactfully says in an official statement, “an aroma of exceeding offense.”

* Political gunslinger George Shipley (among his clients: Texas Gov. Ann Richards) comes to San Diego next week to address the American Marketing Assn. convention:

“The Image Makers: What You Can Learn From Those Dirty, Messy, Mud-Slinging Political Campaigns . . . That Work.”

* Don’t let the “Buy American” crowd know, but . . .

The San Diego City Council on Monday voted to buy 20 lifeguard vehicles for $225,000. From Nissan.

* Yes, a guy really did stand in a fish line at Sea World--$1 for four perch to feed to the sea lions--and ask for tartar sauce.

They Have the Bases Covered

As any parent knows, coping with children requires a variety of survival skills.

But a North County couple who have just applied for a state license to run a child care program in their home seem to have their bases covered.

The wife is a former teacher and has a degree in child psychology.

The husband, asked to prove on the application that he is qualified to deal with children, listed his military training in nuclear/biological/chemical warfare, tear gas, firefighting and damage control.