BASEBALL ‘ 92 : Is Myers a Trouper or Soldier of Misfortune? : New Padre Has Shown a Serious Side to Offset His Frequent Eccentric Antics

Tim Flannery, whose aggressive behavior left a lasting influence on the Padres in his day, remembers the time he was having a few beers one night after a game, minding his own business.

“So I walk into this place and he’s (Myers) behind the bar, wearing a Hawaiian shirt, a Hawaiian hat and giant sunglasses. I never had even met him before,” Flannery said.

They were formally introduced and had talked a little shop when Myers abruptly stopped the conversation, and said: “Hey, you want to head-butt?”

A curious Flannery said, “What?”

Said Myers, much louder: “I said, ‘DO YOU WANT TO HEAD-BUTT?’ ”

Flannery, a little numb at the time, did not want to let Myers think he was some sort of idiot for not knowing what he was talking about. He said, “Ah, sure, why not.”

Before Flannery knew what was happening, Myers lowered his head, grabbed hold of Flannery’s head with his hands, and rammed their foreheads.

“My God, I thought I was going to pass out,” Flannery said. “I’ve never been hit that hard in my life. Really, I thought I had a concussion.

“I walked back to my hotel and there was blood dripping from my forehead.

“I stayed away from him ever since. The guy’s an absolute nut.

“I found out later that he knocked out Lenny Dykstra by doing the same thing on the team bus.”

It’s believed to be the Padres’ first encounter with Randall Kirk Myers.

The Padres don’t take great pleasure in spreading the word that Myers is one of them now.

“I’m not saying he’s certifiably crazy,” teammate Larry Andersen said, “but something’s not there. I mean, you don’t act the way he does if you’re running on all cylinders.”

You mean a guy who makes $2.35 million a year is not supposed to be living in a mobile home and driving an ’83 Monte Carlo with a commando figurine in the rear window?

You mean a guy is not supposed to throw pitches at cameramen and photographers, yell at the general manager for taking a bite of food from the players’ post-game spread, and have a 12-inch machete for a letter opener?

“He’s a prime case for a guy who needs a frontal lobotomy,” Padre pitcher Bruce Hurst said.

Outfielder Tony Gwynn: “I’m scared to death of him.”

Catcher Dann Bilardello: “What, you mean he’s not normal?

Myers, the only man in baseball with hand grenades in his locker, a camouflage T-shirt under his baseball jersey, and a Soldier of Fortune magazine in his hand, will make his home debut in the Padres’ home opener at 7:35 p.m. against the Dodgers.

Fans will now be able to judge him, which is good, considering his teammates have yet to figure him out.

“We all know that he can be loud and obnoxious,” Padre starter Andy Benes said, “but for us to win, we need him. If he comes in and saves 30 to 40 games, we’re going to have a great season.

“Judging by the looks of his locker, I guess we’ll be prepared if some kind of war breaks out, too.”

Myers’ locker is equipped with hand grenades, ammunition boxes, knives, machetes, army helmets and pamphlets on how to kill someone 109 different ways.

There could be more enlightening items in the locker, but no one can get close enough to find out. Myers has placed an orange pylon in front of his locker in San Diego, signifying the area where no one is allowed.

“This is my office space,” he said. “Don’t invade my office. If you do, something bad could happen.”

Myers did not have the slightest trace of a smile.

“I know I’m not taking any chances,” Gwynn said. “I’m not going near that place. It could blow at any time.”

Do people really take it seriously, or it some kind of shtick designed to create an image?

“There’s a lot of people who really think he’s crazy,” said Rob Dibble, a former teammate with the Cincinnati Reds. “They think he’s going to kill somebody.

“I mean, he is crazy, but not crazy-crazy. I can’t see him going down the street just wiping out people with a machine gun or something.

“Well, it would surprise me a little bit, anyway.”

Myers, who guards his privacy so closely that none of his teammates have his off-season address, has kept everyone guessing.

Who is the real Randy Myers?

No one knows, least of all his teammates, who ask the same questions as anyone else:

Is he a rebel?

A reporter walked up to Myers before a spring-training game a few weeks ago, and asked for a few minutes of his time. Myers told him to meet him in the bullpen because he has to watch the first five innings of the game, according to club rules.

The reporter started to sit down in the row of seats by the bullpen and Myers was sitting on the railing when John Barr, assistant general manager, strongly advised Myers that that was the time to conduct an interview. Myers shooed him away, and told him to pretend he didn’t see anything.

Moments later, Mike Maddux strode in from the bench, and told Myers that Padre Manager Greg Riddoch wanted to see him on the bench. Myers told Maddux to inform Riddoch he’d be there when he’d completed the interview.

Minutes later, Joe McIlvaine, Padre general manager, walked down to the railing, and motioned Myers to talk. Finally, this grabbed Myers’ attention. He talked to McIlvaine, and then went to the Padre bench. McIlvaine told the reporter the interview is over.

The reporter gone, Myers later sat by the railing, now only talking to fans?

Is he mean?

Myers typically throws his first warm-up pitch high on the backstop, just to frighten the hitter, and enlighten the fans. He did it in Yuma, Ariz. He did it in Phoenix. He did it on opening day in Cincinnati.

Only one time in Yuma, he did it a bit differently. With Bilardello behind the plate, and a photographer about 20 feet away, Myers uncorked a fastball that smacked the photographer in the forearm.

There was no broken bone, but the photographer was last seen holding an ice bag on the welt, and talking about the possibility of a lawsuit.

Is he crazy?

During his stay with the Reds, he once dragged a half-dead water moccasin out of a pond behind their clubhouse in Plant City, Fla., and carried it into the building, scattering his teammates. He once commandeered a mini-bike and drove it inside the clubhouse at breakneck speed. Another time he stole a small Payloader from a construction crew, and tried to drive inside, but cursed when it wouldn’t fit through the clubhouse doors.

In New York, his claim to fame was shooting up the Mets’ clubhouse one night with a BB gun, wishing only he could have used he real thing.

“I still remember the day in spring training when he reached in his locker, and pulled out this huge machete,” Padre outfielder Thomas Howard said. “Our eyes popped wide open. You don’t see those kind of things in a clubhouse.

“We asked him what he was doing with that thing.

“He told us it was his letter-opener.”

Who is the real Randy Myers?

“There’s not a whole lot of people on the team who really knew Randy,” said Reds reliever Norm Charlton, who played two years with Myers. “I know I didn’t. He puts up a front so you can’t see the real Randy. He doesn’t want you to figure him out.

“Maybe he overdoes it, who knows? I mean, we all had his phone number, and everything, but he wouldn’t even tell us where he lives. No one had his off-season address.

“If you ask me, the reason he’s so private is because he doesn’t want anybody to see his weaknesses. That’s fine.

“I didn’t always agree with everything he did, but we all didn’t grow up in the same city and raised the same way. We’re supposed to be different, aren’t we?”

Even Roger Daniels, who has known Myers for a decade, wondered if he truly knows his close friend.

“I don’t want to blow his cover, but it’s almost like professional wrestling,” said Daniels, Clark (Wash.) Community College athletic director. “His whole thing is just an image. He wants the hitters to wonder who he is.

“The thing you can’t figure out, though, is that part of it is show, part of it is real, and there’s a fine line between the two. I mean, even those who’ve known him a long time, it’s hard to distinguish what is show, and what’s the real Randy.

“Just when we think we know who he is, he throws us a curve.”

Is he the man who donated the van he won for the 1990 co-MVP award of the National League to Clark Community College? Or is he the man who scolded Padre representatives for allowing an unauthorized company to distribute baseball cards in the clubhouse and infringe on their licensing rights?

“All I know,” said Daniels, a former Marine sergeant in Vietnam, “is that if I was in a war, he’d be the guy I’d want on the point, looking for mines, snipers, locating gun nets. He is the true soldier of fortune.

“When you think about it, isn’t baseball like going to war, anyway, when you have the ball in the ninth inning and have to put out a fire?”

Said Myers: “Now you’re talking. Of course, it is. That’s why I try to stay loose mentally before I get in the game.

“Nobody can keep it up for three hours at a day, six months a year. I want to be at my full concentration level when I go out on the mound.”

Perhaps this explains why in the Padres’ opening-day victory Monday over the Cincinnati Reds, Myers was high-fiving Howard after the game, saying how he sure came through with that ninth-inning homer.

Howard looked at him with a blank look on his face, shrugged his shoulders, and wondered what in the world he was talking about. It turns out that Myers thought Howard hit the game-winning homer in the ninth, and was unaware that Darrin Jackson hit it. It wasn’t until he read the papers the next morning when he realized his mistake.

“That’s Randy,” Gwynn said. “He gets so intense out there, he blocks out everything around him. He’s brought in an intenseness that a lot of us have never seen before, and it’s rubbed off on a lot of guys.”

Said Hurst: “You know we laugh at him, and some times you just want to tell him to shut up, but he’s the kind of guy you’re glad you have.

“I don’t know this for sure, but deep inside, I think there’s a heart of gold in there. He could be the best friend you ever had without you ever knowing it.

“I know that sounds funny, but it’s true.”

Myers listens, and shrugs his shoulders. Let others make the judgment, he said. He’ll continue being the same guy as always, whatever that is.

“People don’t know who I am, and that’s good,” Myers said. “I like it that way. It’s just a business. To me, I could leave baseball tomorrow, and it wouldn’t bother me a bit.

“I’d just as soon work as a machinist or an auto mechanic. I’m blue-collar worker, and that’s the way I’ll always be.”

Who would dare argue?