Gary Pettis Getting Acclimated to Padre Surroundings : Baseball: Outfielder gets fresh start after his release by Texas.

Gary Pettis looked up, suddenly, wondering if he was dressed OK.

“Blue warm-ups for infield?” he asked Padre first base coach Rob Picciolo.

So far, so good. He was wearing his blue warm-up jersey.

“What time is infield?” Pettis asked.

Yes, Pettis was in the right place--the Padre dugout--at the right time. Still on track.

This coming-to-a-new-team stuff is never easy. The Padres signed Pettis as a free agent April 14, and he has spent quite a bit of his time ever since asking questions and searching for, what? For scoreboards?

“I was in Houston and I was looking all over,” Pettis said. “That’s something I’ve got to get used to--where the scoreboards are.”

He is at the stage of his career where he has changed leagues looking for a fresh start. Questions? He has plenty of them.

But he is in this position because, first, a few teams had a question for him.

Whatever happened to his offense?

“He’s always had trouble hitting in the major leagues,” said Padre batting coach Merv Rettenmund, who first met Pettis in the early 1980s when Rettenumund was a coach in the Angels minor league system and Pettis was on his way up. “That’s a bit of a mystery because in the minors he was a very good offensive player.

“I don’t think he’s ever had a year in the majors that he would consider a good year offensively.”

Defense was never a problem. Pettis could always make the running catch, the diving catch, the silky-smooth spectacular catch. He has won five Gold Glove awards.

“It seemed like he was always killing us with his glove,” said Padre pitcher Bruce Hurst, who remembers Pettis well from Hurst’s American League days in Boston.

But of 321 players to have played in at least 1,000 games in the outfield in major league history, only one had a lower career batting average than Pettis’ .237: Milwaukee’s Gorman Thomas. But Thomas had 268 career homers. Pettis has 20.

This is why Pettis has become only the fifth player in major league history to win five Gold Gloves with three or more teams.

In this game, defense will only take you so far. When Texas second baseman Julio Franco was injured this spring and the Rangers picked up Al Newman to replace him, they released Pettis on his 34th birthday, April 3, despite Pettis’ guaranteed contract of $1 million this year. Ate it, just like that.

So the Padres picked him up, obligated to pay only the major league minimum of $109,000 on that contract. The Rangers pay the rest.

Pettis’ agent, Larry Reynolds, said the Tigers also showed some interest, but the telephones weren’t exactly ringing off the hook.

“To me, a lot of clubs didn’t do a real good job with research and homework,” Reynolds said. “I’m surprised more clubs didn’t call because they only had to pay him the major league minimum.”

The Padres plan to use him as a defensive replacement, utilize his speed as a pinch-runner--he is 11th among active players with 340 career stolen bases--and spot-start him.

“Over here, he’s going to spend more of his time on one side of the plate--the left side,” Rettenmund said. “Forget the other.”

Left-handed, Pettis’ career average is .237. Right-handed, it is .238.

“He’s been working on some things,” Rettenmund said. “He wants to use his hips more. He was always jumping out. He never seemed to get to the ball. They threw fastballs in.”

Pettis was a rising star with the Angels but, after he batted only .208 in 133 games in 1987 in what should have been his fourth full major league season, he was shipped back to triple-A Edmonton to finish the summer.

Exasperated, the Angels traded him to Detroit that winter for Dan Petry. He spent two summers with the Tigers, batting only .210 and .257, then became a free agent.

The Tigers didn’t show much interest, and he landed with Texas. After two summers there--.239 and .216--the Rangers cut him loose.

“I just look at it as a decision management made,” Pettis said. “Deep in my heart, I know I can still play this game, and that’s all that matters to me. Their decision to go a different way is their decision. If it works out fine for them, then it’s the right move.

“It’s not for me to say they made a bad decision. I’m looking forward, not behind. I’ve got a lot of things to be happy about. I’m playing baseball, I’m in the Southern California area, it’s a better situation for me and my family all around.”

Certainly better than the first week in April, when the major league season opened and, for the first time since the 1970s, Pettis followed things from his home.

“It definitely was weird,” Pettis said. “I found myself driving down our street and realizing that my neighborhood looked different to me. The flowers bloomed in colors I had never seen before.”

Pettis spent most of the week breaking in his new swimming pool and spa, and had a family barbecue on Sunday. On that Tuesday, he joined the Padres in San Francisco.

Meanwhile, Pettis’ wife, Peggy, is thrilled to join Gary in San Diego. Originally from Oakland, Pettis, who spent nine years in the Angels’ organization, has a home in Laguna Hills. Peggy is from Fullerton and telephoned nearly everyone the Pettis’ knew when Gary signed with San Diego.

They spent this week--the Padres’ first at home since picking up Pettis-- looking for a place to live and hoped to find something by the weekend.

“Coming back to the Padres is no difficult transition at all,” Pettis said. “At this point in my career, it’s probably the best thing that could have happened to me.”

He doesn’t have to pick up and move all of his belongings, as in the past. And he and his wife are the parents of a 1-year-old girl, and Peggy Pettis is expecting another child Oct. 17.

“It’s a good situation, knowing when we go on the road that if something ever happened, somebody would be around to take care of her,” Pettis said.

As for himself, a baseball gypsy knows he is at home. He is just hoping he has found one.

He will have to learn a new league--the pitchers’ tendencies so he can beef up his offense and the batters’ tendencies to keep his defense sharp.

And, of course, scoreboard locations from city to city.