Catcher With a Future Doing Fine Right Now

The future may well be now for catching with the San Diego Padres.

His name is Dan Walters, and he is providing a glimpse of what life might be like behind the plate after Benito Santiago heads up the coast or across the continent in search of gold.

While we are getting this glimpse of young Mr. Walters, he is getting is first taste of what life is like in the major leagues.

After a nice afternoon Tuesday, when he drove home two runs in an 8-4 Padre victory over the Dodgers, Walters was liking what he was tasting and Padre fans had to be liking what they were seeing.

Benny Who?

When Santiago leaves, Walters will be the guy to step in. It would seem like a daunting task, replacing a player who is the runaway leader for a starting All-Star spot in spite of both a slow start and an injury.

The truth is that Walters will be embraced warmly by fans. As popular as Santiago seems to be nationally, he would play Bush or Clinton to Walters’ Perot in any local popularity polls.

One of Walters’ advantages, to be sure, is that, like Perot, no one really knows much about him. He is just a kid, all of 25, up from Las Vegas trying to do a job filling in while the starter recuperates.

One of the things about Walters is that he looks more like a linebacker than a baseball player, and that image is reinforced a bit by the fact that he wears No. 58. He stands 6-feet-4 and weighs 225 pounds. If you went to Price Club to buy a catcher, this is what you would get--a large, economy-sized package.

What’s more, those large packages are supposed to last a while. This one will. He might get a return trip to Las Vegas when Santiago returns sometime in early July, but he will last well into the 1990s if he is blessed with good health.

This big, ol’ country boy hails from not too far down the road in Santee, where he played for Santana High School.

Excuse me, he did not play football. I asked him if the football coach was blind, and he laughed.

“I was a beanpole,” he said. “I only ran about a buck 70.”

In English, this translates to 170 pounds.

However, the Houston Astros were interested in this beanpole and drafted him in the fifth round in 1984. He spent four years in the Astro season before the most appalling thing imaginable happened to him.

He was traded to the Padres.

Appalling? Going home was appalling?

Imagine being a quarterback and being traded to the San Francisco 49ers. That was what it was like for a catcher to be traded to the Padres. They already had Benito Santiago in the lineup and Sandy Alomar Jr. in his shadow. They didn’t know what to do with the guys they had, and suddenly they had Walters.

“I was shocked,” Walters said. “Why in the world would they want me?”

He knew the situation well, being a local guy. But he knew something else.

“Back then,” he said, “I knew I was still a long ways away from being ready for the big leagues. I thought maybe a couple of years down the road things might thin out. I just hoped down the road I’d get an opportunity, however it came about.”

This “thinning out” process began after the 1989 season, when Alomar Jr. was traded to the Cleveland Indians. This left Santiago as the lone ranger, and it has not been the most closely guarded secret that the Padres are very unlikely to be able to sign him when he was eligible for free agency after the 1992 season.

Walters, who had spent half of 1990 and all of 1991 in Las Vegas, was a gimme to return there for 1992 as well. It was beginning to become a question of whether Walters would be eligible to run for mayor of Las Vegas before he finally got a big league call.

When Santiago broke his finger, there was Walters . . . hitting .394 and ready for the call.

Walters has played in 19 games since coming up and has 12 runs batted in and a .266 average. His RBIs have come in 64 at bats, compared with Santiago’s 24 in 183 at bats. That’s enough comparisons, which probably are not fair to either one of them.

The fact is that Santiago will get the job back when he returns.

“I’m a realist,” Walters said. “Benny’s coming back and he’s the best. He’ll be doing all the catching.”

Walters, then, would seem to be in a quandary. He could be a reserve here for the remainder of the season or the starter in Las Vegas.

No quandary here, not for Walters.

“I want to stay,” he said. “This is the big leagues. Now that I’ve had a taste of it, this is where I want to be.”

Now that the Padres have had a taste of him , perhaps they might rethink their reluctance to trade Santiago in the midst of a pennant race. Maybe they should seriously think about getting some value for him rather than just letting him walk.

The future doesn’t have to wait for tomorrow, does it?