ALL-STAR GAME : A Weighty Matter : In Philadelphia, John Kruk’s Girth Is Overshadowed--Well, Almost--by His Hitting, Which Is the Best in Baseball This Season

OK, just because Krukker rhymes with supper. . . .

Just because John Kruk believes the off-season is just that, the off -season, the time for daily Sonnyburgers with cheese sticks, fries (gravy and ketchup, please) and a cold beer at the down-home Hamburger Haven restaurant and lounge in McComb, Md., just across the Potomac River from his farmhouse in Burlington, W. Va. . . .

Just because Manager Jim Fregosi of the Philadelphia Phillies describes Kruk’s breakfast of champions as three hot dogs with ketchup. . . .

Just because Kruk was pacing the clubhouse in Wrigley Field the other morning, frustrated because the concession stands weren’t open yet and he would have to settle for doughnuts and he “hates sweet stuff, so what else is there but hot dogs?” . . .

Just because Don Sutton once said that Kruk “looks like a guy who went to a fantasy camp and decided to stay,” or that Phillies’ owner Bill Giles calls him “a poor man’s Babe Ruth” or that teammate Dale Murphy has said he has never seen anything that “looks, moves or is shaped like Kruk.” . . .

OK, just because he doesn’t have an all-star body doesn’t mean he doesn’t belong in Tuesday’s All-Star game at San Diego’s Jack Murphy Stadium, where his major league career began in 1986.

As Fregosi said recently: “John has done a lot for fat--mainly hit.”

Kruk, who is batting .346, has hit to the extent that he has been the major league leader for most of the season. He will appear in San Diego as a first base backup to Fred McGriff, the fans’ choice as starter.

Can Kruk hit, or what?

“It ain’t ever over till the fat guy swings,” teammate Darren Daulton likes to say, adding, “The only difference between Kruk and the Babe is about 640 home runs.”

Said Tony Gwynn, a four-time batting champion and former Padre teammate who is chasing his friend in the National League batting race: “I may still be chasing him in September.”

Translation: Kruk is a bona fide hitter who seldom gets a leg hit but has batting-title potential, in Gwynn’s view, because he uses the whole field, hits left-handers well, has the advantage of playing home games in a hitter’s park, Veterans Stadium; is willing to take a walk--Kruk leads the National League in on-base percentage--and isn’t pitched around because Daulton is having a big year behind him.

“This is the first year he’s received much notoriety, so the focus has been on how he looks and not what he’s done,” Gwynn said. “But the fact is, John has been a good hitter for a long time, so I’m not surprised. My only surprise is that so many others are surprised.”

Gwynn laughed, then said: “Of course, Krukker’s something of a

(fraud). You look at him and get the impression that he doesn’t do anything more than pick up the bat.

“He fools people with his body and that West Virginia country approach, but he’s smart, he studies pitchers and he knows how to adjust.

“He’s also a member of the dawn patrol. Nobody gets to the park earlier or leaves later. He pays his dues.”

Ask Kruk about the batting title or All-Star game and he shrugs and says he doesn’t want to think about things like that. But his All-Star selection carried a $50,000 bonus, and he acknowledged that he has “come full circle,” returning as an All-Star after being traded by the Padres when he was hitting .184.

Kruk generally reacts to interviews the way he does to closed concession stands.

Daulton calls him “the definition of room service, a real stay-inside guy.” Others say he is simply shy around people he doesn’t know. Read stories about himself? “Too boring,” he said.

Not necessarily. No one has a sharper wit in clubhouse needling or is more willing to make fun of himself or his teammates.

On his physique: “Somebody said that Roseanne Barr should play my life story. I hope I don’t look that bad.”

On the Phillies’ reputation as a team of hard-nosed, face-in-the-dirt throwbacks: “That’s only because we were all thrown back by other teams. Our highlight film will probably be called ’24 Morons and A Mormon.’ I feel sorry for Dale Murphy. I mean, Mormons are supposed to do three years of missionary work. What better place than with this team?”

On his home in rural West Virginia: “Nobody bothers you. I broke the lock on my door a few years ago and never bothered to have it fixed. I mean, if you come home and find a chain saw or something missing, you just figure that somebody borrowed it and will bring it back.”

Kruk may have a strange shape, but there is something even stranger about him. Philadelphia third base coach Larry Bowa, Kruk’s former manager with the Padres, put it this way:

“Not too many players seem to have fun anymore, but John does. And he’s the first to make fun of himself.

“I’ve seen him take a bad swing and look down at me holding his nose as if to say he stinks.”

Kruk may have hillbilly fun at his game, but he has also been known to berate teammates for getting too lackadaisical during infield practice, for leaving their game face in the clubhouse.

Then there’s San Diego.

“Hadn’t even heard of it when I first signed,” Kruk said, acknowledging that he didn’t have much geographical knowledge beyond the Potomac.

It is alleged that when he saw Lake Michigan on one of his first trips he asked, “Which ocean is that?”

Not true, Kruk said.

“I asked, ‘Which one is that?’--meaning which lake,” he said. “Tim Flannery (a San Diego teammate) turned it into something of a legend.”

Kruk grew up in Keyser, W.Va., coal-mining country that is still his home and the foundation of his blue-collar approach to baseball. He met his wife, Jamie, when she was working at the Keyser video store.

He helps underwrite the baseball program at Allegheny Community College, where he played. He coaches a local junior high basketball team during the winter. He meets his pals for Sonnyburgers at the Hamburger Haven. Co-owner Rick Rotruck promised him they would all be free next winter if he hit .400.

“Well, the way John eats, I had to have the odds on my side,” Rotruck said.

Hard to believe, perhaps, but Kruk didn’t weigh enough in his early teens to play peewee football. His father, Frank, who worked in Keyser’s bottling plant, coached his Little League team and sent him home one day because he refused to move from shortstop to the outfield.

It made Kruk realize that if he wanted to play, he would have to play wherever the manager put him. He has played all three outfield positions as well as first base in the majors. And his shape belies his defensive skills. He made only 12 errors in 2,828 chances at first base before this season, in which he extended a two-year errorless streak to 106 games before drawing his first error of the season at that position July 3.

“Kruk is an average outfielder and an excellent first baseman,” Fregosi said. “He really has an awareness on the field. I always thought Ron Fairly was as good as I’ve seen (at first base), but John is just as good.”

Kruk and his three older brothers played constantly as youngsters, but he never envisioned the major leagues.

“I didn’t think scouts knew West Virginia existed,” he said, adding that several of his coaches and managers along the way told him to forget it, he wasn’t good enough.

“Hell, everyone’s entitled to their opinion,” said Kruk, who was 20 and playing in a Virginia summer league when he was selected by the Padres in the secondary phase of the 1981 June draft.

Kruk hit only .242 at Walla Walla over the rest of that summer, but he batted .311, .341, .326 and .351 in his next four minor league seasons, then .309 in 122 games with the Padres in 1986 and .313 with 20 homers and 91 runs batted in in 138 games in 1987.

A series of injuries cut into Kruk’s availability and effectiveness in ‘88, when he slipped to .241, and he was hitting only .184 in 31 games in 1989 when he was traded to the Phillies in June for Randy Ready and Chris James. Kruk hit .331 in 81 games over the rest of that summer, .291 in 1990 and .294 with 21 homers and 92 RBIs last year, his first as an All-Star.

Despite the injuries, reduced playing time and dwindling confidence of then-Manager Jack McKeon--”I think he thought my mouth had become louder than my bat”--Kruk makes no excuses for his San Diego falloff, saying simply that he stunk.

Gwynn, however, said it all had to do with playing time.

“John was always productive when he played, but it’s tough coming off the bench or trying to play hurt,” Gwynn said. “John may be a little smarter as a hitter now, but, basically, I don’t think he’s changed.”

Bowa, the San Diego manager in 1987 and part of ‘88, disagrees.

“John was strictly an opposite-field hitter in San Diego,” Bowa said. “It was easy to defense him. Now he’s learned to pull the inside pitch and use the whole field.

“He doesn’t want people to think he’s that sophisticated, but he has a game plan before he goes up there. He reads reports, knows what pitchers got him out on. And he knows he can hit, period. A lot of guys go in a slump and are never heard from again. John goes 0 for 10 and knows it’s only a matter of time before he comes out of it.”

There’s one other thing. San Diego may have been a little too nice, too quiet, too much the same every day for him.

Philadelphia has a bite to it. It doesn’t hurt to have a rain delay once in a while--”I’m not sure they even had a tarp in San Diego,” Kruk said--to see a fight in the stands or be booed.

“I just think the fans in the East are more intense,” Kruk said. “They know the game better. They’re more vocal, and that helps keep your concentration level up. West Coast fans may boo, but the next day it’s forgotten. They’re more forgiving, though they’re getting better. I don’t believe the way they’ve been booing Benny (Santiago) this year. A lot of East Coast people must have moved to San Diego.”

Does he carry any bitterness?

“About what?” Kruk said. “I don’t have a vendetta. I don’t play any harder (against the Padres). I used to when I was first traded, but I don’t have that feeling anymore. Besides, Tony (Gwynn) is just about the only one left (from when Kruk was there).”

The Phillies signed Kruk to a three-year, $7.2-million contract in September of 1991. It carries a clause that prevents him from playing basketball in the winter, which may be deleted.

Idled last winter by that clause and postseason knee surgery, fattened by Sonnyburgers, Kruk was rounder than usual when he reported for spring training.

Fregosi responded with a boot camp regimen that put Kruk in the lineup virtually every day.

“He hated me,” Fregosi said, refusing to divulge what Kruk weighed then or weighs now.

But he added: “I judge John’s weight by his ability to play every day, and he plays every day and plays hard.”

Kruk’s weight is a major topic in Philadelphia. The talk shows even interview the waitresses at the coffee shop where he usually has breakfast. Kruk shook his head.

“I guess it’s kind of flattering that people would spend good money to come out and yell at you just because you weigh too much,” Kruk said. “I can’t believe they do it, but the only thing that matters to me is that the people on this team know I go out and play hard every day.”

Said Mitch Williams, the Philadelphia relief ace: “John may look like a plumber, but he’s a pure gamer. He plays to win. I mean, to have survived 12 years in this game tells you something about his spirit.”

Williams wears uniform No. 29. Kruk wears 28, having given up 29 when Williams joined the Phillies from the Chicago Cubs. Another legend has it that Williams traded a case of beer and a case of Ding Dongs for 29.

A lie, Kruk said, adding: “I’ve never had a Ding Dong in my life.”