Old Padres Definitely Out of This World

“I had to read the Book of Job this morning to inspire me to come to the ballpark. I realized, I guess I’m OK as long as I don’t start getting boils.”

--Tim Flannery, San Diego Padres, 1987

When the San Diego Padres take the field here Saturday for the start of the World Series, the folks back home will be thinking about Kevin Brown and his fastball.

I can’t help but think about Kevin Mitchell and his firecracker.

It was July 1987, my first day of an assignment I remember the way other people remember wrecks or weddings or both.

I was the Padre writer for this newspaper’s now-defunct San Diego County edition. My assignment was to cover one of the most delightful, dysfunctional teams of our time.

I walked into the clubhouse in Montreal on that first day to the smell of smoke. Sitting on a trash can in the middle of the clubhouse was a giant sizzling firecracker.

I leaped for cover. Several Padres backed into their lockers. Everyone cringed and . . .

Nothing. It fizzled. Mitchell’s practical joke was a dud.

I should have known then.

The next day I knew for sure.

Larry Bowa, the rookie manager, called the writers into his office to excitedly announce a blockbuster trade with the San Francisco Giants.

“We got him, we finally got him, the hitter we really need,” Bowa effused. “We got Chili Davis.”

His phone rang. We left the room. When we returned, Bowa was frowning, shaking his head.

“Sorry, there’s been a mistake,” he said. “We got Mark Davis.”

While much of the baseball world celebrates the Padres today--a professional operation with a strong owner and smart front office--it is both my blessing and curse to remember them then.

“I handle this by getting a noose ready every night. I’m ready to hang myself every night.”

--Greg Booker, 1988

*

There have been worse recent Padre teams than the one I covered from the middle of 1987 through the start of 1989.

They have lost more games (101 in 1993). They have suffered greater embarrassments (Roseanne and her crotch-grabbing).

But because of a strange alignment of absentee owner and rookie manager and aging stars and failing prospects--seasoned with a 12-42 start in 1987--rarely have the Padres been as memorable.

Or perhaps you’ve heard of teams whose veteran relief pitcher gets so frustrated by inactivity, he orders his 9-year-old son to warm up in the bullpen in the seventh inning of a game, as Goose Gossage once did?

Or maybe it’s common to have your first baseman followed all summer by the FBI because his former roommate was a bank robber, which was John Kruk’s problem?

To fully appreciate the Padres now, as they have passed the Dodgers and Angels as the Southland’s most stable and respectable franchise, perhaps one must understand them then.

My first year with them, they finished 65-97. The next year, they changed managers in midseason, presidents in September and finished at 83-78. The third year, I changed assignments before they improved to 89-73.

The records weren’t extraordinary. It was everything else. With the Padres, until now, their problem has always been everything else.

They were owned by a socialite who once negotiated a contract with the team president by calling him on a talk radio show and completing the deal over the air.

“This is Jubilant Joan,” Joan Kroc said when she called to give Chub Feeney a raise.

They were run by an aging president who resigned one day after flipping an obscene gesture to two banner-waving fans on--you guessed it--Fan Appreciation Day.

The banner read, “Scrub Chub.”

“It was two guys walking around with a sign, and I waved to them,” Feeney said. “What’s the big deal?”

It was a team managed first by Bowa, a temperamental rookie who fought players, officials and himself.

“There are three or four of you, you can get the hell out of here any time you want,” he once shouted at his team.

Bowa, a brilliant strategist who has since matured as an Angel coach, might have been the first manager in history to be thrown out of a game for imitating the way an umpire walked, as he did with Dave Pallone.

About a year later, Bowa was fired at 8 a.m. in his New York hotel room in his pajamas, and replaced by his cigar-smoking general manager, Jack McKeon.

After years of inactivity, McKeon wouldn’t walk to the mound to change pitchers because he thought the uniform made him look fat.

“Even God couldn’t manage this team.”

--John Kruk, 1988

*

The Padres of those days were led by the magnificently calm Tony Gwynn, but filled with guys like eccentric Benito Santiago, odd Eric Show, wimpy Chris Brown, legendary Marvell Wynne.

Santiago, a catcher, once cost them a game when he tried to pick Chicago Cub Manny Trillo off second base in the 11th inning . . . on an intentional walk . . . when Trillo was standing next to the base, and none of the fielders were watching him.

The ball went into center field, Trillo scored, the Padre legend grew.

“Around here, we can’t even relax on an intentional walk,” pitching coach Pat Dobson said.

Mark Grant, a pitcher, once secretly set Wynne’s shoelaces on fire in the dugout during a game in Philadelphia. The center-field camera caught him, showed it on the scoreboard while he was doing it, and soon everyone in America was laughing at this team.

“I can’t even watch the games,” Kruk said. “Sometimes, when I’m not playing, I’ve gone up into the runway behind the dugout to sit for a few innings and just think about the winter.”

Brown, a third baseman, once delayed the start of a game for five minutes because he broke his jockstrap. But at least that night he played.

During those two seasons, the legendary tin man sat out one game because of a bruised tooth root and another because of a sprained eyelid.

There was Wynne, a utility outfielder, who made a sort of history the night he goaded Brown into punching him the left eye, causing it to swell shut . . . then replaced Keith Moreland for defensive purposes in the eighth inning.

“The only time I’ve ever seen anything like this was on television,” Gwynn said.

Then there was bullpen star Keith Comstock, a pitcher who had been released in five countries.

“I have no pride,” Comstock said. “There’s nothing hitters can do to me that hasn’t been done before.”

This was the team that nearly started a game-related riot--when Show hit hero Cub Andre Dawson in the face in the summer of 1987, causing Cub fans to try to climb the rails to attack the frightened Padres.

“We lost the game, and so damn what? Who gives a damn?” said Gwynn. “I’m just glad we got out of there without getting hurt.”

Amazingly, fittingly, finally, Gwynn will be in right field in Yankee Stadium on Saturday.

Tim Flannery will also be there, as the third base coach. And Greg Booker, as the bullpen coach.

A little-used, soft-spoken backup catcher from the late 1980s will also be around, guy by the name of Bruce Bochy.

I’m not supposed to cheer. Yet I can’t help but remember.

“My wife says it will even out. She says something will happen. I don’t know, I’m sure it will. You have to believe that’s right.”

--Tony Gwynn, 1987