As members of the 1984 Padres team that reached the World Series weighed thoughts on this season’s bunch, so much has changed in San Diego and around the game.
The franchise, long known for bear-hugging pennies, now invests hundreds of millions of dollars. Baseball has kicked batting average to the curb, becoming drunk on power numbers while shrugging at ballooning strikeouts.
Those Padres with a pennant 40 years in their past still see the connecting threads. The must-have things. The intangible things.
Time tinkers with some of baseball’s DNA, but it cannot dictate other truths that fuel winning and losing.
“They’re playing more as a team this year,” Garry Templeton, the Padres’ shortstop in ’84, said before the group was honored Wednesday at Petco Park. “They’re moving runners and getting that extra hit here or there. They’re not taking the big swings like they did last year. It seemed like everybody just came up and tried to hit the ball 900 feet. Now, they’re trying to put the ball in play to make stuff happen.”
Guys from the 1984 team analyze this group through a unique lens. They know the game, if not fully grasping the era. They see through the optics that might fool fans.
They’re bull-sniffers, if you catch the drift.
“I said to (manager) Mike Shildt before the game, ‘I don’t know if you were teaching it, but I bet you were, about situational hitting, productive outs, moving runners,’” said Tim Flannery, a plug-and-play cog in ’84. “They’re more disciplined. Then everyone starts to feel like a part of it.
“I love watching them because they’re a team. I couldn’t watch them the last couple years.”
Basics, fundamentals and grit move the needle with the guys who won the NL West and stormed back against the Cubs to reach the World Series.
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“This club is fun to watch,” said then-catcher Terry Kennedy. “I don’t watch much baseball, but this club I watch.”
Those with ties to 1984 rightfully worry about pitching. The top of the Padres rotation is a Petco-sized what if with the uncertain situations involving starters Joe Musgrove (elbow inflammation) and Yu Darvish (injured, now on restricted list for personal reasons).
The red flag that comes with that? It’s real.
“It’s more difficult when you’re in a division with a team like the Dodgers,” Kennedy said of the arm issues. “If you’re in the NL Central, you survive. If you’re in the AL Central, you survive.”
Flannery echoed the mound concerns.
“I think they need pitching,” he said. “You always need pitching at this point to finish it.”
Bob Chandler, 86, broadcast Padres game during the 1984 run. He sees problems at one glance and hopeful potential at another.
“Those are devastating injuries,” he said, “but the offense is good enough (to make the playoffs).”
Another sliver of optimism?
“I see vastly increased athleticism that wasn’t here a few years ago,” Kennedy said.
It might be easy to dismiss opinions as dusty, four decades later. The 1984 team, though, lit the fuse. They made a city believe. They macheted a path.
They understood the things that are not measured by numbers.
“It didn’t seem like the mix was good last year, from the outside looking in,” Templeton said. “Being around the game a long time, it just didn’t feel right.”
Templeton said he appreciates in-season pickup Luis Arraez, in particular. He’s a throwback these baseball days, thriving on contact more than power.
The two-time batting champion constitutes a key piece, to his thinking.
“He’s a line-drive hitter, so you’re going to have somebody on base all the time,” Templeton said. “You don’t see that too much anymore, but Arizona did it last year (en route to the World Series).
“They ran, they played small ball, because they didn’t have power hitters.”
Winning changes things. The first San Diego change-makers played in 1984.
“That’s our point of pride, that we were the beginning of optimism here in San Diego about a baseball team,” Kennedy said. “And we hold that close.”
The city still is waiting for the next step, 40 years later.
“What you see now (in optimism and energy), I think is a result of the ’84 team,” Templeton said. “The fans are hungry for a championship. They just want a winner. If you put a winner here in San Diego, these fans will go crazy.”
The more things change, the more they stay the same.