‘To Be That Happy, Isn’t That Worth Something?’ : Flannery Loves Life as a Padre

TEMPE, Ariz. — The 30-year-old man with the new ankle stands on first base. The ball is hit into the right-field gap.

The man races toward second base, crosses it, makes a sharp turn, charges toward third base, crosses it, makes a wide turn, stops, then dives back to the bag, safe.

He gets up, and he is laughing. From first to third, he has been laughing. He is laughing as if he were 15, and it was June 1, and he had just run to the beach.

He knows he shouldn’t be laughing, that he should stop right now before the manager sees him. But he is 30, and the ankle feels so darn good, and in this game, who knows, you might laugh in March and not again until Christmas.

It has been nine summers, 820 games, as close to a lifetime as most baseball players get. There’s no hiding the hairline racing to the back of his head, or the lines that fight for room on the face.

Tim Flannery looks at his career and sees ice buckets.

“Garbage cans, plastic buckets, anything that will hold ice,” he said. “I stick my ankle in there, after every game, for 30 minutes. For as long as I play, that’s what I’ll do.”

For as long as I play. The man everyone assumes would always be a Padre is saying that kind of thing now.

He is in the final year of a Padre contract that, in some form or another, has been tendered since 1979. Back then he played 22 games, hit .154 and answered to Roger Craig.

He has since gone through seven opening-day second basemen. Six managers.

Five times of losing more than he has won, four times of finishing more than 20 games out of first.

Three last-place finishes, two labor strikes.

One pennant.

And all without a batting title, a fielding title, a Gold Glove, an All-Star game, a player of the month award, any award.

The man has never been the team’s most valuable player. He has never even been a full-time, full-season starter.

You know that pennant? In the 1984 National League Championship Series, Flannery batted twice. In the World Series, he batted once.

A career batting average of .256. Nine homers. Seventeen stolen bases. One could surmise that he has lasted nine summers without being sharp, strong or fast. He laughs. Whatever is important to this 30-year-old with a new ankle, it’s not that.

“Do you know I’ve had the same locker for nine years?” he said. “The clubhouse is like my second home, the ballpark is like my back yard. I can’t wait to get there before games. I get there at 2 o’clock just because it’s so comfortable.

“To be that happy, isn’t that worth something?”

Oh yes. And he has had one injured ankle. One huge pain in the ankle. It made last year the most frustrating of all.

“The worst year of all,” he remembers of his .228 average compiled while trying to play through the pain. “I let everybody down.”

The ankle was so bad, this winter he had it surgically fixed. Today he feels like a kid again. He runs without pain and is so happy just to run. He is ready to play more, two years more, give him 10 official years in the big leagues, a kind of unofficial tenure that will last longer than any of the money.

He looks around and thinks, what timing.

He sees he’s one of the four oldest guys on the team.

He sees the end of his guaranteed $350,000 contract, a deal that is lower than major league average, below every other established Padre and ones who aren’t so established, such as Lance McCullers and John Kruk.

He sees the sudden wealth of Padre middle infielders. There are Roberto Alomar, Dickie Thon, Mike Brumley. And that’s not even counting one of last year’s opening-day starters, Joey Cora. Or one of baseball’s top hitting second basemen by the end of last season, Randy Ready.

How does he see Tim Flannery? As perhaps being forced to leave San Diego after this season and finishing his career somewhere else.

“If not in San Diego,’ he said, “then somewhere .”

And he sees San Diego fans, who have adopted him and his dirty pants and his blond hair flying out from underneath his batting helmet, as understanding.

“People know I’m the kind of guy who has scrapped and fought so long to stay here, if I wanted to stay two more years, I would go anywhere to get them,” said Flannery. “I haven’t had career statistic goals like a lot of guys. I would never make them. I just want to prove that a guy like me was able to stay around for 10 years. I think that would say something.

“I don’t ever want to leave San Diego, but if I had to, I would.”

If this is his last year here, it could be memorable in many ways. He had two singles and two RBIs in Tuesday’s 5-4 loss to Seattle, making him 6 for 19 this spring (.316) with five RBIs. So much for his health.

“He is born again,” said close friend Ready.

As for his happiness, he has already ensured his place in most hearts as the most popular Padre ever. He would like to tell those people, don’t think he doesn’t feel it.

When the San Diego crowd gave him a standing ovation on opening day last season, he couldn’t see them because of the tears.

When he came to the plate in Yuma for the first time this spring, another standing ovation. Afterward he said, “Are you kidding me? Sure I heard it.”

“I’m convinced,” Ready said, “that one day he could be the mayor of San Diego.”

Tuesday against Seattle, there surfaced a different show of admiration. Flannery was caught in a pickle as he unwisely tried to stretch a two-out single into a double. Rookie Randell Byers, faced with the prospects of being stranded on third, was forced to sneak home and was thrown out by a mile, ending the inning.

What did the fans say?

“C’mon Byers, get your head in the game!”

Nobody boos Tim Flannery, perhaps because people don’t boo themselves.

“People see me as a construction worker, a blue-collar guy like a lot of them are,” Flannery said. “I think they can identify with my persistence, with the way I’ve been able to hang on.

“You know the best compliment I’ve ever had? A laborer guy once came up to me at a bar and said, ‘You know, you make it easy for me to go to work in the morning.’ Greatest compliment ever.”

It happened last season. Flannery remembers it because, at the time, he could use it.

On May 6, during batting practice, while running to first base after a bunt, he stepped on a baseball that had rolled under the tarp. He tore ligaments on both sides of his right ankle. The team’s two strongest men, Steve Garvey and Mark Parent, carried him screaming from the field.

Twenty days later, after Cora officially flopped at second base and Flannery was needed to start, he was back.

“Twenty days,” Flannery repeats, shaking his head. “We should have put it in a cast and left it there for six weeks. I have a guaranteed contract. I didn’t have to come back.

“But I’m no superstar. I couldn’t afford to miss a chance. In my mind, I had no choice. If I had to do it again, I would have no choice.”

When he returned, right away the pain was so bad, he needed six Tylenol a day. He would soak the foot in ice before games, after games and early the next morning.

“Try that with your morning coffee,” he said.

Recalled Ready: “He was in such pain all the time. I could never get him to go to dinner after a game because he was soaking it in ice. When we did go out, we always had to take cabs, he could never stand to walk.”

Then came September, when the pain finally enveloped him and his game. He went through an 0-for-29 stretch at the plate and ended up with his lowest average since that .154 in 22 games as a 1979 rookie.

“You couldn’t say anything to him about quitting before that,” Ready said. “Deep in his mind he was saying, ‘It’s just till Oct. 5. I’ll make it, I’ll make it.’ He was too afraid that if he didn’t play, he wouldn’t get another chance.”

Well, he has made it. He had surgery on Dec. 15. The next morning when he awoke, it felt better than it had felt the previous summer.

“I still limp in the morning, and I can tell when it’s going to rain, because of the throbbing, but I can live with it,” said Flannery. “And even though now it doesn’t seem very smart, I would play hurt again.

“The only way you have no regrets in this game is to give 100% from day one, and that’s the only way I can do it. The struggles make you a strong person, a strong man.”

At least one Padre appreciates this.

“If Flan can walk, he’s out there,” Manager Larry Bowa said. “That is typical of a player who has never had anything given to him.”

So is this is last year as a Padre? Whatever he thinks, he’s not playing it that way.

The other day, a triple-A bound infielder, Brad Pounders, ended a one-run loss to San Francisco by striking out with the bases loaded in the top of the ninth. He fought off several good pitches with foul balls and hung in against Giant pitcher Craig Lefferts, but he still struck out.

As Pounders walked back to the bench, Flannery jumped in his face.

“Great at-bat, great fight, keep your head up!” Flannery shouted at the confused rookie. “You could have hit that ball 500 feet, and you still aren’t going to make this club. So just relax and get good at-bats, like that one. You’ll learn, you’ll be here.”

It is unknown whether Flannery will be here to greet Pounders. But two days later against the Giants, the kid won the fight. In one of the longest home runs of the spring, Brad Pounders did hit a ball 500 feet.

It’s not much, but, as Tim Flannery might put it, isn’t that worth something?