Padre Notebook : Joey Cora--’The Forgotten Man’--Knows He’s Heading Down

TEMPE, Ariz. — He keeps to himself, mostly. He has taken to wearing glasses, but nobody much notices. It appears he is growing a beard, but nobody has said anything.

For goodness sakes, his alma mater made the NCAA basketball tournament for the first time in a millenium, but he can’t even brag because nobody will listen.

“Ah, they got a bad draw,” said Joey Cora, Vanderbilt University, 1984. “They’ll win the first game, but then they’ve got to play Pittsburgh.”

A bad draw. Cora knows the feeling. Just Monday, Padre President Chub Feeney called him “the forgotten man.”

“I know it,” Cora said. “I look around, I know nobody is talking to me. I know what’s going on. It’s OK because I expect it.”

The emergence of Roberto Alomar at second base has turned Joey Cora, for now, into little more than a memory. And what a memory.

Every spring there is an Alomar, and last spring it was Cora--hitting, fielding, dazzling his way straight from double A to the big leagues.

He was the starting second baseman on opening day and went 2 for 5 against San Francisco and . . . thud. Black April. Black May. By the time he was sent down to triple-A Las Vegas on June 8, he was hitting .234 with 7 errors, which was enough to lead all Padre second basemen for the entire season.

Said Bowa at the time: “I would say Joey has cost us five or six games himself. A lot of it is my fault. He just wasn’t ready.”

One spring later, even recovering from off-season arthroscopic knee surgery, Cora feels more ready. Only the Padres don’t.

He has started one spring game. He has batted eight times with two hits.

“He’s going to go down and play,” said Bowa Tuesday. “Down” meaning triple-A Las Vegas, thus making Cora the first official demotion of the season. “He’s still a prospect, still a good one, but he needs to play.”

Fine. But what happens if Alomar and Mike Brumley are also sent down? Those two middle-infield favorite sons probably would be the starting combination for Las Vegas.

Cora, once a top rookie prospect in the National League, could easily wind up a utility player in the Pacific Coast League.

“It’s all right, I guess. I just have to play when I get a chance,” said Cora, 22, who was publicly flogged by both Bowa and the media last year. “I like it like this. I don’t have to talk a lot, I can be by myself and be myself. I’m ready for triple A.”

He said all of this is made easier because the knee, which was hurt during a Puerto Rican League pregame drill Dec. 14, is still recovering from Dec. 22 surgery.

Baseball’s players association has yet to give its approval to two new rules this season involving the strike zone and the balk. If any official from the baseball union was watching Tuesday’s game between the Padres and Seattle Mariners, one rule is in trouble.

For the first time in anyone’s memory--even Padre announcer Jerry Coleman’s--both managers were tossed out of a spring game.

Bowa received his first ejection of the season at 1:45 p.m., when NL umpire Gary Darling threw him out for protesting an Ed Whitson balk in the second inning. Six innings later, Mariner Manager Dick Williams was tossed out by AL umpire Ted Hendry for protesting a Darrin Burroughs balk.

The Mariners won, 5-4, in 10 innings. The new balk rule--which states that the pitcher must come to a complete stop with both feet on the ground before pitching--may have lost.

Turns out, Bowa was madder at left-hander Mark Davis’ rotten 10th inning, in which he walked left-handed hitting Mike Kingery and then allowed a game-winning triple to lefty-hitting Alvin Davis.

“He’s has got to start making quality pitches to left-handers, that’s why we have him,” said Bowa, who said he wouldn’t hesitate to use Dave Leiper in the left-handed stopper situations if Davis continues to struggle.

“For now they are our two left-handed guys down there; I would use them both,” said Bowa, which means that lefty Keith Comstock suddenly has the inside track on a demotion to Las Vegas.

Padre Notes

Look for the Padres to cut six or seven players when they return to Yuma Friday, according to team sources. That would cut the 42-man roster to about 35, with two more cuts likely before reaching the 24-man, opening-day limit. . . . In the mismatch of the spring, a group of mostly Padre minor leaguers faced Oakland pitcher Dave Stewart in a “B” game Tuesday. They lost, 6-0, as Stewart struck out eight and allowed just two hits in six innings.