Getting To The Bottom of Gary Lucas' 1982 Season (Part 1)

I've written before about the greatness of the '83 Topps baseball card set, how it was the first summer I really collected baseball cards and the unbridled glee of opening a wax pack - usually purchased at the Convenient store where Gift and Loucks Avenues intersect with Sheridan Road in Peoria, IL while my Dad picked up a pack of Vantage cigarettes - and finding a brown, yellow and orange clad Padrino player staring up at me.

Like the Gary Lucas card above, for example.

No doubt I was mesmerized by Lucas's photo when I first saw it - for one, my Dad had a similar 'stache at the time - and, living in Peoria about 3 hours away from two of the best closers in the game - the Cubs' Lee Smith and Cardinals' Bruce Sutter - I had obviously asked my Dad who the Padres' "saves guy" was. He said Gary Lucas so I was instantly a fan.

But more than his photo and his closer status, what fascinated me about Gary Lucas were his '82 stats. He pitched in 65 games for the '82 Padres, finishing 39 of them. He posted a 3.24 ERA over 97.1 innings and racked up 16 saves. Not too bad for a lefty out of the pen.

But here is what stunned me.

His record was 1 - 10.

That's right. One win, ten losses. That discrepancy is hard to overlook, especially to a 6-year old who understands wins and losses more than any other stat. Looking at the card now I still can't get over the "1" in the W column juxtaposed with the "1" "0" in the L column. It's quite a sight.

I've often wondered about those 10 losses, especially since the Padres finished 81-81 in 1982. Given that record, Lucas probably pitched in some high-leverage situations, and some of those losses must've been daggers. Or so one might hypothesize.

Now, with the help of Baseball-Reference.com, I've decided to take a look at Gary Lucas' losses during the '82 season to see how each played out.

My bet is Gary was sometimes to blame, but not always to blame, and maybe sometimes he was only partly to blame.

Let's get started.

#1. April 28, 1982 - 5-4 loss to the Mets at the Murph in 15 innings: Gary enters in the top of the 12th and proceeds to throw 1-2-3 innings in the 12th, 13th and 14th. In the top of the 15th, however, Mookie Wilson leads off with a triple to right center and Bob Bailor follows up with a sac fly to put the Mets up 5-4. The legendary Pete Falcone then closes the game out for the Mets in the bottom half of the inning. Gary's line: 4 IP, 1 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 0 BB, 4 K. Conclusion: Gary not to blame.

#2. May 7, 1982 - 5-2 loss to the Phillies at the Vet: The Pads lead 2-1 going to the bottom of the 9th. Eric Show starts the 9th and Gary enters with 1-out and a runner on second. Gary gives up a single to Ozzie Virgil, an RBI groundout to Bob Dernier that ties the game, and an intentional pass to Pete Rose. Dick Williams then brings on Luis DeLeon in relief and DeLeon promptly issues a 3-run walk-off jack to an unknown, flash-in-the pan named Mike Schmidt. Gary's line: .1 IP, 1 H, 2 R, 2 ER, 1 BB, 0 K. Conclusion: Gary partly to blame.

#3. May 10, 1982 - 3-2 loss to the Mets at Shea: The Pads go up 2-1 in the top of the 9th when a Terry Kennedy double plates Sixto Lezcano. In the bottom half of the 9th, Dick Williams brings in Show to start the inning (a common refrain in '82), and Show gives up a single to Ellis Valentine and K's Hubie Brooks. Dick then brings in Gary with 1-out and Ellis Valentine, the tying run, dancing off first. Gary gets Rusty Staub to ground out but Valentine moves up to second. After an intentional walk to pinch-hitter George Foster (the Mets, incidentally, had geriatrics Staub, Foster and Dave Kingman all on the roster in '82 ... I wonder how many Mets' fans knew then that they were only four years away from one of the great teams of all time), and with Wally Backman running for Foster, Bob Bailor strides to the plate and hits a 2-out, 2-run game-winning 2B, no doubt throwing the 9,670 Mets fans at the game (a Monday) into a frenzy. Gary's line: .1 IP, 1 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 1 BB, 0 K. Conclusion: Gary partly to blame. Bailor must be Gary's mortal enemy.

#4. May 30, 1982 - 6-5 loss to the Cardinals at Busch Stadium: A major dagger loss to the eventual World Champs. But what a game. The Pads lead 3-0 going to the bottom of the 9th. Gary comes on in the top of the 7th with a runner on second and K's Julio Gonzalez to end the inning. Then he works a mostly harmless bottom of the 8th against the likes of Darrell Green, Tito Landrum, Ozzie Smith and Willie McGee, no small feat, mind you. In the Padres half of the 9th, current Mets manager Jerry Manuel triples home Luis Salazar to give the Pads the 3-0 lead. Interestingly, to show how baseball has changed over the past 25 years, in the top of the 9th, after Manuel's triple, the Padres have Terry Kennedy up with 2-outs and a runner on third. Whitey Herzog orders an intentional walk to bring up Gary's spot in the lineup. What does Dick Williams do? He bats Gary who promptly K's to end the inning.

Which brings us to the bottom of the 9th where the wheels come off. Keith Hernandez singles, then George Hendrick singles, then Lonnie Smith doubles, all off our boy Gary. That makes it 3-1 Pads, runners on second and third, with nobody out. Gary next induces a groundout from Mike Ramsey that holds the runners, but then, on what must have been a crazy play, Julio Gonzalez grounds to third and there is an E5/interference called on Luis Salazar. The end result is that Hendrick scores and the Cards have runners on second and third with 1 out. Dick orders an intentional walk to Darrell Green to load the bases. With two outs and the bases juiced, Tommy Herr steps up and and hits a sac fly to tie the game. Gary then gets The Wizard to ground out to end the inning.

Extra innings. The Pads face Sutter in the top of the 10th. Alan Wiggins leads off with a single, followed by a Gene Richards single that allows Alan - what a speedster - to move to third. Then Joe Lefebvre hits a double to score Alan. After an intentional walk to Ruppert Jones to load the bases, Sixto hits a grounder to short and Ozzie Smith - former Padre and probably the best defensive SS of all time - throws home to force Gene at the plate. Huge play. Next up, Luis Salazar grounds out to score Lefebvre from third. After a Luis steal, with runners on second and third and 2 outs, Sutter K's Jerry Manuel to end the inning.

So we arrive at the bottom of the 10th with a 5-3 Padre lead. What really shoves the dagger in here is that Gary gets 2 quick outs - an Orlando Sanchez groundout and a Keith Hernandez lineout to Ruppert in center. But then Hendrick singles, Lonnie doubles him home and then Mike-effing-Ramsey singles Lonnie home to tie the game. Gary then plunks Julio Gonzalez (of course he does) and Dick replaces him with Floyd Chiffer with Gary's runners on first and second. Dane Iorg - yes, the same Dane Iorg who would help the Royals beat the Cards in the '85 Series - promptly hits a game-winning single. Gary's line: 3 IP, 7 H, 6 R, 5 ER, 1 BB, 2 K. Conclusion: Despite the Salazar error in the 9th, Gary to blame. You can't give up three straight hits to lead off the 9th and also give up another lead in the 10th.

[Trivia Interlude: According to Baseball Reference, this was Jerry Manuel's final game. He only played 2 games for the '82 Padres and his only hit was the triple in the top of the 9th against Bruce Sutter.]

#5. June 22, 1982 - 7-5 loss to the Reds at Riverfront Stadium: Gary enters with 1-out in the bottom of the 7th with the tying run on second base. He gives up a tying double to Eddie Milner. He then gets Rafael Landestoy to ground out but Dan Driessen draws a 2-out walk. Dick then removes Gary in place of Floyd. The inning is extended and a run scores on an E5 (thanks again, Luis). Floyd gives up another single, scoring another unearned run (though Cesar Cedeno was out at home on what was no doubt a laser by Ruppert from centerfield). The Padres never recover and go on to lose the game. Gary's line: .1 IP, 1 H 2 R, 0 ER, 1 BB, O K. Conclusion: Gary mostly to blame. The double to Milner is not good, nor is the two-out walk to Driessen. The E5 made Gary's runs unearned but he allowed the inherited runner to score which you never like to see.

So there you have Gary Lucas' first five losses of the '82 season. I'll examine the next 5 losses in another post sometime in the next few days.

Until then, think Padre thoughts.

Tony

The Tony Gwynn Topps rookie card. An iconic image to Padres fans and any baseball card collector with even an ounce of pride. Looking at it, even on a computer screen, fills my heart with all things good and true and happy.

I remember when I first saw the card. My Mom and Dad drove us out to Timberlake for an afternoon barbecue and swimming. Actually, I don't know if we barbecued. My family in the early '80s was more the "pick up a few sandwiches and sodas and grab a corner of a picnic table" type. Anyway, on the way we stopped at a gas station and my Dad, as per his usual practice, bought me a few packs of cards. Probably didn't cost much. If I looked on the internet I could probably find a link to some site that could tell me the price of a Topps wax pack in Central Illinois in the summer of 1983, but I'm not going to look for that at the moment. I'm a busy man.

The summer of 1983 was the first year I really collected cards and really remember stuff about baseball. I know this because my card collection exploded that year. Sure, I have a few '82 Topps cards (more than a few, actually) but they always seemed from a remote time, as if out of some distant - yet also recent - past. My theory on this is that Dad probably just bought packs because he liked cards and wanted to get me interested. I may have said I was interested but I have no recollection of that. My first memories of asking my Dad to buy me packs and then opening them was in 1983. (Added to this, the first World Series I remember watching was the previous Fall, the Fall of '82, when Bruce Sutter struck out a Brewer to win Game 7. I have no recollection whatsoever of the '81 World Series between the Yankees and Dodgers.)

But I have digressed, and I aplogize. So I'm sitting in the car on a summer day opening a Topps wax pack and we arrived at the Timberlake parking lot and the AC went off and - I remember this like it was yesterday - I was sitting there as the car heated up flipping through the last cards in the pack when I came across a Padre I didn't recognize. A cool, kind of funny looking Padre, no less. This was no Terry Kennedy or Eric Show. This guy had a fro and was running in an unathletic way with his butt high in the air, like and old man might run if his back hurt. Or like Terry Kennedy or Eric Show might run if they allowed the Topps photographer to shoot them on the basepaths.

This was my first introduction to Tony Gwynn and needless to say I was intrigued.

I sat staring at the card for a minute then flipped it over and looked at the statistics. Words like Walla Walla and Amarillo and Hawaii jumped out at me. Those places were so exotic I was only vaguely aware they were even places. What also jumped out at me were the high numbers under the .AVG column. That was one of the columns my Dad said was important. And this Tony guy was good in that category.

Pretty sure I stashed the card in the car and then went off to swim in the lake for the day. I'm not a huge fan of going to lakes to swim. I would much rather sit around looking at baseball cards.