A Lot of Character and a Lot of Characters

Nearly a quarter-century after the team’s exhilarating first appearance in a World Series, the San Diego Padres’ class of ’84 recalls the chemistry and the character that made them a part of baseball history

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SO WHERE ARE THE BOYS of the summer of ’84 during this spring of 2008? They’ve aged, of course. Gwynn has his 48th birthday in May; Gossage turns 57 two months later. More than a few can take pride in the stability of their marriages. Gossage, for example, has celebrated a 35th anniversary, Garry Templeton his 30th, Ed Whitson a 28th, Tony Gwynn his 26th. All four have children who are grown—and achievers.

Gwynn, as most know, is head baseball coach at San Diego State University and an analyst for ESPN baseball telecasts. Following retirement after 23 seasons, Gossage returned to his native Colorado Springs, from which he travels extensively as a motivational speaker and trade-show presence for major corporations.

Williams, whose celebrity as manager of the National League champions was resented by general manager McKeon and team president Ballard Smith, was forced out some 16 months after the flag had been hoisted, maneuvering that did not improve his disposition. He declined a request to be interviewed for this article. McKeon, who later added the Padres’ field manager role—but no pennants—to his résumé, eventually won a World Series as skipper of the Florida Marlins.

Garvey lives in Palm Desert and is head of a marketing firm he founded. Lollar is head golf pro at Lakewood Country Club. Thurmond and a brother share ownership of an insurance agency in Katy, Texas, a Houston suburb. Dravecky, who lost his gifted left arm to cancer surgery a decade ago, lives in Monument, Colorado, and is president of Outreach of Hope, a Christian-based service organization for cancer patients and amputees. Whitson resides in Dublin, Ohio, and stills hunts and fishes frequently—but not, one presumes, in Colorado.

McReynolds lives near Little Rock, Arkansas, where he operates a ranch that welcomes hunters for a fee. After a lengthy stint as manager of the Padres, Bochy now serves in that capacity for the San Francisco Giants. Third-base coach for Bochy, Tim Flannery (another member of the ’84 squad) is an accomplished singer-songwriter who tours extensively. He has eight CDs on the market. Bochy and Flannery both maintain homes in North County, as do Gwynn and Templeton. A native San Diegan, Nettles now resides in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Although he’s taking a sabbatical this summer, Templeton has been manager of an independent-league baseball team and expects to return. Martinez, Hawkins and Greg Booker all have jobs in professional baseball at the minor-league level. Kurt Bevacqua—a free spirit Garvey undoubtedly had in mind when he mentioned “characters” on the ’84 team—lives in North County and owns a company that sells “high-end technology to automobile dealers” and for a number of years has been a member of the Celebrity Professional Golf Tour. He continues to marvel at the power of the stroke that, he admits, was easily the highlight of his career. His three-run homer in game two was the difference during the only World Series victory in Padres’ history.

“Look at this ball,” Bavacqua said, after it had been retrieved on that October evening in 1984. “It’s crushed on one side.”

The Padres have no current information on Bobby Brown, Craig Lefferts, Mario Ramirez, Luis Salazar and Greg Harris, others who wore the uniform that autumn long ago.

Alan Wiggins, jump-starter of the 1984 ignition system, became trapped in a web of drugs, eventually contracted AIDS and, according to family members, weighed 75 pounds when he died in 1991 at age 32.

“I was thinking recently about how proud Alan would be of his kids,” says Gwynn. “Candice an All-American in basketball at Stanford, and a son who played basketball at the University of San Francisco. What happened was so sad.”

Garvey, who traveled to Coopers town last summer for ceremonies surrounding Gwynn’s Hall of Fame induction, had—16 years earlier—attended Wiggins’ funeral. “Looking around, I realized I was the only one of his teammates there,” Garvey recalls. “I thought that odd.”

Commenting on the loss at the time was Eric Show, who called it “an incredible waste of life and talent.” Several months afterward, Dave Campbell—a color voice for Padres broadcasts during the ’80s, at present a highly regarded analyst for network television—was discussing with Show the latter’s multiple talents, which included music (accomplished jazz guitarist), baseball (101 major-league victories) and engaging intellectual thought (“As long as air has weight, I’ll have a slider”), when Eric suddenly said, “But I have a dark side, too.”

Three years after the Wiggins tragedy, Show was found dead at a drug rehab facility in Dulzura. Cocaine and heroin were the grim reapers. He was 37.

It’s been said a sports team often reflects most of life’s variables. The boys of the summer of ’84 stand as testimony to that premise.

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