Bowa Says Padres Need a Hollerer : He Thinks Team Lacks Old-Style Fire in Locker Room

CINCINNATI —  Back when Larry Bowa played, when you didn’t hustle, when you didn’t care, you didn’t see straight.

“Players were not afraid to jump into other players’ lockers, right in their faces, nose to nose, and chew them out,” said the former Philadelphia shortstop who broke into the major leagues in 1970. “Young players had respect for veterans then. I remember one time when I was a rookie, I came in the clubhouse and said something kind of loud, and Jim Bunning came over and said, ‘We’ll let you know when to talk. You’re just lucky to be here.’ ”

Back when the Padres played well, back in 1984, when you didn’t hustle, you didn’t enjoy the bus rides.

“That was some bus back then,” infielder Tim Flannery said. “Coming from the airport or going to the games, with just us players on the bus, there was no escaping.

“Tempy (Garry Templeton) and Goose (Gossage) would sit in the back and would start the abuse of everyone who had screwed up.”

But those days are no more.

With Bowa’s Wednesday night talk--during which he accused several Padres of not hustling and said they could “just get the hell out of here”--surfaced another equally serious problem on this club.

It is not what Bowa said, but that Bowa has to say anything at all. This team lacks the makeup that would allow veteran players to say those things for him.

“It would be nice if a player could jump another player once in a while,” said Bowa, who will remain the bad guy until this happens. “That’s certainly the way it used to be.”

The guys to do it, most agree, would be Gossage, Flannery, Tony Gwynn or captain Templeton. Yet all four have reasons why they can’t.

“Kids can’t take it in this day and age,” Templeton said. “Now, if you tell them anything, they feel like you don’t like them, and everybody is against them. Back in 1984, there were more veterans, and they could accept more abuse. Not anymore.”

“Look around the lineup,” Flannery said. “We got guys here with one, two years of experience who, if they don’t do the job, they are gone. There’s no reason getting on them. We have to wait until the rebuilding is done, until we get guys set in their ways, until that sort of thing will work.”

Gossage added: “A lot of younger players today are spoiled by the money. I don’t think the kids realize how or why they are getting paid. If they don’t realize they only get one chance and have to make the most out of it, we can’t help them.”

For Gwynn, the reasons are more personal: “I’m not the kind of guy to get in a player’s face. I’m a player, that’s all I am, and I try to lead by example.”

Gwynn said that such player involvement can sometimes cause problems.

“We did the same things in 1985 that we did in 1984, but we weren’t winning, and everyone got sick of it. There were near fights on the bench, and guys going nose-to-nose on the bus, and it had to stop.”

In the case of players not hustling, other players say if they are that unwise, no advice will help them.

“If you can’t understand how hard it is to play this game, we can’t help you,” Gwynn said.

In the case of frustrating injuries--such as Chris Brown’s 10 missed starts in 21 games with a sore right wrist or Storm Davis’ month-long stay on the disabled list with torn cartilage in the rib area--the players say they would never dare comment on such a personal subject.

“It is very hard to say, very hard to judge how bad he (any player) is hurt,” Gossage said. “It’s a kind of touchy thing. Nobody knows how bad a guy hurts. Some guys feel different levels of pain.

“But I do know this. If you went out there only when you felt perfect, you wouldn’t play many games.”