Getting to the heart of WINNING

As camp openings near, `team play' might sound like a trite concept, but more than ever it's a bright concept--and the key to success

We open the spring with a scene from the fall. We're in the nearly empty visitors clubhouse at Turner Field early on a Thursday evening in October, 40 minutes before Game 2 of the National League Championship Series between the Padres and Braves. Most of the Padres are in the training room or the players' lounge. A few mill around their lockers; but for the most part, we have the joint to ourselves, Ken Caminiti and I.

The previous day, Caminiti had hit a 10th-inning home run to left-center against Atlanta closer Kerry Ligtenberg to give San Diego a 3-2 win on its way to a six-game series victory over the favored Braves. But three days before that, on Sunday in San Diego, I'd found a sullen Caminiti staring into his locker at Qualcomm Stadium as the rest of the Padres whooped it up after a Division Series-clinching win over the Astros. Caminiti was apart from that celebration even as it swirled around him six feet away, an island of dejection alone in a sea of champagne and cigars, as removed from the maelstrom of revelry as a man on a stool in a winning clubhouse could've possibly been. Caminiti, utterly ravaged by another too-long season of knee-joint damage and quadriceps pulls and groin strains and shoulder breakdowns, hit .143 in the series against Houston. San Diego was ecstatic, but there was no joy in Cammyville.

Now, minutes before NLCS Game 2 in Atlanta, I want to know this: What gives? Is Caminiti so self-absorbed that he doesn't take a moment's enjoyment out of the Padres' smooth move past Houston to reach the NLCS? How did his teammates react to his surprising Sunday pout? Where does that leave his frame of mind as San Diego takes on Atlanta? And what has last night's game-winning home run done for his psyche?

"I don't know the answer to that yet," Caminiti says quietly in response to the last question. "I just know that in the 10th inning last night, I knew I was going to help this team. I think it was directly related to the way I felt last Sunday. And I know I've picked myself up since then."

Did someone get to you after that scene on Sunday in San Diego? I ask.

"Davey Lopes did," Caminiti says. "He grabbed me and said, `You're the Man.' Tim Flannery did, too. He said the same thing. He said, `We can't do this without you.' And I saw Greg Vaughn, and I started thinking. You know, Greg Vaughn had a bad year last year (1997), but he was always positive, always a positive influence in the clubhouse. That's such a good trait, and I learned a lot from him. Those guys are always picking me up, and it should be the other way around. I've got to be a positive role model here, instead of a sulking piece of (expletive) like I was the other day."

I say: You're suggesting you've undergone a fairly major transformation since the Houston series.

"Exactly," he says. "I've been told over and over that these guys in here look up to me. (Coaches) Lopes and Flannery and those guys tell me over and over that I don't understand how much the other guys look up to me. And they're not just looking at me on the field. They're looking at me to be a leader in here, in the clubhouse, and to pick everybody up when times are bad. Not necessarily to be verbal. But maybe one-on-one. Instead, I was just sitting in my locker, just staring into nothing. And so I didn't bring Sunday back here to Atlanta with me. I let all that go. And then I hit the home run. Maybe that's too easy a connection, but I think there's something there."

Something is there, and it's something more than one man's struggle with the demons of personal failure. It's a something that continues to make baseball a glorious game, even through the inescapable cynicism growing out of $105 million contracts and competitive imbalances that send have-not clubs into camps in the coming weeks with nary a prayer that their seasons will last into the playoffs.

Baseball, despite it all, is a "team" game. At its very best, it's played in ways that make an unsightly .143 batting average from a star third baseman and clubhouse leader disappear into a whole, harmonious oneness of effort. One of the wonderful things about baseball is that it allows a person like Caminiti to realize how much he needs his teammates, and how much his teammates need him. For at least their two-week run to the World Series last October, the Padres played together well enough to make magic happen beyond the reach of their individual talents or shortcomings.

And so here is the thought with which we open spring training 1999: Whatever that magic is, and however it happens, it is as much a component of a championship season now as it has ever been. In fact, this corny concept of "team play" has been evident more than ever recently. And I expect it will be even more visible, and more necessary, in the long months to come for the clubs that hope to contend for titles as this season evolves.