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“The only thing I know about baseball,” Merv Rettenmund often said, “is that no one will ever figure it out.”
A longtime San Diegan who died of cancer Saturday at 81, Rettenmund delighted in a sport that took him to four World Series as an outfielder and three World Series as a hitting coach lastly with the 1998 Padres.
Rettenmund could relate to the pain of Padres fans, being one himself.
An apt storyteller and quipster, he took readers of the elcajon newsbehind the scenes in Major League Baseball across several decades, beginning with the great Baltimore Orioles of the 1960s and early 1970s, with whom he won three pennants and two World Series rings.
Want to know about Cincinnati’s Big Red Machine? Merv homered against Sparky Anderson’s club in the 1970 World Series with the victorious Orioles, then played for the Reds in the famed 1975 World Series against the Boston Red Sox.
As a bench player for the first California Angels team to reach the playoffs, Merv befriended teammates such as Hall of Fame pitcher Nolan Ryan and first baseman Rod Carew and renewed his friendship with Don Baylor, a former Orioles teammate who won the American League MVP that year.
Rettenmund was a good big leaguer in his own right who batted .271, reached base on 38% of his career plate appearances and finished with more walks than strikeouts. He hit .322 with 18 home runs for the 1970 Orioles. His 22 pinch hits with the 1977 Padres stand as a club record.
Against lefty pitchers, the selective 5-foot-10 right-hander homered off aces Vida Blue, John Candelaria and Ken Holtzman, and closers such as Sparky Lyle and Will McEnaney, the ‘75 Reds teammate who got the final out of the World Series.
His knack for appearing in the Fall Classic persisted after his 16-year playing career ended.
He spent two years as the wise-cracking hitting coach of the Oakland A’s, who benefited from the exploits of steroid-linked sluggers Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire. Rettenmund assisted the 1989 World Series-winning team and the 1990 squad that won the franchise’s third consecutive pennant.
Adding to his belief that baseball posed too many riddles to solve, Rettenmund was on the painful end of two World Series shockers: the 1969 Orioles’ World Series loss to the “Amazin’ Mets” and the Oakland’s 1990’s four-game exit against the Reds.
In addition to playing for the 1976-77 Padres, he had two coaching runs in San Diego.
Rettenmund clicked with several Padres hitters in the five seasons after rookie manager Bruce Bochy retained him entering the 1995 season. Assisted by Rettenmund’s knack for reading pitchers, the 1996 Padres earned the franchise’s first National West title in 12 years. The 1998 team won a club-record 98 games before upending a pair of 100-plus game winners in the playoffs.
Rejoining the Padres early in the Petco Park era, Rettenmund went through exasperating stretches as Padres hitters struggled to cope with pitcher-friendly conditions.
Rettenmund lived out his final years in downtown San Diego, not far from Petco Park.
Baseball still engrossed him, and he remained an emotional attachment to the Padres, who left him bewildered, bemused and, in recent months, excited.
Sooner than most baseball observers, Rettenmund saw rare hitting aptitude in last year’s Padres. Praising their approach to Union-Tribune readers in June, he said he enjoyed watching the team’s hitters more than any Padres offense he’d seen.
He was on to something.
The Padres would post the big leagues’ best win-loss record in the season’s second half, finish with their best record (93-69) since 1998 and win a playoff series before losing in the Division Series’ winner-take-all game to a Dodgers team that went on to win the World Series.
But by then, Rettenmund knew MLB’s ‘24 postseason would mark his final baseball journey.
Having lost 30 pounds despite not changing his diet, Rettenmund learned in August he had terminal cancer.
“I’m going to pass away soon,” he said by phone on the day after Thanksgiving. “The doctors told me, ‘Just forget it. You’re in trouble.’”
Merv’s longtime wife, Susan, whom he’d met as a student at Ball State, was nearby as he spoke on the phone.
Susan interjected that when the chance came to talk baseball, he would speak with more force and seemed happier.
“We’ve had a lot of fun,” he said to Susan, a Spanish-speaking longtime travel agent with whom he traveled the world.
“I got to watch T-Gwynn,” said Rettenmund, under whom Tony Gwynn won four of his eight batting titles and pushed for the .400 mark in 1994. “It’s been a great ride. Really and truly, I feel really good. I’m not in any pain. Everything is hunky dory.”
To honor Rettenmund, Susan Rettenmund suggested donations to MLB’s Baseball Assistance Team (B.A.T.), which provides confidential support to past and present members of MLB.
Before the phone call ended, baseball topics emerged. One memory came roaring like a Tom Seaver fastball.
The loss to the arm-rich ’69 Mets of Seaver, Ryan and Jerry Koosman still smarted.
Rettenmund had been exposed to Mets pitchers and wondered if others knew how dominant they could be.
“This is what (ticks) me off. I tried to bring it up in a meeting before the World Series,” he said. “The Mets had good pitching. I’d seen them in winter ball and in the minors. (Orioles star) Frank (Robinson) didn’t want to hear it. Frank was (often right) but…”
Moving ahead to last May, Merv marveled that the Padres got Luis Arraez in a trade — and that as a condition of the trade, the Miami Marlins picked up all of Arraez’s salary.
Retaining his priceless sense of humor — dry as a rosin bag — Rettenmund noted the advanced state of his cancer and suggested it would be just like the Padres to deprive him.
“At least I won’t have to see the Padres win the World Series,” he cracked.
Originally Published:
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