Commentary : Kroc Talks Like Owner Padres Need

So now we have a new era in San Diego Padre ownership. The face is familiar and so is the name.

Call it Kroc II.

That’s right. Joan Kroc is the new owner. I don’t know for sure how long she has been away, but she rode back into the picture Friday like a pixie on a white stallion.

She yanked this beleaguered franchise from the limbo into which she herself had cast it with the controversial attempted sale of the club to George Argyros, a Newport Beach businessman. The deal was contingent upon Argyros selling his team, the Seattle Mariners.

Hence, the confusion and uncertainty.

Since that transaction was announced on March 26, the Padres have been perceived as a collection of directionless waifs. They had one owner who was trying to get rid of them and another owner who couldn’t send them flowers for fear of being fined.

How was that for developing a feeling of not being loved?

These images were embraced by the community, which felt its own proprietary yearnings for the home team could not have been shared by either the owner on the way out or the owner on the way in.

When the Padres did not succeed in signing Tim Raines, the fans were enraged. They blamed Ballard Smith, the Padres’ president, for bungling the deal, but at the same time wondered if maybe the reputed fiscal tightness of Argyros was already strangling the local franchise.

Many people were left wondering about many aspects of the sale of the club. It was a deal that should not have happened, at least when it happened, which is to say before the Seattle club was sold.

Joan Kroc settled all that and eased the confusion when she said that the deal will not happen.

Why not? Basically, George Argyros was not able to sell the Mariners. He has said that he had a buyer here or a buyer there, and surely something would happen in a few days or a week. Nothing happened.

That could have gone on forever, Argyros trying to sell one team and buy another at the same time.

Fortunately, it won’t.

And that may not have been the nicest result of Friday’s announcement. It would have been easy for Kroc to say that Argyros was out, but that other potential buyers were standing in line. She could have said that negotiations would continue.

She didn’t.

Kroc said she was the Padres’ owner. She was the owner now and she would be for the remainder of the season. And she intimated that she might just remain as owner. Period.

“Do you want me to?” she asked the media, whimsically turning the tables.

She has found, as owner, that the media generally makes its opinions known sooner or later. She may seriously have wanted some insight into how a continued Kroc reign would be accepted.

She is to be applauded for taking charge. She talked as an owner should talk. She talked of disappointment and determination. This season, she said, will be turned around.

Will it? What, really, can an owner do?

That is hard to predict. What we are talking about is emotion. Will the players really be relieved to know that they are owned and maybe even loved? If so, will they hit better, pitch better and field better?

Realistically, a team that stands at 11 victories and 38 losses figures to move more toward a statistical middle ground; it figures to improve. If the Padres start making that move now, it could be considered a coincidence or it could be considered an uplift caused by the resolution of ownership.

I suspect that what Kroc decides beyond this season will be determined more by the individual she hires as club president than by what the team does on the field. If she gets the right person, and I assume she would not hire the wrong person, she may well be content to own this team and let a strong hand run it.

Coincidentally, the decision to sell this club came last November at a time when the Kroc family seemed ready to abandon this sport en masse. Son-in-law Ballard Smith, who has since separated from Kroc’s daughter Linda, was anxious to get into other pursuits. And Joan Kroc had become disillusioned with the negative aspects of ownership, mainly criticism and accountability for how 27-year-old men play a game.

For someone so eager to be away from this team and sport last November, Joan Kroc certainly seemed involved and determined Friday. Smith is leaving to pursue his other interests and Argyros is out as prospective owner. Maybe Kroc felt for the first time that the Padres actually need her .

They did.