BASEBALL PLAYOFFS : NATIONAL: San Francisco vs. St. Louis : KEVIN MITCHELL : He's Forced to Leave Home but Makes a Name for Himself in San Francisco

By SAM McMANIS

Oct. 9, 1987 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

SAN FRANCISCO — One early fall afternoon at Candlestick Park, third baseman Kevin Mitchell of the San Francisco Giants was sitting on a stool in front of his locker.

He was slumped forward, his back to the room. On his back, a bright orange T-shirt declared: “I only hit ropes.” So still sat Mitchell, he could have been sleeping.

But no, Mitchell was wide awake. He was merely looking down at a row of shoes, softly pounding a new glove.

“I like getting here early,” Mitchell said, looking up. “I enjoy coming to the park now.”

Earlier this season, though, when Mitchell, unhappy and struggling, was with the San Diego Padres, he was caught napping at his locker about four hours before a game.

Mitchell, having problems playing in his hometown of San Diego and adjusting to being traded from the World Series champion New York Mets to the abysmal Padres, got a loud wake-up call from Manager Larry Bowa.

The Padres eventually traded their troubled third baseman to the Giants, a move that first angered Mitchell but now has him back in the National League Championship Series, which will resume here tonight with Game 3 at 5:25. The Giants and the St. Louis Cardinals have each won a game in the best-of-seven series.

Mitchell, however, has been slumbering at the plate in the first two games. After hitting .333 in the final 48 games of the season, he is 1 for 8 against the Cardinals.

That he is back in the playoffs, though, seems only mildly surprising, since the last two seasons have been eventful for Mitchell.

He has been traded twice in less than a year, prompting talk that Mitchell is a bad influence in the clubhouse. If he is, it has escaped Giant Manager Roger Craig. “He shows up to the park early, does whatever we ask of him,” Craig said of Mitchell, who hit .306 for the Giants after the July 4 trade. “We can’t get him out of the lineup, even when he’s hurt. I like that in a player.”

Reports on Mitchell haven’t always been so glowing, though.

Shortly after the Mets had traded Mitchell to San Diego last December, one Met executive speculated that Mitchell might have been a bad influence on pitcher Dwight Gooden. Gooden spent the first month of this season in a drug rehabilitation center.

Then, in San Diego, Bowa and other Padre officials worried that Mitchell’s poor performance was the result of spending too much time with friends and family in a rough section of town.

Mitchell has mixed emotions about this season of upheaval. Although he says he is content with the Giants, he still seems scarred from the two trades.

“I’ve been traded twice, and it’s only my second year,” Mitchell said. “You wonder what it is with you and you think about trying to straighten it out. Find out what you did wrong. I didn’t think I caused problems. I got a bad (reputation), and I don’t know why.”

It wasn’t until after Mitchell left New York, where he was popular with his Met teammates, that management started talking about his being a bad influence.

But the rap followed him to San Diego, where he didn’t help matters in spring training by saying he wasn’t thrilled about the trade.

Then Mitchell struggled with the Padres, hitting .244 with 26 RBIs and 7 home runs in 62 games. He was living with his grandmother and admitted that friends from the neighborhood would visit at all hours of the night.

“That was the obstacle, not his ability,” Bowa said. “If a guy is preoccupied with things, he can’t do his job. I mean, I’d look at him, and it seemed he was up all night. We didn’t trade him because he couldn’t play. It was the other things. I don’t think he was on drugs. I’ve never questioned that. But he would be sleeping in his chair, inattentive.”

Said Mitchell: “Playing at home didn’t bother me none at all, because I knew my obligation toward the team, knew what I had to do. My friends knew that, too. But I’m pretty sure that’s what the Padres thought was the reason I wasn’t hitting.

“But I made sure I had enough rest and that I made it to the park on time. They thought I was going to fall back to my old ways on the street, getting in with the wrong crowd and getting caught doing something. But that stuff is gone, man. It’s history.”

The details of Mitchell’s past are sketchy, but he used to regale his Met teammates with stories of his gang activity, showing how and where he was stabbed.

Mitchell’s brother, Donald, was killed in a gang fight in 1984. “It happened, but I don’t want to talk about it,” Mitchell said.

In a story in the San Diego County edition of The Times last summer, Met outfielder Darryl Strawberry told reporter Marc Appleman: “I read that stuff about him being in gangs. He had mentioned it several times. We don’t really ever get into it. It was at a young age when he didn’t realize he could be somebody.”

Met Coach Bill Robinson said, however, that Mitchell vowed to avenge his brother’s death but that Robinson was able to talk him out of it. “He’s a tough young man, and I was prepared to battle,” Robinson was quoted as saying. “Maybe I said some things that have helped. He really turned his life around.”

Still, it was with some trepidation that the Padres traded for Mitchell. If they had read any of the San Diego newspapers, they knew the history.

The Mets’ 1986 media guide said that Mitchell graduated from Clairemont High, but Clairemont was just one of at least four high schools Mitchell attended. He didn’t graduate from any of them.

He also didn’t play baseball in high school. The story goes that he was discovered by a Met scout while playing a pickup baseball game at Grossmont College in 1980.

Still, Mitchell has such raw talent that the Padres figured he was worth the risk. Mitchell has even bigger forearms than those of former teammate Steve Garvey and a finely sculptured body that seems made to generate power and speed.

Yet, Mitchell didn’t show much with the Padres. He said Bowa put too much pressure on him to carry the Padres’ offense and complained that Bowa would bench him if he went 0 for 4 or had a minor injury.

Bowa questioned Mitchell’s maturity and also said that Josie Whitfield, Mitchell’s grandmother, was hampering his maturation.

“I know his grandmother, and she’s a nice lady,” Bowa said. “She is very important in his life. But at his age, he should have his own responsibility. He should find his own apartment instead of living at home. I mean, how old is he--25?”

Said Mitchell: “I don’t think anyone in the world can get as close to somebody as I am to my grandmother. We can’t be apart too long.”

On July 4, when the Giants made the seven-player trade with the Padres, Mitchell stormed into Bowa’s office and told him that he wasn’t reporting to the Giants.

“Most players would have been thrilled to be going to a first-place team,” Bowa said. “Kevin was so upset, he wouldn’t speak to me.”

After a long phone conversation with his grandmother, however, Mitchell finally did join the Giants, and in his first game for them, he hit home runs in his first two at-bats.

“I was real depressed by it,” Mitchell said of the trade. “I wanted to make it back home. But now, I sure hope I can find a home here. I hope I can just stay in one spot and put up better numbers every year.” Mitchell’s production so far has clearly pleased Craig, who said he really didn’t know what he was getting with Mitchell.

“Of all the players we got in trades, Mitchell was the most surprising,” Craig said. “He is a great hitter who can hit with power and for average. And he’s underrated as a fielder, too.”

In Game 2 of the playoffs Wednesday at St. Louis, Mitchell saved two potential base hits on the hard artificial surface at Busch Stadium. “Kevin can be an excellent fielding third baseman,” winning pitcher Dave Dravecky said.

Mitchell’s preference, however, is playing the outfield, where the Giants are stocked with talent. But as long as Mitchell consistently sees his name on the lineup card, he’s happy.

“Roger plays around with me sometime,” Mitchell says. “He tells me I’m not in the lineup just to get me (upset). I tell him there ain’t no way he can keep me on the bench.”