Her Own Fan Club : Padre Catcher Parent Finds It’s His Turn to Support Old Friend

SAN DIEGO —  The old lady and the kid. That’s what they were to each other.

Mark Parent was a runny-nosed 17-year-old baseball player who never should have left his high school coach, or his mother. Rhoda Polley was a retired legal secretary who had agreed to join the Padre front office as a general manager’s assistant, sorting contracts, filing papers and, most of all, watching over kids such as Parent.

The year was 1979; his first, her first.

Remembers Parent: “She was the one person in the front office you could talk to.”

Remembers Polley: “He was the one who received about four perfumed letters every day from his girlfriend. After delivering all those, I’m glad she finally became his wife.”

A couple of years passed, and it became obvious that the old lady and the kid were not that much different. They were both role players, little-known reserves. Neither was going to be made a millionaire by this game. Neither was going to be famous.

Parent was a solid catcher missing the required flash. Every year he showed up and played hard. But if the Padres ever noticed, they had a funny way of showing it, running off to Latin America to sign more catchers than they now know what to do with.

Polley learned the inner mechanisms of the game and became as much of an expert on front office rules as any general manager. But her general manager became Jack McKeon, and although he constantly tried to pass on the credit, he became the folk hero, and she became the one lost in all that cigar smoke.

So the old lady and the kid formed a bond. They never talked about it, never wrote anything down--it was just there.

Once, when Parent was fed up with minor league life and decided to quit, Polley talked him out of it. She then made a habit of sending along sweet notes every winter with his contract, assuring him that he was being paid fairly, assuring him he would one day make the big leagues. He would see her every spring training. He would wave to her in the stands, stay late talking to her in the offices, promise her that yes, one day he would make it to the big leagues.

And today, Mark Parent has made it. He is beginning his second major league season as one of the better backup catchers in baseball. Soon his contracts will be done in big negotiations with big agents, and all sweet notes will cost extra.

But there’s something missing. It’s the old lady. Last week, the day after another season opened, Rhoda Polley unwillingly resigned from the Padres at age 65 to concentrate on a battle with a cancer that is spreading through her body.

You might remember Polley from opening day. She was the woman being helped to the pitching mound before the game by Parent, Garry Templeton and Tim Flannery. She’s the woman you’ve never heard of who threw out the first ball. George Bush did it in Baltimore, the old lady did it in San Diego.

Mark Parent would like you to hear about her. Hours after her resignation, he hit a home run against the San Francisco Giants. As he crossed the plate into the warm arms of teammates and loud cheers of fans, there was only one thing he could think of. Is Rhoda watching?

“I was home, trying to watch on TV, but my sleeping pills got me, and I was sleeping,” Polley said the next day. “But I still saw him. I don’t need to be watching Mark to see him.”

Parent hopes she keeps watching. The kid has dedicated his season to Polley. He figures she would do the same for him. That is, if she hasn’t already done the same for him.

Rhoda Polley’s story is a simple one. She was baseball fan, grew up in San Diego, became so enamored that she and her husband bought a house five minutes from the ballpark so she could walk to the games.

Her husband died in 1974. She retired from her job as a legal secretary and became a baseball freak. She had no children, so she saw the Padres as her children. She attended every spring game, every home game. She became one of those fan fixtures who attach themselves to every club . . . and then in the spring of 1979, Bob Fontaine, then the general manager, suddenly plopped down next to her in the Yuma box seats.

“He said he needed a secretary, somebody to help out,” Polley remembers. “I asked him, when do I start?”

She has since been through seven managers, three club presidents and two full-time general managers. Her job was, among other things, to mail the contracts and keep track of the incentive clauses in those contracts. She once worked out the language in Alan Wiggins’ guaranteed contract so that it made so much sense, it was sent to the Players’ Assn. as a model.

Oh yes, and she played mother to the Padres’ minor leaguers.

“I got into a fight with a manager in double-A in 1982, and they wanted to suspend me, and then send me down, and I told them to stick it,” Parent recalled. “I was on my way to quitting . . . and then Rhoda called. She told me I was better than that. She told me I was blowing my one chance. She wanted me to act like a man.”

Recalled Polley: “I gave him this speech, and all he said was, ‘Yes ma’am.’ ”

So Parent took the demotion to Class-A Salem. By the next year, he was back in double A. And from then on, they shared a trust.

“She was a person in the front office I always believed,” Parent said. “She treated me like I was no different than Dave Winfield. During spring training, she would holler at me from the stands, which was nice when you had nobody else. She was much better for me than I ever was for her.”

“Oh, but was like one of my sons,” Polley said. “He treated me like I was special.”

That’s why she fretted this winter when, after being diagnosed with cancer, she could not reach Parent in the Dominican Republic, where he was playing winter league. It wasn’t until Parent returned to the United States in January and called her about spring training reservations--and the annual players’ pool tournament she sponsors in Yuma--that he heard the news.

“It was funny, but she told me, and it was like I couldn’t get her off the phone fast enough,” Parent said. “She told me I was the last person she would tell, and it got all emotional, and I could tell it was killing her, so I wanted her to hang up.

“I’ve never had anybody around me sick like this. I’m not sure how to handle it.”

The Padres showed how they handled it on opening day, when Polley threw out the ball at owner Joan Kroc’s request. After an off-season spending spree that might put the Padres in contention, Kroc could have made the pitch and probably still be hearing the cheers.

“But they asked me instead, and I got so excited,” Polley said. “Imagine me, throwing out a first ball.”

“It’s the least we can do,” McKeon said. “Rhoda has constantly made my job easier. I was a rookie general manager, and she guided me through the hard times. I remember, and we all remember.

“If we get lucky enough to make the playoffs or World Series, you bet your life she’ll be right there with us. Even if I have to carry her there.”

Despite needing help reaching the mound opening night, it was Polley who carried the three players when, while still on the mound, they were surprised by the loud noise from surprise pregame cannon shots.

“We heard this boom, and all of us jumped, but Rhoda,” Parent said. “We all hung on to her.”

“Wrong,” Polley said. “We hung on to each other.”

Said Parent: “You have to understand, I really can’t tell her I’m dedicating this season to her. I don’t know how to do it.”

He paused. “Maybe I can just show her. I show her, she’ll know.”