Padres’ New Center Fielder Says He’s Ready for the Big Time : Jefferson: Cool on the Outside but Hot to Play

YUMA, Ariz. — Get off Stan Jefferson’s back. He can’t help it if he’s laid-back. Larry Bowa, the Padre manager, is thinking about giving his new center fielder a pep talk, but Jefferson’s wife already tried that.

And failed.

Like the time their little baby girl, Tiffany, was crying. Jefferson’s wife, Carmalita, said: “Honey, will you get her?”

Silence (except the baby’s still bawling).

“Honey, will you get her?”

Silence (except the baby’s going strong).

Finally (about five minutes later), he got out of his easy chair. The baby was only 15-months-old, but he tried sweet-talking her.

“Hey baby . . . stop crying,” he said.

Carmalita said: “Stanley, she’s screaming. Don’t talk to her. . . .”

“Let me talk to her,” he said, certain he could talk anybody to sleep.

And Tiffany did go to sleep.

Jefferson is too cool for his own good. He grew up in the Bronx, and there was the time his buddy had a dispute with an ice-cream truck driver. Who knows how it started, but Stan’s friend climbed on the truck, took all the ice cream and gave it to a bunch of little kids. Then the friend beat up the driver.

The driver came back that night with five of his buddies. Stan was sitting in with his friend and two other guys when his friend said: “It’s the ice-cream truck dude! He’s in that car with all them guys.”

“You better get outta here,” Stan said. “They’re coming to tear you up.”

The friend ran away, but the guys wanted to tear up Jefferson too. Naturally, he tried sweet-talking them.

“I have no gripe with you . . .” Stan began to say.

They hit him in the back of the head with a weight-lifting bar.

Now, any uncool person would have collapsed or cursed or cried, but Stan Jefferson walked away and found a red car to lean on.

His friends hailed a cab and took him to the hospital.

No biggie.

So this is how you get a bad rap. The New York Mets--who traded Jefferson to the Padres this winter--supposedly loved him, except he always used to get this disinterested look.

“Looking at me physically, it looks like I’m down on myself,” Jefferson said. “I’m not. I’ve just always looked like that. I don’t know why. I walk slow, and I always walk with my head down. I’ve always walked that way. And I’ve found a lot of money that way as well.”

He laughed. Everyone in camp thinks he laughs like actor Eddie Murphy.

Uh-huh-huh-huh-huh-huh-huh.

“You know, I found a $50 bill like that,” he said. “I was looking down, and . . .

“Anyway, when I sit, I sit like this (he’s staring at the ground). I’ll look up when something happens. And when I relax, I relax like this (he’s staring at the ground). I’m always looking down, I guess. I’ve always had this relaxed attitude, and people get the wrong impression. I do the same thing, whether I’m going good or bad.”

He usually goes good. In college, at Bethune Cookman College in Daytona Beach, he once stole 67 out of 68 bases. Vince Coleman, now with the Cardinals, had stolen 54 out of 55 at Florida A&M; the year before, and Jefferson decided he was going to do better.

The Mets drafted him in the first round (20th overall) of the 1983 June free-agent draft. He batted right-handed, but they told him he’d be better off as a switch-hitter. And since he used to play stickball in the Bronx, making the adjustment was no biggie.

Later, the Mets drafted another kid (Shawn Abner), and their outfield of the future was going to have Abner in left, Jefferson in center and Darryl Strawberry in right. That was the plan, anyway.

Davey Johnson, the Met manager, adored Jefferson. Johnson had seen Jefferson play in instructional league, and Stan hit .500-plus.

“I don’t know what my average was, but it was an outrageous number,” Jefferson remembered. “I couldn’t make an out.”

He laughed. Uh-huh-huh-huh-huh-huh-huh .

The Mets invited him to their major league camp last spring. He batted .500, but the Mets sent him to Triple-A.

“I thought he was ready last year,” said Abner, who also was traded to San Diego in the Kevin McReynolds deal. “I thought he’d get the job last year. But the Mets are different. When they go into spring training, they know who’ll be on the team. I didn’t make the first cut last year, and I was leading the team in home runs and RBIs at the time.”

Jefferson was still considered Johnson’s favorite. Jack McKeon, the Padre general manager, says Johnson liked Jefferson more than Len Dykstra, another center fielder with potential. But when No. 1 center fielder Mookie Wilson got hurt in spring training, Dykstra got his chance and eventually became a playoff and World Series hero.

Jefferson--who was called up at the end of the year and got his first major league hit off the Padres’ Dave LaPoint--suddenly became trade bait.

“If you’re asking me if I wanted to trade Stan Jefferson, the answer is no,” Johnson said last week. “I still think he can be a fine center fielder and everyday player, but I don’t want to get into comparing if he’s better than Dykstra.

“I fought hard not to trade him. I didn’t want to trade him, but--in the best interest of the team--we had to. We were blessed with center fielders, and we needed a guy like McReynolds.”

Essentially, the Padres have handed Jefferson the center-field job, but he’s 24 and isn’t used to big crowds.

“Getting called up late in the year really helped me as far as just getting rid of some of the myths about standing out there in front of a lot of people,” Jefferson said. “I’d played in front of large audiences, but not exactly 40,000 or 50,000.

“When the game started, though, I didn’t see anybody. Every now and then, you hear a few gestures out of the stands. ‘Stan, way to go!’ or ‘Glad you could make it . . . you’ll be here for many years’ or ‘They should’ve brought you up sooner.’ ”

He was up for only 29 days, and now he’s the Padre leadoff man.

Is he ready?

“It’s only 162 games!”

He paused to laugh. Uh-huh-huh-huh-huh-huh-huh.

“I really don’t see the problem. I’d much rather play hard for four hours a day and 162 days. I think that’s fantastic. I’ll go out and give my all for four or five hours. I can do that for 365 days. And 162 days? That’s a piece of cake.”

Can he steal a lot of bases (he calls them bags)?

“If, like in the minors, I had run, run, run, it probably would’ve interfered with my offense,” he said. “That’s because you sometimes slide head first and tear up your fingers. Everything gets torn up. Now, 70 bags is cool or 60 or 50 bags is cool. . . . But when you start getting to the 100s, you tear yourself up and your average is gonna hurt and you won’t get on base as often.

“What kills me is I don’t know how Vince (Coleman) does it. He’s not getting on base, but he keeps running like a madman. I don’t see playing baseball like that. Doesn’t he want to hit?”

And, will he be any good on defense?

“I’ve been watching him, and he’s got a good first step, there’s a smoothness to him,” said Amos Otis, a former Gold Glove winner with Kansas City who now works with Padre outfielders. “Put it this way: fly ball to center with two outs in the ninth? Start the car ‘cause he’s got it. Pop fly to short center? Send the kids for hot dogs because he’s got it.”

Jefferson was told what Otis said.

“Start the car? Send the kids for hot dogs?”

Uh-huh-huh-huh-huh-huh-huh.

Not many New Yorkers are laid-back.

He is.

You can hardly tell he has an accent. Only when he pronounces “ball” or “Shawn” or words like that.

His dad, Everod, is from Panama. Two of Everod’s idols were Jackie Robinson and Joe DiMaggio, and he wanted his son to play just like them. Everod thinks Stan plays defense the way DiMaggio used to, but he says Stan doesn’t steal bases like a Jackie Robinson.

“Jackie had pitchers and catchers confused when he was on base,” Everod said. “They didn’t know if he was going or not, and they’d end up walking the batter. But I don’t think any baserunners are like that anymore.”

Stan’s mother is named Havana.

“Everod and Havana Jefferson!” he said. “All these funny names, and they came out with a Stanley. I don’t understand it.”

They lived in the South Bronx, and Everod--a subway conductor--was worried that the neighborhood was too tough to raise a son in. So he moved to the Northeast side of the Bronx, to Co Op City.

Co Op City was a calmer place and produced a calmer kid. Stan played stickball, football, etc., on a concrete lot in the backyard. All the kids in the area played sports, and Everod managed Stan’s Little League team. But then the kids changed as they grew up.

“As I got older, my friends started to stray into their different ways,” Jefferson said. “On a typical day, they’d play basketball, get drunk and then go out and get more drunk. And then I’ve got to take them home. I’m the only one sober. And it’s like, I’m saying, ‘Oh man, if this is a good time. . . .’

“I’ve never been a drinker. I never drank, really. I’ve tasted beer; I’ve tasted wine. But I’ve never had a full can of beer or a full glass of wine. Never.”

One day, one of his own friends almost mugged him. He laughs about it now.

“He jumped out from the bushes,” Jefferson said. “He didn’t know it was me. Then, he said, ‘Oh, it’s you.’ I said, “Are you crazy!’ ”

His family’s apartment was on the 24th floor of a high-rise, and Jefferson could see Shea Stadium (10 miles away) out the living-room window.

“You’d sit in the living room, and when the Mets were playing I’d have the TV on and I could look out the window and see Shea. I could see the glow of the Shea lights out the window.”

He used to sell hot chocolate at Jet football games. He used to dream about Shea, and you would have thought that this winter’s trade would have been hard on him.

“No, it wasn’t that bad,” he said. “I wanted to start in the major leagues. With the Mets, with all those outfielders, I was like knocking at the door but I can’t get in.”

Starting every day in the big leagues was the cool thing to do, and Jefferson’s goal in life is to be the coolest man possible.

Which explains the following:

--In high school he didn’t try out for the baseball team until his junior year. He thought he was too small (“5-7 or 5-8 and 100 pounds and some change”). He says it would have been uncool to be cut from the team. He didn’t want to be uncool and fail.

--In class he wouldn’t sit up straight. He says he would lean back in his chair, tilt his head to one side and have one hand on his forehead. The bored look.

When the teacher called on him, he’d ever so slowly lift his body up, remove his hand from his forehead, sit straight and answer the question.

He’d get it right.

Then he’d slump down again, legs crossed, hand back touching forehead.

--In class a teacher once asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up. He wouldn’t say. He knew he wanted to be a baseball player, but if he had said so everyone would have laughed.

Which wasn’t cool.

So he said: “I don’t know.”

--And, finally, in one of his college road games--against the University of South Florida, in Tampa--the fans made fun of his name.

They shouted: “Staaaaaan-ley! Staaaaaan-ley!”

So he hit a home run.

That was funny, he remembered. Uh-huh-huh-huh-huh-huh-huh.