This was the worst year of John Moores’ 14-year ownership of the San Diego Padres. It began with Moores’ wife of 44 years, Becky, filing for divorce and went downhill the rest of the year until the Padres finished in last place with 99 losses, their worst season under Moores.

The divorce, which a baseball official described as “a messy divorce,” will eventually be settled, most likely in court, but there’s no guarantee what will happen to the Padres. They are headed for more perilous times. The divorce, for which Becky Moores filed claiming irreconcilable differences, is a major part of the reason.

“It’s having some impact,” said Sandy Alderson, the chief executive officer. “Four or five months ago I wouldn’t have expected it to have any impact.” Could the divorce affect the ownership of the team? “I think it could affect ownership. It could lead to a partial sale. We’ll have to wait and see. As a result of what’s happening, it could.”

John and Becky Moores, who were married in 1963 after having met in history class in high school in Texas, have already engaged in a dispute over use of the ownership box at Petco Park. California is a community property state, meaning each spouse is entitled to half of a couple’s assets acquired and income earned during a marriage.

John Moores bought 80 percent of the Padres in late 1994. In recent years Forbes magazine has estimated his net worth at about $750 million and the value of the team at more than $360 million.

The divorce is also having an impact on the Padres’ payroll. General manager Kevin Towers said he is on a course to reduce a $73 million payroll to the low 40s. “We’re already at 50,” he said. “We talked about moving Peavy and Greene. That definitely gets us under. If we’re out of it at the deadline, we could move Giles.”

Jake Peavy is the ace of the Padres’ pitching staff, the unanimous winner of the 2007 National League Cy Young award. Khalil Greene is the dynamic young shortstop. Brian Giles is the productive outfielder.

Trading Peavy alone would reduce the Padres’ chances of resuscitating the team, but Towers is determined to reduce the payroll, shedding Peavy’s $11 million salary for 2009 and an additional $70 million for four years beyond that.

Peavy has a no-trade clause in his contract but has said he would accept three teams – the Braves, the Cubs and the Dodgers. The Braves have ended talks with the Padres, the Dodgers haven’t really started talks and the Cubs’ position is ambiguous.

“I would say the Cubs are still in it,” Towers said. “Lou (Piniella) said they’re not in it, but their general manager says they’re in it. The Dodgers have bigger fish to fry. That’s not to say they might not circle back later in the winter. Our primary goal is to trade Peavy.”

The Padres know the danger inherent in trading Peavy. “We’d scratch one at the top and move everyone else up,” Alderson said. Not that the Padres have an abundance of established starters to advance in the rotation. They have Chris Young, who missed nearly 40 percent of last season after an Albert Pujols line drive broke his nose, and Cha Seung Baek, who joined the Padres’ rotation two months into the season.

After them comes Josh Geer, who started five times last season, and two other young pitchers to be determined.

The Padres don’t plan to give up Peavy just to get rid of his contract. They have asked for enough in return to discourage the Braves and the Cubs from making a trade. “If we can’t make a good baseball deal, we won’t move him,” Alderson said.

If they trade Peavy, Towers added, “we’re going to have to do well on that trade. When we treaded (Adam) Eaton and (Akinori) Otsuka, we got Young and (Adrian) Gonzalez, two guys who helped us the next year. We hope to get some established players back for Peavy.”

The Padres don’t blame everything that happened this past season on the owner’s divorce. They cite injuries and under achieving players.

Greene, for example, broke his hand punching an equipment locker and missed the last two months. Outfielder Jody Gerut, who batted .317 in June, July and August, missed September with a sprained finger. Josh Bard missed two months with a sprained ankle he suffered in a home plate collision with Pujols, who was on base because his line drive had broken Young’s nose.

The Padres released center fielder Jim Edmonds before mid-May because he was hitting .178. Then he joined the Cubs and hit 19 home runs and drove in 49 runs in 250 at-bats.

“There was a variety of reasons for what happened last year,” Alderson said. “If we can avoid injuries, that will give us some increased level of success.”

But there is the bad economy and the owner’s divorce to deal with.

“We had expected a cash infusion of about $15 million from the owner this year, which has been the case with Padres recently,” Alderson said. “We had it in 07, and we didn’t need it this year. It’s a kind of cyclical thing. It had been anticipated for 2009, but it will not be made.”

One victim of the new Padres’ economy is Trevor Hoffman, the team’s closer for 14 years and the all-time major league leader in saves. Hoffman, who earned $7.5 million this year, was offered $4 million for next year, but then the Padres withdrew the offer, angering Hoffman.

Now he is a free agent, ready to pitch for someone else for the first time since he was a rookie in 1993. His departure from the Padres is the team’s second messy divorce.

Baylor Bounces Back

Don Baylor, out of baseball the past three years, is returning for next season as the hitting coach of the Colorado Rockies. He was the Rockies’ first manager, holding the position the first five years of their existence, 1993 through 1998.

“My office is just going to be a little smaller,” Baylor said. “I know my place. I know what I have to do. I’m there to help Clint the best I can.”

Clint Hurdle was Baylor’s hitting coach for two seasons and went from hitting coach to manager in 2002.

“Clint reached out at the All-Star game and made me a part of it,” said Baylor, whom Hurdle made an honorary coach on the National League team last July.

Not all managers are comfortable with a former manager on their coaching staff, but Baylor said, “Certain guys do it and aren’t afraid of it. I don’t think Clint is.”

Before getting the Rockies’ job, Baylor nearly became the bench coach for Jerry Manuel in New York. The Mets were looking for a first base coach and interviewed Baylor. Learning that the Mets might be interested in hiring Baylor, Sandy Alomar Sr., the Mets’ bench coach, talked to Baylor and offered to switch jobs if Baylor were hired. But the Mets hired Luis Alicea instead, and Baylor returned to Colorado.

Name That Ball Park, or the Curse of Bill Shea

When ball parks were called Forbes Field and Crosley Field and the Polo Grounds, they were easily identifiable and never in danger of having their names changed. Look at the names now: PNC Park, Citizens Bank Park, Great American Ball Park.

Many fans have trouble matching a park’s name with its city, especially when the name has changed. Enron Field in Houston became Minute Maid Park. The Giants’ new in San Francisco has changed from Pacific Bell Park to SBC Park to AT&T Park.

Now there’s an additional problem with bestowing corporate names on ball parks. The Mets’ new park, Citi Field, was the subject of newspaper articles for a week as people speculated about whether the name could survive until opening day next season given the plight of the economy and the effect its decline is having on banks.

The Mets send daily newspaper clips to writers, and until recently all of the clips were baseball articles. In the past week the preponderance of clips dealt with the economy. One day 33 of the first 34 clips were about the economy and resulting problems.

On another Citi Field note, maybe the Mets have stumbled into one of those ubiquitous curse things, like the curse of the Bambino in Boston and the Billy goat curse in Chicago.

Perhaps the Mets have died the last two Septembers because of the curse of Bill Shea. A nice man and a powerful New York lawyer, Shea was responsible for returning National League baseball to New York after the Giants and the Dodgers left in 1957. In honor of that achievement, the Mets in 1964 named their new park Shea Stadium.

With the advent of a new park, though, the Mets, like other teams, decided to make money from its naming. Citigroup is paying $20 million a year for 20 years to have the Mets’ new home called Citi Field. Bill Shea’s name disappeared. But maybe the curse of Bill Shea appeared.

The curse of the Bambino lasted until 2004. The Billy goat curse goes on.

When Nothing Else Works, Try Something New

Much of the outsourcing that United States companies do these days is located in India. The companies that outsource elements of their operations do so because the cost is cheaper. Now the practice has come to baseball.

The Pirates are outsourcing their future.

They signed two Indians last week to professional contracts. Those are natives of India, who have never played an inning of baseball. While at first glance it seems bizarre, look at it from the Pirates’ point of view.

With a major league record-tying 16 successive losing seasons, the Pirates haven’t been able to get it right so how bad can it be trying to develop inexperienced Indians?

The unfortunate aspect of the foray into India is that it is the Pirates who are doing it. Even if there’s a glimmer of hope that decent players could be developed in India, you have to remember it’s the Pirates who are trying it. The Pirates haven’t been able to develop outstanding college and high school players into major leaguers. What makes anyone think they can turn baseball neophytes into baseball prospects?

All right, maybe it’s only a gimmick; that’s always possible. But it’s the Pirates who are doing it, and no one has ever accused the Pirates of being capable of doing anything clever.

As Thanksgiving dinners go, it was probably the most memorable. But it was memorable not for the quality of the meal or the guests. I didn’t eat dinner that Thanksgiving, and I’m not sure who the guests were. That’s because I never saw them.

Thanksgiving 1976. It was a day like most other days. I was working. I wasn’t supposed to be working, but because that was the first year of free agency I felt I should make some calls to check up on possible developments. The calls paid off because I learned that George Steinbrenner was close to signing Reggie Jackson.

Easily the No. 1 player in the first class of free agents, Jackson was Steinbrenner’s No. 1 target. Steinbrenner was in the fourth year of his ownership of the Yankees, who a month or so earlier had been swept out of the World Series by the Cincinnati Reds.

That was the year the Yankees returned to the post-season for the first time since 1964, propelled by Chris Chambliss’ dramatic ninth-inning, last-game home run against Kansas City in the American League Championship Series. It was a remarkable achievement for Steinbrenner, considering where he started, but the Reds’ sweep left him with an empty, incomplete feeling. That, he vowed, would not happen again.

The start of free agency was a personally beneficial development for Steinbrenner. It was as if free agency were created just for him. Accepting that gift, he played the game better than anyone.

The Yankees signed Don Gullett 33 days after he beat them in the World Series opener, but the best was yet to come. Steinbrenner wanted Reggie Jackson – Billy Martin would have prefered Joe Rudi — and he pursued him, in Jackson’s words, “like trying to hustle a girl in a bar.”

The critical day in the pursuit was Thanksgiving, 32 years ago this Thanksgiving. On that day Steinbrenner was visiting his son, Hank, at Culver Military Academy in Indiana, having Thanksgiving dinner with him at the school eatery known as the Shack.

That’s where I tracked Steinbrenner by telephone. He was shocked that I had found him but took the phone when he was told there was a call for him.

“We have a good shot,” the owner acknowledged when I told him what I had heard. “We feel we have a good chance to get him. We’re right in the middle of it. It’s not easy when you have Ray Kroc and Charles Bronfman in the mix, but we’ve got something to sell and that’s New York.”

Executives of other clubs vying for Jackson had pretty much conceded.

“I thought all along the Yankees were in the driver’s seat,” said Buzzie Bavasi of the San Diego Padres, whose owner, Ray Kroc, wanted Jackson as badly as Steinbrenner. “Í think it’s going to be New York. That’s my gut feeling. We asked what their proposal was. They told us. Ray said okay. He said do you want cash or a check. They turned down their own proposal. To me, it’s between Montreal and New York, and I think New York has the inside track.”

The Jackson pursuit had an interesting subplot. Reggie’s agent, Gary Walker, did not fly but instead traveled around the country in a motor home. Basically, anyone interested in signing Jackson had to travel to meet Walker, and on this Thanksgiving Walker was in Carthage, Ill.

Walker was a Mormon, and as he said, “Carthage is steeped in Mormon history.” He also noted that it was where Joseph Smith, the Mormon leader, was killed.

Carthage was also close enough to Chicago, which is where Steinbrenner and other suitors met Jackson and Walker.

“I’m coming into O’Hare,” Steinbrenner said in our telephone conversation Thanksgiving night. “I get on a little bus that goes to the Hyatt Regency. I’m the only guy on there and all of a sudden he stops and who gets on but Hank Peters.”

Peters was the general manager of the Baltimore Orioles, another suitor.  “They asked us to make our final offers,” he related that night. “They didn’t want to play one off against the others. They asked us to give them our best shot. I have reason to think the offers have gone out of sight. I think it’s gone even further than they thought it would.”

Peters, however, might have miscalculated. He thought the Yankees’ interest in Jackson was not as great as it had been previously, and he said he didn’t think Jackson had to rely on being in New York to have the television exposure he desired. “He has reason to believe he’s pretty well set now,” Peters said.

The prevailing view among all of the clubs was that Bronfman’s Montreal Expos had made the best offer.  “Reggie said he’d call me when he makes up his mind,” John McHale, the Expos’ general manager, said. “I thought he’d call this morning, but I guess there are three pretty substantial offers in front of him. I don’t know what the other people have offered. I know our offer is so substantial I don’t see how anyone is going to knock us out of it.”

McHale called the Expos’ offer a “king’s ransom,” and it was the highest offer Jackson received, more than $3 million, which in those days was a king’s ransom. But Reggie didn’t want to play in Montreal. That was the problem the Expos would have in the early years of free agency. Players didn’t want to play there, and the Expos always had to make higher offers than other teams to try to lure free agents north of the border.

“Montreal has tried awfully hard; they made some fabulous offers,” Gabe Paul, the Yankees’ general manager, said just before I reached Steinbrenner at the Shack. But he said, “I think we’re going to get him. He really wants to play in New York. Reggie said he would not accept any offer from Montreal.”

Jackson accepted the Yankees’ offer of $2.66 million for five years plus a $250,000 loan at a low 6 percent interest rate. The Yankees also paid his agent’s and lawyer’s fees.

I would like to have talked to Steinbrenner about his Thanksgiving pursuit, but he no longer does interviews; nor does he appear publicly very often. I am told he still has a good recollection of past Yankees events, but he shares them only rarely.

In lieu of Steinbrenner, I would like to have talked with Hank Steinbrenner, who was the Culver student his father had Thanksgiving dinner with between trips to Chicago to meet with Jackson. But Hank was nowhere to be found. Even the Yankees, I am told, usually have difficulty finding him or getting him to return their calls.

Hal Steinbrenner, who was in elementary school when his father signed Reggie, was not available either. The Yankees said he was doing no interviews until after the Thanksgiving weekend.

Their unavailability raises a question: If there were a Reggie Jackson available as a free agent this year, would Hank or Hal have spent Thanksgiving chasing him and trying to sign him?

The previous column on this Web site said that Greg Maddux had retired. The report, as it turns out, was premature. However, by the end of the week, it might not be.

“I haven’t officially decided yet,” Maddux said in a telephone interview Monday, “but I will do so very shortly. I’ll try to figure it out in the next couple days.”

Maddux didn’t say if he was leaning one way or the other, but earlier this month he told the Review-Journal in his hometown, Las Vegas, “I’m thinking more about not playing than playing.” And during the Monday interview his tone suggested that he would retire after 22 years.

“My position right now,” Maddux said Monday, “is I’m going to talk to a couple people and make a decision very shortly. I just got back from vacation and haven’t had a phone for two weeks, which was kind of nice.”

A decision to retire could help create an unprecedented development. It is conceivable, though not very likely, that Maddux, Tom Glavine and John Smoltz, the three musketeers of the Atlanta Braves for a decade, could all retire and, hand-in-hand, march into the Hall of Fame together in 2014.

Glavine said the other day he’ll know in about a month when he starts throwing in his return from elbow surgery if he’ll be able to pitch next season and if he wants to pitch next season. Smoltz isn’t saying how his recovery from shoulder surgery is going, but a source close to him said he is ahead of schedule in his rehabilitation and is optimistic about his chances of continuing his career.

“The way he was throwing before he got hurt last year he could still do it,” Maddux said of Smoltz. Maddux is the only one of the trio whose decision will not be based on his arm.

Smoltz made only five starts this past season, all in April. He had a 3-2 record and 2.00 earned run average before going on the disabled list with a sore shoulder. He returned to make one relief appearance in June before having season-ending shoulder surgery June 10.

Dr. James Andrews, the celebrated orthopedist, repaired Smoltz’s labrum and also worked on the pitcher’s rotator cuff, a.c. joint and shoulder capsule.

Smoltz is accustomed to serious surgery. He had Tommy John surgery on his right elbow in 2000, missed that entire season and much of the next. After he returned, he moved from the starting rotation, where he won 24 games and the Cy Young award in 1996, and became a brilliant closer for three seasons, amassing 144 saves. He switched back to starting in 2005 and posted a 44-24 record in three seasons.

If Smoltz is able to pitch next season, it’s not certain if he’ll do it as a starter or a reliever. He prefers starting, but he is prepared to do whatever he needs to do to play baseball. Playing is his primary goal.

Smoltz isn’t ready to talk about his status or the future, but people familiar with his situation said Smoltz’s rehabilitation has gone well and that he is throwing pain free. Meanwhile, lines of communications are open between Smoltz and the Braves, as they are between Glavine and the Braves.

“Nothing has been decided; that’s the gentleman’s agreement I have with both of them,” said Frank Wren, the Braves’ general manager. “They’re both in the midst of rehabilitation and neither had a whole lot of information about where they were. We’re just going to play that by ear as the winter goes along, see where they are in rehab. We told both we’d love to have them.”

Smoltz will be 42 years old May 15, Glavine 43 March 25. If their repaired body parts are sound, they could very well still help the Braves as starters. The Braves, however, won’t sit around waiting for them. 

“We’ve got to construct our pitching staff as if they’re not coming back,” Wren said. “I’m not sure the role, what they’ll be able to do, so we have to construct our pitching staff as if they’re not coming back. If they do, it’s gravy. We don’t have an answer. We expressed a willingness to work with them and have them work with us. We’re trying to rebuild our pitching and need to have a bit of flexibility.”

Without Smoltz and Glavine in their rotation, the Braves have a corps of young starters: Jair Jurrjens (13-10), Jorge Campillo (8-7), Charlie Morton (4-8), Jo-Jo Reyes (3-11).

“Jurrjens and Campillo both had good rookie years,” Wren said. “Morton and Reyes, whom we have high hopes for, had good times but also struggled. We have to add some depth with veteran pitchers. If we’re able to get some veteran guys other than Smoltz and Glavine and if they come back and unseat the kids, the kids can go back to Triple A.”

For the veterans he wants, Wren is looking at free agents and has also explored possible trades. He spoke with San Diego about Jake Peavy, but those talks have ended. “We’ve kind of focused our efforts in other directions so I’d have to say we’re not in it.”

Maddux is not one of the veterans Wren has considered. However, the Los Angeles Dodgers, with whom Maddux finished the past season after a trade from San Diego, have indicated they would welcome Maddux back.

But Amanda (14) and Chase (11) would welcome their father at home, and as Maddux ponders his decision, they most likely exert a greater pull. “It would be nice to see them,” Maddux said.

Some players might find it irresistible to forgo the millions of dollars another contract would offer, but Maddux said, “I stopped playing for the money seven, eight years ago.”

And facing the reality of his age (43 April 14) and his 2008 record (8-13, 4.22), he said in his characteristic self-deprecating way, “I figured I was getting closer to the end when the bullpen catcher started taking his glove off before I was finished throwing.”