"Steve Garvey Is Not My Padre"

The ex-MLBer wants into politics at 74, and I can't help but chuckle.

Steve Garvey by Joe Kennedy, LA Times is licensed under CC BY 4.0.

I woke up this morning to a piece of news that seemed like it came out of a hot tub time machine. Former Major League Baseball first baseman Steve Garvey, who played 19 major league seasons with the LA Dodgers and San Diego Padres has announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate from California.

For those of you who weren’t alive when Garvey retired from the majors in 1987, his resume is impressive, and at one time it appeared he was ticketed for a place in the Baseball Hall of Fame. He was the 1974 National League Most Valuable Player (MVP). He appeared in 10 MLB All-Star Games and was voted MVP of the game twice. He won four gold gloves and had over 200 hits in a season six times.

He appeared in five World Series, winning it with the Dodgers in 1981. He was twice voted the MVP of the National League Championship Series. His postseason slash line of .338/.361/.550/.910 demonstrated he didn’t crack when the stakes were high. For a time in the 1980s while Cal Ripken, Jr. was still in the early days of his own career, many in baseball thought it would be Garvey who would break Lou Gehrig’s MLB record for consecutive games played. Garvey set the NL mark with the Padres during the 1983 MLB season and his streak eventually reached 1,207 games before he broke his thumb in a home plate collision against the Atlanta Braves on July 29, 1983.

Steve Garvey, wife Cyndy, and baby daughter by Cal Montney, LA Times is licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Early in his career, Garvey cultivated the image of an Irish-Catholic golden boy. His marriage to his wife Cyndy, a union that produced two daughters, seemed storybook, but the carefully constructed public face masked a turbulent marriage that ended in divorce in 1983 after Cyndy discovered that Steve was having an affair with his secretary. Steve had to sue for access to his daughters after the divorce, but his children refused to see him.

After the end of his playing days in the wake of his divorce, Garvey’s chaotic personal life shifted into overdrive. Instead of re-writing things, I’ll just let the editors at Wikipedia take it from here, otherwise I would struggle to keep track of what went on.

In July 1988, Garvey discovered that Cheryl Moulton was pregnant with his child, Ashleigh. Despite this, Garvey proposed to Rebecka Mendenhall in November 1988, telling Mendenhall about Moulton at the time of the proposal. Mendenhall learned that she was pregnant that January. Garvey broke their engagement January 1, 1989, on a phone call. Garvey and Mendenhall had been in a relationship since 1986. Their only child, Slade, was born in October 1989.

In January 1989, Garvey became engaged to Candace Thomas, whom he met at a benefit for the Special Olympics. Over the next few weeks, Garvey and Thomas began a courtship that included trips to the inauguration of President George H. W. Bush and the Super Bowl.

Garvey would marry Thomas and have three children with her.

It was at this time that Garvey’s life intersected tangentially with my own. I was in my senior year at the Catholic University of America (CUA) finishing my undergraduate degree in Politics. Garvey, though I never met him or saw him on campus, was serving on CUA’s Board of Regents. As you might imagine, this was something of a minor scandal, and I seem to recall that Garvey quietly resigned from the position sometime during the 1988-89 academic year.

But not before my roommate had his say in the matter.

“Russ” was a second-year transfer student from Upstate New York. He was a budding music and cultural critic — an early draft of his senior thesis on the Black Panther Party was my introduction to radical politics — who had a droll sense of humor.¹ We had more than a few laughs together over the self-inflicted wounds in Garvey’s personal life, wondering how CUA’s administrators would back themselves out of the relationship while keeping Garvey’s dignity intact. Though memories can fade over time, “Russ” told me he was thinking of doing something public to tweak the school.

We lived in Monroe Hall, a converted Holiday Inn that abutted Metro’s Red Line.² Our room, thankfully, was on the opposite side of the building, facing the parking lot and the motel’s abandoned, in-ground swimming pool. One night during the first semester, as I was returning from class, I looked up to the window of our room to see the following words spelled out in masking tape.

STEVE GARVEY IS NOT MY PADRE

At first, my reaction was something akin to Scott Bakula in the NBC prime time series, Quantum Leap. In terms of demonstrations of on campus free speech, it was relatively benign. Soon enough, I was laughing uncontrollably and performing a polite golf clap underneath our window with a group of our friends.

The message stayed up for a few months, until the building’s boiler failed in the midst of a Mid-Atlantic winter and the “political” message was replaced with:

HEAT: WHAT WE DON’T HAVE

So what do I think of Garvey’s chances as a first time candidate at the age of 74? In California’s “jungle” primary system, the top two vote getters regardless of party affiliation will advance to the November 2024 election. California has been dominated by Democrats for decades now, and it seems like Garvey is counting on name recognition to get him into the second slot when three Democratic representatives: Barbara Lee, Katie Porter and Adam Schiff, could very well split Democratic votes.

Mets vs Dodgers - 1978 by Tequask is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

So I guess we’ll see what happens, though I’m amazed Garvey is giving this a shot after being out of the public spotlight for so long. Had you told me that he had been planning to run for office in the immediate aftermath of his career, I wouldn’t have blinked an eye and I would have liked his chances barring the implosion of his personal life. But the California that once celebrated Garvey as a hero is just a memory, and one would have to think the odds here are the longest he’s ever faced.

1. It’s been a while, so in a nod to another LA resident, the late Jack Webb, we’ll be changing his name to protect the innocent.

2. Thanks to its former life, Monroe Hall was known among undergrads as the “no tell motel.” In the spring of our senior year, the parking lot developed a drainage problem that persisted for weeks and wasn’t resolved until after graduation, helping it earn the sobriquet, “Lake Monroe.”