San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
Leitner misses Pads, but will ‘get through this’
“You’re asking Custer how it went.”
That was Ted Leitner’s reply Thursday night, when asked how his day had gone.
For the first time in 42 years, Leitner wasn’t in the Padres’ radio broadcast booth on opening day. Citing a “conglomeration of things” including health, Leitner left the job this past offseason while retaining his play-by-play duties on San Diego State’s football and men’s basketball games.
Leitner said he and an older son planned to attend the Padres game Saturday night as a guest of Peter Seidler, the team’s chairman and lead investor.
On opening day, well, the ballpark was a bridge too far.
Deciding it would be too painful to visit and mindful that COVID-19 restrictions would prevent him from chatting up Padres players and fans, a big part of his day for the past four decades, he never went to Petco Park, nor did he watch the telecast.
“It was a very difficult day,” he said. “For anybody who’s done something for 41 straight years and been there on opening day, and then all of a sudden he’s not, anybody in the whole world who’s left the job and suddenly isn’t going there the next morning, that’s going to be different on many different levels — more so, I think, for people who loooved their job.
“Because,” he added, “I don’t know anybody who loved their job more than me. And I mean jobs as in plural. Football, basketball, baseball play-by-play and television anchor. Sports. Talk shows. All that stuff. I’ve been the luckiest guy in the world, honestly. I’ve been loving my work.”
As opening day unfolded, Leitner wasn’t sure what to do with himself. He took his car to an auto shop for needed body work. Then he drove home in a rental car. Then, well, he didn’t do a whole lot. Perhaps he couldn’t.
“It’s like having the bends, like a diver,” he said. “What’s going on here? It’s opening day and I’m not there in that booth with that anticipation, with all the preparation for the game. I absolutely missed it.”
Leitner, 73, revealed Thursday that a scary tumble he took two years ago, while on a Padres trip, influenced the decision to scale back his immense workload.
“We flew into San Francisco, late at night,” he recalled.
At the team hotel, which was built in 1913 and funnels visitors down a very long staircase to the lobby, the Padres party descended toward the check-in area.
“I’m carrying two fairly light carry-ons that I had on the plane,” said Leitner, “and I just got a little shaky, walking down the stairs, like the fat old man that I am. And, I fell and tumbled down the entire flight of stairs. In front of the players, the coaches, my colleagues and so forth.”
Leitner avoided serious injury. Still, the incident shook him up.
“I said, ‘How the hell did Jerry Coleman do this (job) until his late 70s? I’m 73. How long am going to keep doing this?’
“I thought: ‘I did this my entire life and blew four marriages’ — it wasn’t all based on being gone a lot, but that was part of it, being gone a lot when my (seven) kids were growing up — and I honestly said, ‘Why don’t I just cut back and not do everything until the day I die?’ And that started the genesis of it.”
Lately, there were other life challenges. He had a kidney removed in 2018. He shared a glaucoma diagnosis with an audience in February 2019, reported the Times of San Diego.
Time spent with four grandchildren tugged at the heartstrings.
“I would love to do the games forever — football, basketball and baseball because I love them all,” he said, “but, I really did miss huge chunks of my children’s lives and I don’t want to do that with my grandchildren.”
Leitner said he was motivated to open up the play-by-play job for his radio partner Jesse Agler. He said Padres broadcasts are in excellent hands with Agler and Tony Gwynn Jr.
While it stands to reason the decision to entirely give up a job he loved wasn’t made solely by Leitner, the longtime broadcaster said the decision was his. He said he is grateful to Seidler, calling him “incredible” and “one of the nicest guys of all time.”
Leitner, who is under contract with SDSU through 2022, will have to wait until the football Aztecs season opener to call his next game. In the meantime, he’ll remain a pitch man for several corporate sponsors and speak at Padres engagements as part of a job the team created for him.
He said he is indebted to ophthalmologist Dr. Robert Weinreb of UC San Diego’s Shiley Eye Institute for preserving 20-20 vision in his left eye while also mitigating significant deterioration in his right eye.
The loss of such a consuming activity, however, can be an enormous jolt.
It is an identity quake, and Leitner experienced a major tremor Thursday.
The previous time the Padres opened a season without him in their radio booth was in 1979. The Padres were at Dodger Stadium. Their manager was Roger Craig. How long ago was 1979? The home to the Padres was San Diego Stadium. The San Diego Clippers were playing in the Midway District. Tony Gwynn Sr. was dribbling basketballs and hitting baseballs at San Diego State.
It was so long ago, you may be stunned to learn the Padres had four future Hall of Famers on their team in Ozzie Smith, Dave Winfield, Rollie Fingers and starting pitcher Gaylord Perry, coming off his Cy Young season. The Dodgers had won the past two pennants but didn’t do much against Perry, 40. The Padres won, 4-3, with Fingers getting the save.
Leitner worked then as a TV sports anchor.
He began calling Padres games in 1980, connecting him to San Diegans for a few hours on most days, from the start of spring training through whenever the Padres stopped playing. Even when he was down to 140 games in most recent years, Padres fans heard more from him than they may have heard their own family members. He was talking to them in their cars and kitchens, both indoors and outdoors.
It was a privilege, he said many times.
“I’ll get through this,” he said Thursday night, “and I’ll be fine.”
The Padres will play another 160-plus games, and doesn’t he know it.
“I love it, I miss it so much,” he said.