Columnist Dean Juipe: Stars need to get away from Padres

Dean Juipe

Monday, Aug. 2, 1999 | 9:21 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

There has been some discussion on the subject of the Las Vegas Stars and their flat-line attendance figures since moving here in 1983. Despite the valley's rapid population growth, the Pacific Coast League baseball team has not added to its basic yearly attendance ceiling of approximately 330,000.

It won't add to it this year either.

But the reason may be more simplistic than a marketing budget that's categorized as insufficient and a stadium that could use a few more temperature-deflating misters.

The problem with the Stars is the San Diego Padres.

The Padres provide the Stars with players and pay their salaries, and that latter item alone is what keeps the team in business. But with the decade nearing an end, take a look at how those players have collectively performed in Las Vegas in the past 10 seasons.

Here's a one-word synopsis: abysmal.

While the Stars and Padres have always seemed like a good match in terms of geography and their front-office staffs are compatible, it appears the time is overdue for Las Vegas to sever the umbilical cord and find a different major-league team to do business with.

The Stars -- who defeated the Nashville Sounds 7-3 Sunday at Cashman Field to "raise" their record to 48-59 -- are having still another miserable season. With 20 of their remaining 34 games on the road, a long winning streak -- or at least one that might provide a winning record for the season -- seems unlikely.

If it finishes as a losing season, it will be the Stars' eighth in the 10 seasons of the 1990s.

Here is Las Vegas' record by season, starting with 1990 and moving through 1998: 58-86, 65-75, 74-70, 58-85, 56-87, 61-83, 73-67, 56-85, 70-72. Add 'em up and it's a very unflattering 571-712, with another losing season on the way.

That in itself is enough to merit breaking away from the Padres, who annually promise to stock the Stars with winning material yet just as routinely fail at the task. Be it bad luck or the Padres' indifference, the Stars are not winning and bear little resemblance to the franchise that was prospering both on the field and at the box office in the late 1980s.

It's not that the stadium has suddenly become antiquated, or that local residents can no longer take the grueling summer heat. They're just tired of losing, and so is Stars general manager Don Logan, who insinuated that a change from the Padres to some other major-league affiliate could happen after Las Vegas' deal with San Diego expires 13 months from now.

While there is an argument of some merit that says if the Stars had "Fireworks Night" every night they would be hugely successful at the gate, it's easier to believe the quality of the team's play is the leading factor in the attendance stalemate. This is, after all, Las Vegas, and Las Vegans have long since established that they will not mindlessly support a losing sports team.

It's time for the Stars' front office to take the risks associated with finding a new club and locate a more hospitable caretaker than the Padres.

Logan sounded like he was ready to do it Sunday, and the thousands of empty seats at this still-beautiful ball park looked as if they agreed.