(April 8 marks the 50th anniversary of the first major league game in Padres history. To commemorate the occasion, the Union-Tribune is producing a nine-part series on memorable debuts through the years. Today: Chapter Five ... The Greatest Pitching Debut Ever)

Jimmy Jones was preparing to load up his car for the drive back home to Texas after helping the Las Vegas Stars to the 1986 Pacific Coast League championship when Stars manager Larry Bowa called the right-hander into his office.

Jones was going to the big leagues.

“It caught me off guard because the first half of the season I didn’t throw very well,” Jones said. “I never really even thought about. ...

“Of course, I made all the calls to the family.”

Jones was back on the phone a week later to tell family and friends to make the drive from Dallas to Houston to see his major league debut with the Padres at the Astrodome.

That is a day — Sept. 21, 1986 — Jones will never forget.

“All these people were here,” Jones said. “I didn’t want to go out there, pitch four innings and shower up. I didn’t want to disappoint them.”

He didn’t. Not by a long shot.

Thirty-three years later, the past decade as the Padres’ Double-A pitching coach, it remains Jones’ greatest moment on a baseball field.

Jones nearly did the unthinkable, allowing only one hit in a 5-0 win over the Astros. “I guess I’m on cloud nine right now,” Jones said after the game.

Tracked down by phone this week in Amarillo, Texas, where the Sod Poodles are preparing for the new season in a new ballpark, Jones said it took some time for his accomplishment to sink in.

“I was fortunate enough for it to be a day game, which meant there wasn’t enough time to get nervous,” said Jones, who also credited having Benito Santiago, his catcher in the minor leagues, behind the plate. “I could certainly feel the adrenaline like every other start, but a little bit more because this was the big leagues, something you think about since you’re 5 years old.

“Once the day’s over and you get a chance to reflect, you’re thinking, ‘OK, OK, that just happened.’ Then it becomes really exciting.”

Jones struck out five and did not walk a batter in the game. The only Houston hit was a third-inning triple by pitcher Bob Knepper.


Knepper was also the Astros’ only baserunner, meaning Jones had come within a pitch of a perfect game.

Padres center fielder Kevin McReynolds and right fielder Tony Gwynn were kicking themselves for not catching the ball Knepper hit. They may have gotten to the ball if it hadn’t been the pitcher at the plate.

“Aw, the darned thing should have been caught,” Gwynn said after the game. “I was playing Knepper (who is left-handed) to pull, even though he’s hit the ball the other way a couple of times. Mac was playing him more the other way. If I’d have been moved over just a step or two toward center, I’d have caught that ball.”

Knepper’s hit went to the gap in right-center field.

“I just wish real bad there was some way I could have caught that ball, or they could have given me an error on it, or something,” McReynolds said then. “If it was any other hitter, I’d have caught that ball, but I was playing the pitcher toward the left-center alley. I just missed it by about a step.”

Knepper was a career .141 hitter who was batting .093 coming into the game.

“I don’t think I’ve ever broken up a no-hitter before,” he said. “But I swing the bat OK. It’s no shame to lose it to me.”

Jones’ performance was arguably the greatest pitching debut in modern baseball history.

Two other pitchers have tossed one-hitters in their debuts — San Francisco’s Juan Marichal in 1960 and Boston’s Billy Rohr in 1967. Rohr came within an out of a no-hitter. But neither pitcher was as close to a perfect game.

It was the 11th one-hitter in Padres history. There have now been 30 one-hitters in the franchise’s history. Through 7,983 games, the Padres still are waiting for their first no-hitter.

Jones never would approach such success again. He went 9-7 in 1987 and 9-14 in 1988, then was traded to the Yankees. The mid-90s velocity Jones displayed out of high school had disappeared and never returned. He also pitched for Houston and Montreal before his eight-year career came to a close.

Jones was selected by the Padres with the third overall pick in the 1982 draft. Dwight Gooden was chosen two picks later by the New York Mets. Gooden won the 1985 Cy Young Award and helped the Mets to the 1986 World Series title a month after Jones’ debut.

“Since he had been a No. 1 draft choice and much ballyhooed, that was a big deal,” former Padres broadcaster Bob Chandler said by phone last week. “Jimmy Jones when the Padres drafted him and signed him, he was like the Texas High School Athlete of the Year with a great fastball. ...

“His coach overused him in the Texas high school playoffs and he never had that same fastball with the Padres. But he had a great game that day in the Houston Astrodome.”

Jones garnered national attention in high school when he struck out 28 batters for Dallas’ Thomas Jefferson High in a 16-inning playoff game in which he threw 251 pitches.

“He had a very live fastball and the makings of a very good curveball,” said Tom Romenesko, who was the Padres’ farm director during the 1980s “It wasn’t as consistent as far as velocity and movement. I’m not going to say it was that one game, but that was very detrimental to his career.”

Romenesko is now a scout for Arizona. Speaking before a Padres-Diamondbacks game earlier this week, Romenesko still bristles at how Jones was used by coach Gerald Turner in his last high school start.

“He had a decent major league career,” Romenesko said. “His coach cost Jimmy the potential of a very good major league career,” Romenesko said.

Jones doesn’t dwell on what happened in high school.

“Those were different days,” he says.

Instead, Jones remembers what Turner, who was among family and friends that night at the Astrodome, told him after the game.

“He said, ‘Hey, you need to remember this is something to remember your whole life,” Jones said. “I knew I still had a career to do, or at least attempt to do, but at the same time, I realized I needed to absorb all this.

“That’s when it started dawning on me, ‘OK, this is kind of a big deal.’ ”

Friday: Straight to the majors.