It's an unassuming gesture of hospitality - one that belies station but not character. With neither flourish nor fanfare John Jay Moores bends down and picks up a photographer's equipment bag. He's hoisting it up the lobby steps of his sprawling Del Mar office complex. Here is a man of weight and influence - native son of Texas, software wunderkind and majority owner of the Padres - who exhibits real empathy. Most multi-millionaires would have neglected to lend a hand, either deeming it beneath them or just not thinking to offer. Not Moores.

    What makes his willingness to aid a member of the media more unusual is that the man abhors opening his private life to the masses. He gladly sidesteps the spotlight. Thus, this paradox: by politely assisting a photographer with his tools of trade he ends up bearing rifle for the firing squad at his own execution.

    Actually, camera toting comes naturally for Moores. His father, Cyrus, was a World War II-era photographer. After the war, the elder Moores shot pictures for a Corpus Christi newspaper and later became a commercial photographer. Young Moores often lugged his father's cameras, tripods and assorted photographic odds and ends from job to job.

    Now, here he is on the other side of the lens, painfully posing for shot after shot. A near-smile is coaxed from him. Dark brown hair is parted to a side, but curls unmanageably on his brow. The untamed locks lend an "up-all-night-writing-code" look. A prototype computer nerd, Moores helps look the part by eschewing button downs and ties. If you want to dress like the boss at Peregrine Systems Inc., his $40-million software company du jour, show up in khakis and a golf shirt emblazoned with a Padres logo.

    Those pennant-chasing Swinging Friars are never far from Moores' whirling mind. It’s an appropriate coincidence the team logo on his shirt covers his heart. Lest you forget he owns the local team, Padres memorabilia abounds in his soon-to-be relocated office. A shelved back wall is cluttered with Padres jerseys, photos, mugs, balls and pennants. It’s what a Ray Kroc yard sale would have looked like. Even an office couch - fashioned in brown-leather and shaped like a giant fielder's mitt - reminds visitors that a serious hardball junkie hangs out here.

    That Moores is consumed by a passion for baseball is obvious. The not-quite-as obvious is revealed when he's asked to name his biggest mistake in a seemingly profluent business career. Without hesitation he replies, "The worst financial decision I’ve ever made was buying the Padres. Because they lose so much money."

    Uh-oh. Red flag? This we know of Moores: He grew up in the bigger-is-better Lone Star State, where he and his wife, Becky, attended the University of Houston. John and Becky have donated $72 million to their alma mater - including a 1991 donation of $51.4 million which was at the time the largest such gift in U.S. history. John Moores built a reported net worth of $400 million after founding Houston-based BMC Software. With a departure on the horizon of the Houston Oilers, Moores expresses an interest in owning a new NFL football team there. Baseball, too, may defect from the city, according to Moores' buddy, Houston Astros owner Drayton McLane.

    For the record, Moores says he has no intention whatsoever to move the Padres to Houston. Zero chance. Nada. Roseanne will be back to sing at Jack Murphy Stadium before that happens. But business is business. Moores readily admits buying the Padres was a financial blunder. That situation will have to be rectified. That's what always happens with Moores' business dealings. Mistakes are made, then corrected. It’s highly unlikely the sporting world will ever include the Houston Padres. What is more likely is a post-season escalation of negotiations to build a new - and highly profitable - Downtown San Diego baseball-only stadium.

    "Bone-headed and stupid," says Moores. He is talking about some of the decisions he made in starting up BMC Software. "There was a whole series of technical decisions that were so stupid, I can’t even describe them. If I did it would bore you to death."

    The adjectives he chooses better describe the IBM manager that refused Moores' free offer of a technology he created; a software program that wound up launching his fortune. While working for Shell Oil, he wrote a program that makes mainframe computers work faster by reducing traffic on communication lines. "I said to IBM, here, you can have this," says Moores. Two weeks later he got a letter basically saying Big Blue didn’t want to trifle with his idea.

    At the time, Moores had taken and passed the bar - though he hated lawyering. "Going to law school was another huge mistake I made," he says. "But I was too stubborn to drop out." So while Moores was still with Shell, he was asked to help incorporate a new software company. In 1980, a $1,000 investment and Moores' ground-floor recognition of the fledgling software market led to the formation of BMC Software. Moores created the first four products that the company sold. He used revenue from product sales to grow the company and hire talented programmers and salespeople. More than a few defected from IBM.

    BMC went public in 1988. When that happened, Moores stepped down as CEO but remained chairman. "The last thing in the world I wanted to do was be president of a public company," he says. "I’ve had two successors [at BMC] and they've both done a better job than I have. There's a lot of public attention that comes with that position. The CEO of a public company has fiduciary responsibility, accountability for financial performance. I wasn’t real comfortable with that."

    At Peregrine, a private company founded in 1980 by Chris Cole, Moores has Alan Hunt serving as president and CEO. Moores joined the Peregrine board of directors in 1989. By the early '90s he'd bought up close to 90 percent of the company’s stock and brought it into the John Moores Investments (JMI) fold.

    In 1991, Moores had lured Hunt away from IBM to work at BMC. (Moores was chairman of BMC until 1992.) Hunt didn’t necessarily want to move to Houston from San Francisco, but found it hard to refuse Moores' offer. Next for Hunt was a stint in Boulder, Colo., at XVT Software -another of Moores' holdings. When Moores merged XVT and Peregrine in November 1995, Hunt assumed the presidency.

    Hunt says his goal at Peregrine is to reach the heights achieved by BMC. He predicts that at some point XVT will be sold off and Peregrine will go public. Peregrine's showcase product is a recently renamed and expanded problem-solving package for network management systems called ServiceCenter.

    According to Hunt, Moores is a quietly determined leader.

    "He wants to be the best, and be associated with the best people," says Hunt. "I have no doubt about the future success of Peregrine. And there's no doubt in my mind he’ll make the Padres a profitable team, too." The Padres reportedly will lose $8 million this year - about half what the team lost in 1995.

    Many, including Hunt, have been surprised to see Moores allowing the press into his private life to the degree he has. Of course, a major-league baseball team is a publicity-garnering machine. In Moores' eyes, the Padres are a public trust. That he now must endure the glare and scrutiny that comes with the turf is a little unsettling for the admittedly shy Moores.

    "But this is different," he says. "This is a lot of fun. It’s more fun than anything I’ve ever done in my life. It’s a trip." He says he's saddened when the team goes on road trips. That's not a problem for his baseball-crazy wife, however. Becky regularly travels with the Padres.

    The thing that really makes owning a professional baseball team worthwhile though, says John Moores, is that it doesn’t entail attending a plethora of financial conferences. Or sitting through lots of mind-numbing meetings.

    "I hate meetings - I just don’t do them," he says in a rare flash of ebullience. "I sit on a couple of boards, and I have to do them for that. Other than that, I might walk into a meeting and say hello. But you know, there's not much that’s worth a damn that you can’t tell somebody in three minutes in a hallway."

    A Democrat - although he donated $25,000 to the San Diego Host Committee for last month's Republican National Convention - Moores was nominated to a policy committee by President Clinton a few years ago. He went to one Washington, D.C., meeting. Then he quit. He's not even sure what the committee's focus was. But if being on the committee meant attending meetings, Moores wanted nothing to do with it.

    Unfortunately, even a baseball team owner must attend a few meetings. He searches for a kind word or two about this fraternity he's joined. "There are just a few owners that I’ve met that cast a pall over the whole group," Moores says. "It’s undeniable that the ownership group over the years has made some awful, really stupid decisions. But the people I know are upstanding, decent and honorable folks. I do not know Marge Schott, however." The twice-deposed Cincinnati Reds owner is "quiet as a church mouse at meetings," he says.

    He expects meaningful revenue sharing to be approved this year, thereby cutting a bigger slice of the pie for small-market teams like San Diego. However, revenue sharing in itself won’t be enough to put the Padres in the black. Not like a new stadium would.

    Moores is prejudiced toward building a new stadium somewhere Downtown. The team has a lease at Jack Murphy Stadium through 1999. "There are a hundred issues that have to be dealt with," he says. "We need to study parking, access, traffic ... It’s a complicated decision. We’ll look at it more closely after this season is over."

    On the other hand, columnist, ABC-TV pundit and Padres board member George Will reports, the Padres' move to Downtown is already a foregone conclusion. "I think it’s already been accomplished," says Will, who is featured on "This Week With David Brinkley," and also serves as a board member for the Baltimore Orioles. "The demonstration made in Cleveland and Baltimore [with their new downtown stadiums] makes the case for doing it by fact, not just argument." In both those cities, tickets to all home games sell out; three million tickets to Indians games at Cleveland's Jacobs Field were gone before this season even started.

    Moores puts real weight behind Will's opinions. The conservative commentator has Moores' vote for the long-vacated position of commissioner of Major League Baseball. Claims Will: "If half of the soon-to-be 30 owners were half the gentleman John Moores is, then I'd think about it."

    Almost universally, Moores is perceived as a gentleman. To some, he is the savior of the Padres. Soon, though, he’ll be painted as a rich guy who wants to make more money off San Diego with a stadium built on city taxpayers' backs. Postseason, the real test of faith in John Moores will begin.

    John Moores' fortune doesn’t just stem from having designed a better piece of software. He also figured out how to sell it cheaply and motivate his employees to create new products that people would buy.

    Chris Mortenson, an analyst with Alexander Brown, has been following BMC Software Inc. from the days before it went public in 1988 to today when annual sales have surpassed $400 million and the stock is trading near a 52-week-high of $71.

    "The original business concept, which was at that time unique, was that you could develop software for very specific purposes and package it so you could sell it over the telephone versus having a field sales organization out knocking on doors," Mortenson says. "The advantage of the telephone is it is a heck of a lot cheaper."

    Chuck Phillips, an analyst with Morgan Stanley, says this selling style "led to some of the highest margins in the software industry." Mortenson also says that under Moores' command, BMC pioneered the payment of incentive bonuses to software developers based on how well their products sold. Phillips says the practice of giving a percentage of the profit to the software developers was new when Moores promoted it at BMC and still is something of a rarity in that industry.

    Peregrine Systems, the software company Moores purchased in San Diego, follows a similar model.

    "Pivotal to Peregrine's growth has been a unique approach to product development called product authorship," says a Peregrine document. "With this concept, Peregrine encourages engineers to assume greater responsibility for their product design and delivery by basing compensation on the success of the product. Peregrine continues to attract renowned development engineers with this innovative product development model."

    To accommodate these new engineers, Peregrine moved last year to the former Fujitsu complex on High Bluff Drive, signing an eight-year lease for 95,100 square feet in two buildings.

    Meanwhile, BMC is faring quite well without Moores at the helm.

    The world's 11th largest independent software vendor, BMC has more than 1,400 employees. First quarter 1987 sales were up 35 percent to $126 million. About 85 percent of BMC's business involves mainframe computer system software. Mortenson says the challenge is developing products for the faster-growing smaller computer platforms.

    The company trades on the Nasdaq under the symbol BMCS. A $100 investment the year Moores left was worth $259.17 by March 31 this year.

by Tim McClain