On Supporting a Shitty Team

I am a native San Diegan. I was born at Scripps Hospital and grew up in Point Loma. I started at Francis Parker in pre-kindergarten at age 4 and graduated from there a few days after my 18th birthday. I then moved across the country to go college and, for all intents and purposes, I have not lived in the city ever again. I used to go back and visit often enough, but then I moved abroad in 2010 and I haven't really been back to the United States, let alone San Diego, since. My siblings moved to other parts of America before I did, and a few years ago my parents left San Diego, as well. I've also lost touch with most of my high school friends - moving away quickly and never spending more than a few weeks at a time when you do come back will do that -  so now the only thing connecting me to the place I was raised, the place that I called home for the first 18 years of my life, is, sadly, the San Diego Padres.

I generally don't buy into the idea, created no doubt by marketing departments, that once you pick a sports team you have to be loyal to that one team for the rest of time, regardless of what happens. In what rational world does that make sense? You have to support a team, no matter what? We're all supposed to believe that some random American who became a Fulham fan a decade ago because Brian McBride and Clint Dempsey just happened to play for them is still living and dying by the Cottagers' results? Tell you what - if he is, he's a sucker. We all know sports teams are businesses just like everything else, but we've convinced ourselves - or, perhaps, allowed ourselves to be convinced by entities with vested interests in keeping our loyalty - that somehow they are different. To paraphrase the most insightful thing ever said about professional sports: every time we call it a game they call it a business, and every time we call it a business they call it a game.

There are exceptions, however. Exceptions that are personal to each individual fan. And for me, it's the Padres. Don't get me wrong, I have waned at times. As I've mentioned before on this site, I lived in Boston at the height of the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry. I went to a game with my brother and we sat down the first base line. He bought me a beer even though I was underage and we saw Brian Daubauch hit a grand slam against the Marlins. I sat in the bleachers under the overhang behind home plate at an early April game absolutely freezing, because despite living in Boston for four years I never learned to dress properly for the weather. And when the Sawx finally won the Series I celebrated like they were my team. I lived in LA and went to a lot of Dodgers games. It was fun. I would pay 8 bucks to sit in the upper deck and buy cheap hot dogs and turn around and watch the sun go down over downtown Los Angeles. I lived in Virginia and watched a lot of Manny Acta-era Nats games on MASN. I would drive up to DC and sit in the empty lower bowl and drink coffee that had a hint of hot chocolate in it and sweat in the humidity coming off the Anacostia.

During those periods I didn't particularly care about Padres baseball, but then again the Padres didn't particularly give you much to care about. (If you can believe it...) But my family always had the season tickets. We spent the 1998 season going to games using tickets my dad would get from work, and ended up at about 20 regular season games, and four playoff games. 1999 was our first year as season ticket holders, down the right field line. We were pretty close to the field, and I was a shitty teenager, so I yelled at Raúl Mondesi asking if he wanted a beer, knowing full well that he had been charged with a DUI the year before. He nodded. And then when Petco opened our seats were still first base side, but now second deck, just past the pillar. No more yelling at players, but an amazing view of the game. And we kept those seats for a long time. And so even when I wasn't paying too much attention to the Padres, every time I went back to San Diego I made sure to go to a game, or two.

And then I moved away, and I stopped caring about baseball for a little while, because when you're in a new country that has its own sports and you want to fit in and the internet is shitty and it's winter during baseball season and you can't afford MLB.tv anyway, you stop paying attention. And then your parents tell you they're retiring, and giving up the season tickets as part of the cutback, and you're ok with that, because you're in love with someone from your new country and you want to stay there forever, and you haven't watched a game in years, so whatever.

And then one day in 2015, after spending all but 13 days of the previous five years outside of America, I suddenly missed it. I missed baseball. And the team I wanted to watch wasn't the Dodgers, or the Nationals, or the Red Sox, it was the Padres. And I can't explain it, except to say that sometimes, when you pick a team - or, perhaps more accurately, when a team picks you - you're stuck with them for life. So maybe the marketing departments are right. But there's just one thing...

I hate supporting the Padres. I really do. There's the practical shit: I live nine, sometimes ten time zones away, which means during the summer I stay up until 3 or 4 AM just to catch a couple of early innings. I then waste most of my morning watching the previous day's game, usually already knowing the outcome. And finally I have to go on Twitter and read people on the Atlantic Seaboard complain about how late Padres games are, trying not to scoff as I pour an entire pot of coffee down my throat. To be honest, though, that stuff isn't so bad. I've been a night-owl my whole life, so it's not hard to stay up late. The mornings do suck, though.

The real bad part of supporting the Padres is, well, the Padres. There is so much to dislike about the organisation, from the death-by-boredom uniforms and Ron Fowler's seeming determination to be baseball's number one outspoken idiot owner to the Entercom deal and the fact that, as HJ Preller so eloquently pointed out, we all know who the fuck Wayne Partello is. Their apparent fear of MRI machines. The retired numbers being removed from the top of the batter's eye so they could use that space for advertising. Their, as the Steve Dangle Podcast might say, "shut up, here's a scarf, go Padres" attitude to the fans. Their continual assertion that what people really wanted was the old PCL Padres uniforms back. (This one, thankfully, appears to have gone by the wayside.) AJ Preller starting every sentence with "yeah no."

I'll stop now. Because I could go on, and despite that fact I still support this stupid fucking team. And I guess I hate myself for it. (My increasingly foul language would suggest as much.) I hate myself for it because I always thought I wasn't a goddamned sucker when it comes to sports. But the Padres (and Cruz Azul, to an extent... But that's a different post) have proven that in this particular case, I am. Because I put up with all their shit and I still care about them. When things get really bad in August and September I find myself switching over to American League games, because I have a rotating cast of teams I follow in the AL and watching them lose doesn't bother me the way watching the Pads lose does. I don't want to support the Padres, but I do.

With (almost) every other team in every other sport, when they say it's a game I say it's a business, and if it gets bad enough I simply refuse to support their business. With the Padres I have no such control. I'm married now, to that someone I mentioned before. Someday we'll have kids. I've still not been back to the United States, and we probably won't raise our kids there, but they'll be Padres fans. Because I love the Padres, and there's no fucking way I am going to suffer through this shit alone.