Let's take a ride in the Way Back Machine to April 27, 2005:

"It's hard to put together a game as bad as we did today. There's absolutely no excuse for it. We were just horrible. That's pathetic baseball. They know it.''
     -Bochy

"First order of business: Invest in some diapers. If every single player on this team is going to just go ahead and crap on himself every other game, spare the clubhouse guy the pain of having to clean it up."
    -Dex

The Padres had just been killed by the Giants, 10-3. This coming off the heels of a another mistake ladden loss the previous day. Now, I don't know if it was Bochy's 15-minute tirade or Dex's rant, but the Padres went 16-3 over the next few weeks. Most will say that it was Bochy's tirade, but shouldn't he have gone into meltdown mode by now? And I'm not talking about one with a St. Louis cabbie

Today, with their off day, Bochy needs to get medieval on their asses. He needs to channel his inner Patches O'Houlihan. This team is allowing the city of San Diego and Padres fans to be portrayed as chumps. The media is making a mockery out of them and us. Well, Bruce, don't tell it to Scottie and B.R. Tell it to the team; put a freakin' chip on their shoulders.

Those of us who have been fans since the Bob Owchinko days have had to put up with (mostly) everyone outside the 619 either making fun of us or ignoring us. When ESPN and Regis mock the Padres, they are mocking us, the fans. The team represents us. And then that team goes out, makes dumb mistakes, faltering in the clutch, and not playing good fundamental baseball, it elicits either anger or depression from us. Padre fans are starting to lose hope. Hope! Hope is what we have at the start of every season. Something that drives each of us to believe that this year is THE year. But we can only have hope if we believe that the outcome is possible...even if there is only a 99.99% chance of it happening. We have faith that the .01% possibility could actually happen. But it is hard to place faith in a team that seemingly doesn't even want to win. Someone has got to light a fire under them. It is time for Boch to do what he did back on 27th of April. They can either continue to have themselves, their manhood, and their abilities to be mocked and ridiculed, or they can sack up and play like they once did for one glorious month when they fooled some us into thinking that they were '84, '96, or '98 good.

A comeback this weekend would be more impressive, more unbelievable, more emotional than the comeback of 1984. They have to come together as a team, with or without Jake Peavy, and punch the Cardinals, the media, and fans of every other team in baseball in their collective mouth (and why not kick them in the jock while they are down), just so they can deliver the line from "Coming to America" when everyone reminds Eddie Murphy (as the barber) that Rocky Marcianao kicked Joe Louis's ass, "F--- you, f--- you, f---  you.  Who's next?" Even if they get rolled in the NLCS, at least they would have gone down fighting.