Lunch with Padres Media Relations

I forgot to mention it when it happened, but jbox and I recently had lunch with Warren Miller and his media relations team, Brett Picciolo, Josh Ishoo and Shaun O'Neall who runs the Padres Magazine.

It was a pretty informal meet-and-greet. JBox and I didn't really have an agenda other that to keep in contact with Warren who has been very gracious with us and to meet some other dudes who put together what we as fans see and hear about our favorite team. If the Padres organization was a large sea lion, then those in our lunch bunch would be the sea lion's vocal chords, barking incessantly and occasionally mooing. Letting you know that you should throw some raw fish its way so as to satisfy the needs of its gray, blubbery body.

Shaun O'Neall looks the part of a grizzled beat reporter, now spending his days shilling the five dollar magazine. Brett's a younger guy. Probably a little younger than me or jbox. Chiseled features. The cool and calculating type. Josh looked like the youngest guy at the table, but he could've easily just been baby faced. Josh wasn't wearing Padres colors. Bastard.

Lemme just say right off that everybody was real cool to us. However, Brett did come off a little bit tight lipped, to match his cold and calculating features. It was like he might be afraid of what me and jbox might say to you, dear reader. As if at any moment something might be revealed, wherein I would pull out my trusty laptop while jbox would cry out, "Check and MATE!"

The only time he really perked up was when I called out Josh during lunch. We were asking them where they all were from and who they rooted for outside of work. Josh said, almost apologetically, that he rooted for one of the "big East Coast teams".

"Don't worry. It's not the really bad one."

"Which one do you think is the really bad one?" I asked.

"Oh, the Yankees of course."

I looked him in the eye and told him, "You sir, are much much worse."

JBox and I then went into a brief diatribe about how Boston fan is so smug about their championships, but furthermore feel like they're entitled to be smug because they were "long suffering". Yankee fans are just douchey, but Red Sock fans somehow end up being douchey and whiney at the same time.

That was the part where Brett perked up a little bit and started nodding, I think a little encouraged that we were right about something. Anything.

So, we insulted Josh and we weren't really sure if Brett liked us much at all.

Shaun, on the other hand, was very enthusiastic. I think we had a bond right off because the "salad" that came with our sandwiches consisted of shredded lettuce with no dressing.

Sure, we said. Send the not so subtle message to the fat guys.

We talked a bit about how the traditional media gets their hands tied and how little they can really report on because of the lack of hard proof. For example, he was pretty confident that most every sportswriter out there knew about steroids well before Jose Canseco exposed it to the world. It also didn't seem to come as a surprise to him that Ruben Rivera had been sneaking underage girls into bars and that Jim Leyritz is a swinger.

We also compared notes on some of the beat reporters who are left and what the state of the Padres online world is.

In summary:

• 619Sports is doing a great job.
• MightyXX gets love from us because their interviews are good, they've shown us love, and their website is MUCH easier to work with than 1360's (read: I can open the site up and not be worried about NSFW content).
• Sabermetric type fans are a niche that's tough to target, and, I guess, not one that gets targeted heavily.
• Clayton Richard is doing a great job with his Facebook Fan Page.
• Lots of regular conversation happens on Gaslamp Ball and the SignOnSanDiego forums.
• Twitter's great if you're willing to put the time in to figure it out.
• Paul DePodesta should blog more about more.

That's about it. JBox and I didn't ask for press creds or anything like that, though I'm still hopeful that Warren, despite insulting his team at various points during the lunch, will help us get some better interviews during the offseason and into next season.

Also, I'm hopeful that having a better relationship with these guys helps us get more better info with which to mold and shape into humorous anecdotes and wild assumptions.