Padres Home Opener 2011

Jon and I drove down to the ballpark together a little after 1 o'clock.  Our search for free parking kept expanding around the ballpark until we finally parked on Market and 19th on the other side of the freeway.  Much to Jon's dismay, I've never paid for parking at a baseball game and I don't plan to start now.

After a walking a half hour we finally reached Petco Park and there was already long lines to get in.  We skipped these and headed to the block party on K Street.  Randomly we bumped into Dex while he was on the corner getting ATM - getting money from the ATM.  He was on his lunch break and we all went in the block party where they had a line of roach coaches serving food.  All of us agreed that we wished that they'd do this block party for every game, or at least during weekend games. Jon and I found a coach serving delicious foods.  He ordered and ate a Monte Christo and I had the best Philly Cheese steak ever.  We both drank Mexican Cokes, that's what we call them here in America. Take a look at that picture of Jon's throwback 1935 Ted Williams Padres Jersey.  That's sick right?  He only wears that for special occasions.

Once inside the park we walked by fans hugging and greeting their Padres ushers in a joyous reunion after a long winter. I thought to myself how annoying it is when fans get really attached to -- "Hey look there's Pad Squad Andre!"  We rushed over to him smiled adoringly at him while he wished us a Happy Opening Day.

It was time to go to our seats.  It was then that I realized that I had been telling everyone that we were sitting in section 317, when really our seats were in 318.  Oh well.  After all these years I can never remember that even numbered sections are on the first baseline. 

Much to our chagrin our seats were in the second to last row.  It was a warm Spring day down below, but a cold and blustery Winter's day in our seats.  We clutched our arm rests tight and fought off our feelings of vertigo.  The pre-game ceremonies were beginning.

An executive from Sycuan Casino was throwing out the first pitch.  Jon was pissed.  "Last year they had Phillip Rivers throw out the first pitch!"  I commented on his jersey.  "That's one of those fake Padres jerseys from Target, somebody get him a real jersey!"

Then came the team introductions.  Dick Enberg was the Master of Ceremonies for the second year in a row.  Somewhere Ted Leitner was grumbling about his 32 seasons of service and Jerry Coleman was glad not to be in a Tuxedo. 

As usual Enberg seemed a little bit too complimentary towards the Padres' opponents.  "Welcome the World Champion San Francisco Giants!"  and "Two time Cy Young Award Winner Tim Lincecum!"  I rolled my eyes.  I thought it was understood that the announcer would read off the opponents names in a monotone voice to a chorus of boos from the crowd.  What the eff was this?  Padres fans did cheer for Tim Flannery and Bruce Bochy though which I guess would be alright if we weren't about to play them.

Finally it was time for the Padres' introductions, oh wait we have to sit through the introductions of Padres trainers, staff and clerical workers.  "Get to the starters already!" I screamed quietly to myself.

Jason Mraz sang the National Anthem in harmony with some other dude.  He was introduced as "San Diego's own Jason Mraz."  Mraz isn't from San Diego, he just moved here at some point in the 90's.  I don't know much about him other than that everybody always talks about him like he's a San Diego native even though he's from Virginia.  I think I also read somewhere that he washes his hair with avocados.  The singing sounded good though, check it out:

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Let's see what else happened? Let's switch to bullet points:

• The Padres are celebrating their 75th anniversary this year, if you count back to their days as a Minor League team.  In commemoration of the anniversary, the Padres brought back players from different eras.  There was one of two surviving members of the Pacific Coast League Padres, the one that's not Bobby Doerr.  The original Major League Padre Ollie Brown was there too.  Mark Loretta was also in attendance.  Then with the tolling of the bells, Trevor Hoffman jogged out of the bullpen and then walked to the mound.  It was rad. 
  
• Jon noticed the rust on the steel I-beams.  I thought they repainted the steel every year, but apparently not.  Jon told us a story about how the steel for Petco Park was shipped in from China and it was needed in a hurry, so they put a bunch of Chinese painters on board to paint the steel in transit.  He swears it's true.
• Jon also noticed and we all agreed that the World Series Trophy on the back of the World Champion hats looks phallic. Two dudes were wearing them in front of us, it made it hard to concentrate on the game. 
• We ran into Jordan from Bring Back the Brown in the Padres store.  I wasn't wearing any Padres gear or Padres colors.  He glared at me.
• We collected hugs from Pad Squad Alicia.
• Dex bought one of those new Padres hats that the team will wear with their new camouflage uniforms.  He kept telling us how it'll look good with his skin tone and color pallet.
  
• On our long walk back to the car.  Some homeless dude started following us.  He asked if we remembered him.  When approached by homeless, my routine is to always agree with them.  So he told us he'd been watching all the cars on the block to make sure that they weren't stolen.  Then he started getting angry and said we owed him money.  I told him we didn't drive and don't have a car, changing my story from a few seconds ago.  That confused him enough so that we could get away and run to the car.

We also won the game.  More on that later.  Maybe.