A Letter from an Average Every Day San Diego Padres Fan

This is a post about empathy. I'd rather not read comments from semi-regular readers about how this proves that I don't know anything about the Padres or baseball in general. I readily admit that I don't know much about a lot so you can save yourself some typing. -Dex

Dear Padres,

I am a San Diego Padres Fan.

You might consider me "casual" or "fair weather", but I have never rooted for another team other than the San Diego Padres and I do not plan on rooting for any other team. It may upset you to read it, but this includes rooting for minor league teams. I have no interest in college baseball or minor league baseball. As I understand it, the owners of the Padres also control some pretty good minor league baseball teams, but this is about as interesting to me as saying that really happy cows make great dairy products.

I don't want to potentially eat a delicious lunch in three years. I want a grilled cheese sandwich in a timely manner because I am hungry now.

I find sports talk radio loud and obnoxious and all of the talk show hosts sound the same to me. Always going on and on about stuff that doesn't have anything to really do with what I see when I go to Padres games.

Who cares about how much money the team is getting in a TV deal? Just tell me what channel the games are on.

Who cares about the size of the Padres media market? I've been to Anaheim. That ain't a big place and the Angels seem pretty good from year to year. San Diego is bigger than Anaheim.

I read in the paper that the owners were able to pay over $500 million dollars to buy the team. I do not understand why that same ownership group could not fork over an extra $75 million to pay for players that I recognize. In my mind, if I have $5 in my pocket and the thing I really want costs $5.75, it's well within my ability to scrounge up the last 75 cents.

I go to Padres games and I pay good money and I don't expect them to win all of the time, but I at least expect them to be competitive.

No other aspect of competitiveness matters to me other than whether the Padres are able to score more runs than the team that they're playing.

On any given day, when I'm watching a baseball game, I don't care if the people in the front office are smarter than the front office of the team we're playing against. I don't care if we have more future draft picks than the team we're playing against. I don't care if our minor league system is better than the minor league system of the team we're playing against. I don't care if some new fangled stat has been calculated to show that we should win the game.

This is all potential and potential is good, but I pay for kinetic. I know enough to know that the process of evaluating, drafting and developing talent is not a frictionless process. It is a process where potential is great, but product is not guaranteed.

I pay for product.

Somebody could point to other places where their potential was seamlessly translated into a championship caliber baseball team, but I am doubtful that the same could happen in San Diego. I have seen what it takes to get to the World Series in San Diego, and what we are doing now does not look like 1984 nor 1998. I do not need long-winded explanations regarding potential if I am expected to pay for something.

I am the type of person who reads movie reviews before I go to the movies because I do not wish to spend my money watching terrible shit that I could've been forewarned against watching.

If somebody calls me and asks me to invest in a season ticket package for the year of 2012, my first question is if the product, on the field, in motion, regardless of potential, in the calendar year of 2012, will be worth my money. I expect an honest answer.

All this is to say that it doesn't really matter if I'm patient or not because, like I said, I live in San Diego and I'm not interested in rooting for any other baseball team, so I guess I have to live with it, but that doesn't mean that I have to like it. I may be vocal about my dislike about it and I would rather not be berated about how I am not "die-hard" because I dislike what I see from day to day or season to season. I'll also probably pass on season tickets and just attend games here and there depending on how things go.

Please note: It is entirely possible for me to love the Padres and dislike Padres immensely.

In the end, however, I believe that both of us would prefer that I only love the Padres and that my dislike is kept to a minimum as this means that I am both enjoying myself and giving you money.

Sincerely,

Average Every Day San Diego Padres Fan