The other night I had a fun Padres dream. Part of the context involves a confession (surely appropriate for a Friars blog), a request for penance and a question as well. So I'll take a detour, but I promise I'll get to the gruntling dream in a moment.

So, I'm applying for a major grant that would give me the money and teaching leave to look at the development of fan culture in the late 1800s to early 1900s around Aussie Rules football, soccer in the UK, and of course baseball in the US. And I need to choose a city for each. While I wish I could choose SD, the city needs to be on the East Coast cause baseball got big there first (this is the confession part, please forgive me seeking to study them!) - the options are NY, Boston and Chicago, and I'd chosen NY, but a Bostonian colleague reviewing my draft application said Boston was closer in character to Melbourne and considered more sports mad than NY. So I told him that I hated the Red Sox slightly less than the Yankees, and I am now leaning a bit towards Boston cause it seems a decent fit and the term "kranks" was developed their to describe obsessed fans. So my question is which East coast city should I choose and why?

Anyway, my colleague was speechless when I noted my antipathy to the thieving Sox, which might be why, in a later email, he told me that he didn't think he'd ever met a Padres fan in his life! This snooty revelation helped spark the dream, along with the imminence of spring training and the glorious promises that this entails.

So in the dream our wonderful Padres are in another game 163 and victory will take them into the playoffs.Exactly who we were playing was unclear, but I hate all our opponents anyway.

I'm watching the game on MLB TV, and after a tense first few innings when the Friars fritter away opportunities, the suddenly start dominating. And I'm not just using the D word to excite Drama. The details of the game passed me by in a dreamy, delirious blur, though I do remember that I was constantly replaying hits, home-runs and enemies flailing helplessly at pitches (I guess young Josh Spence must have been throwing some flames). By the time the 9th inning begin, the Pads are up by a mere 26-3.

You know who I spotted playing second base? A spry David Eckstein himself, back with all his scrappy panache! Just as I enjoying seeing him do his little-man strut of his stuff, he catches the final out. And the dream ends with the announcer (Matt Vasgersian?) yelling out that you might not know any Padres fans, but they're in the playoffs, and they're gunning for your team!