A review of Jerry Coleman Day from someone who didn't attend Jerry Coleman Day

I'm out of town so I missed out on Jerry Coleman Day. I had to get my fix from videos on Padres.com and Twitter. Neither of which probably did the ceremonies justice but it's all I had.

Both the location and the statue were a surprise to me. Jerry's bronze likeness stands in the corner of the East Village entrance. I thought for sure he'd be at the main entrance by the waterfall. I had about seven other guesses too, but I wasn't even close. Shows what I know. I'm not sure how I feel about the location yet without having seen it in person. I guess I'll wait to form an opinion until I see the structure Fox Sports decides to build in front of it first.

Even though I thought there was a chance that the statue would depict a young Coleman in Marine flight suit, I thought it was a long shot. Of the three stages of Coleman's life: the Marine, the Teammate and the Voice, the only one that has no connection to the Padres is the Marine. I get that the Padres are trying to make a connection to the team of the military, but he is overwhelming known and celebrated as the team's broadcaster. It would seem more fitting that the statue would represent him as such as we celebrate his 70 years in baseball. Still I can't complain it's a good looking statue and a powerful tribute to the Marine.

I watched Jerry's speech too. This would be a good place to embed it if my iPad allowed me to do such things. Anyway as you all know Jerry doesn't like a lot of attention on himself and because of that his speech came off really random, at least to me. Here it is Jerry Coleman Day and instead of talking about his life or his new statue he covers three major points. First, people said the 2012 Padres would lose 100 games, they didn't. Second, the team has manager Buddy Black to thank, he's a genius. Third, people think player's wives have it easy, but they don't. Like I said, it was random. He was purposely trying so hard to deflect the attention that part of the moment was lost. But I think if he really talked about how much today meant to him he would have become too emotional and Jerry's just not the type to do that in front of a crowd.

We all love Jerry Coleman and he deserves this recognition, whether he was comfortable with it or not.