The Padres to host first official Pride Night at Petco Park

The Padres have finally decided that it's safe to be officially OK with gay people attending and enjoying a baseball game. I'm sure they were OK with it before, but that was much less official than it soon will be.

For years, San Diego Pride has hosted an Out at the Park event at Petco Park. The planning for the event (I like to imagine) occurred in back rooms, in the shadows and out of the sight of prying eyes of Petco Park personnel in charge of "officially sanctioned" events. But now that the nation has embraced unity and love beyond all of the "traditional" loves like love between a man and a woman and love between mother and child and love between a boy with a shotgun and his sickly dog and love between a chubby blogger and an Oreo cookie, it's time for us to make some new traditions. Let's give new meaning to "traditional".

Interestingly enough, the Padres official page for buying tickets to Pride Night mentions the word "networking" twice (emphasis mine):

It's Pride Night at Petco Park on September 1. Enjoy a night of networking, entertainment and baseball as the Padres take on the Rangers at 7:10 p.m. The first 1,000 fans to purchase Pride Night tickets will receive a limited edition Pride-themed Padres hat. All Pride Night fans will enjoy networking at Park at the Park presented by the Greater San Diego Business Association and the National Anthem by the San Diego Gay Men's Chorus. $5 of every Pride Night ticket purchased will be donated to San Diego Pride, GSDBA and San Diego Gay Men's Chorus. Use promo code Pride2015 when purchasing your tickets for Pride Night.

Is "networking" gay code for something I'm not familiar with? If so, I'm totally down with it. I recently read Aziz Ansari's Modern Romance, but there was very little that covered gay dating culture, so I don't know what the latest lingo might be. If the latest lingo does include "network" as one of the things that will make this event successful, then I would encourage you to go and develop your networks. Do this for the rainbow hat if for no other reason at all. If the Padres haven't covered off on every other color as part of their official color scheme yet, then that rainbow hat will provide an opportunity for you to future proof your Padre hat collection against any sudden red/orange/yellow/green/blue/indigo/violet changes.

The Pride Night happens tomorrow, September 1. Mark it on your calendar, go out and do something gay for once and be proud of it instead of all weird and uncomfortable about it.