Padres owner Ron Fowler needs to stop talking

Padres owner and executive chairman Ron Fowler loves to talk. He’s on the radio regularly, and the Union-Tribune has no shortage of interviews with the man. Access to a team owner can be a great thing, but only if said owner isn’t talking out of his ass. He made national news last year when he publicly tongue-lashed James Shields. Then he did it again just a couple weeks ago with Jered Weaver. And in his latest conversation with the Union-Tribune’s Bryce Miller, he dropped a brand new doozy.

Fowler defends the team’s decision not to lower beer prices, for example, to lure customers.

“We emphasize family entertainment,” he said. “The lower beer prices and such, we’re not looking to encourage people drinking a lot of beer. We feel the way we handle beer sales is appropriate. We balance family entertainment and people having a good time at Petco.

God, I don’t even know where to start with this. Ron Fowler literally made his fortune selling cheap beer. But now prices have to be jacked through the roof to keep the drunks away? I don’t know how many games Ron has actually been to this year, but the prices need to get a lot higher if he doesn’t want to see wasted people at Petco. And maybe if he’s so concerned about the place being family friendly, he should kill the Friday night beer/wine/cocktail-fests.

There’s really only two possible ways to parse that statement: Fowler is either an idiot or a lying hypocrite. These options are not mutually exclusive, but the solution to the problem is obvious: It’s time for the rest of the team ownership to put a gag on their executive chairman.