The Padres Kickstarter

I’m gonna buy the Padres. I am. I’m opening a Kickstarter account with the sole intent of purchasing San Diego’s second most loved team. However, they’re the only team that actually wants to stay in San Diego. Maybe that’s the reason for San Diegans to treat the Padres like they do – like their wife. I’ve had a long strained relationship with the Chargers. This has easily been a one-sided relationship. The Chargers, by all accounts, have no idea who I am or that I exist. Which is actually very similar to most relationships I’ve been in. But, the one I’m in with the Chargers is a tad different because I’m not making out with any of them – except for one weird night back in 2004 when Shottenheimer and I were very drunk and sad and lonely, makes sense when you think about it for hours and hours and hours.

I feel like a team who wants a brand new stadium, only so they can get the ridiculous revenue from a ridiculous amount of press boxes, but that same team hasn’t actually won anything important in almost a decade is a bit, well…ridiculous. It’s like asking a friend to borrow $500 million dollars when that same friend has a long history of losing their job.

The Chargers and the Spanos family do not deserve a new stadium. They don’t. Not in the least. And, when the NFL threatens to stop holding the Super Bowl in San Diego until we build a new stadium with plenty of rich people boxes I sit back and laugh. Why? Cause who doesn’t love the Super Bowl in Jacksonville? Good call NFL. Roger Goodell is the master of making sense and concussions. Regardless, until the Chargers can make one post-9/11 Super Bowl appearance I don’t feel like they need a new dress. But, I guess you’re in luck cause the Chargers don’t care what I think nor do most San Diegans. The Spanos family has threatened to leave San Diego if a stadium agreement is not reached and thank sanity that our Mayor has called their bluff. Problem is our Mayor’s term is almost up and no doubt they’ll be a hoard of Chargers fans voting in a new Mayor based solely on his/her Chargers stance. Which, is possibly the most ridiculously reason to vote for anyone – actually, not it’s not. I’m sorry.

This leads me back to the first part of this thing I’m writing. Back in 1998 the Padres made an extremely smart move – they worked it – hard. They started two years previous, knowing exactly what they wanted to do. They knew that in two years they could put a measure on the ballot to get a brand-new, Baseball only, taxpayer funded stadium voted in. They sat down and thought ‘how would we get such a measure passed’? How about we make the people of San Diego care about the Padres like they used to care about them in the 80’s. How do we do that? Well, they went to the World Series in 1984, so how about we go back to the World Series? They put together a team that could make that happen and not only happen for one year, but it could happen every year until the stadium proposition showed up on the ballot. It was genius and it worked. We voted in a new stadium, which revamped an entire section of downtown and made John Moores a billionaire. San Diego was so happy, until the off-season of 1998 when a firesale as legendary as Bill Walton’s knees burned through the hearts of every single Padres fan. It was over. The promise of a brighter future rested in the arm of Jake Peavy and the steroids of Phil Nevin. Needless to say the next decade was a little uneasy. We paid for a new stadium and got an old team. We married the girl and she immediately got fat. Now we don’t care. We’re on to the new girl and she wears blue and gold. She’s popular and while our wife keeps eating and eating this new girl seems to work out more and more each year. That is until last year. This new girl who has been screwing up our marriage has started to get a little weird. She wants some real commitment from us or she is out of here. You can’t totally blame her, but it still pisses you off. I mean she’s taking off at the exact same time that your wife is going through a terrible crisis. Right now, as a San Diegan you are going through a lot. It’s your entire fault, but you’re still dealing with it and you want nothing more than someone to just figure it out.

Let’s pretend I’m your therapist and I convince you to leave you wife so that I can marry her. Well, that is almost the exact same thing that’s happening to the Padres right now and exactly the point where this analogy dovetails into not making any sense at all.

So, now we sit as jaded Padres fans. We’ve heard the promises, paid for the promises with democracy and commerce. We’ve seen those promises broken time and time again. John Moores made a ton of money from all this downtown development and didn’t spend any of it on the team he promised would contend. You could make the argument that he did raise payroll once we got to PETCO, but outside of a couple first round exits and Game 163’s, everyone knew we weren’t real contenders. We were just visitors overstaying our welcome at a house warming party we weren’t really even invited to. John Moores didn’t really care about the Padres, he cared about money and making more of it and so did his wife, which is why she got a lot of it while choosing to divorce him at the right time. Broken-hearted and a little more broke than before John Moores decided to sell the team and couldn’t even do that right. Jaded Padres fans became disenfranchised Padres fans and as of right now would rather spend the majority of their energy rooting for a football team that’s dying to leave, than root for a crap Baseball team that’s dying to exist.

Moores needs to go, Bud Selig doesn’t give a rat’s ass and the list of owners lined up to take over seem almost interested in owning a San Diego franchise, now that no other team is for sale. In the process of trying to find someone to revive a franchise that’s stuck in a memory, all the gross secrets of just how screwed up we are as a city, team and fans have risen to the surface. I mean hell; we just found out that Tony Gwynn owes a significant amount of money to the IRS! It’s all just a little too accessible and average.

Alas, this is just ridiculous ranting and if you didn’t get the fact that the whole wife/girlfriend analogy was meant to represent the Padres/Chargers then there’s really nothing else I can do for you. Football is more popular than Baseball, and as much as I hate that there is nothing I can do to change it other than invent the flux capacitor and travel back to 1955.

However, the one thing I can try to help change is your jaded attitude towards your wife. She’s had her ups and downs and sure she’s had a lot of emotional problems that you’ve had to pay for, but she really does love you and she will not leave you. She’s committed to you no matter how late you stay out with your girlfriend or say publicly you’ll never buy season tickets again. You’re girlfriend is fiery and temperamental and always claiming she’s taking off unless you impress her friends. You’re girlfriends a B. You’re wife is trying. Don’t cheat on your wife. Kickstarter.com/dallasisbuyingyourwifebywhichhemeansthepadres (this is not a real website, as Kickstarter would not let me try to buy a sports team.)

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