San Diego Padres: A Plea to Peter

Fans of the San Diego Padres have a very simple request for Peter Seidler. The following is an open letter from fans addressed to the owner.

The time has come for you to take over the main leadership position of the Padres. Ron Fowler has passed his sell-by date, and the team’s newly new direction (as opposed to the last new direction) demands a new face and voice.

Since you are relatively new to San Diego, you will need a deeper understanding of the damaged psyche of the collective Padres fan. Having grown up as part of the O’Malley clan, your experiences with the Dodgers have absolutely no comparison to ours down here.

During your family’s tenure, the Dodgers won six world championships and 13 National League pennants. By comparison, the Padres have made it to the World Series only twice and lost both times, albeit in a shorter time frame. San Diego has won two league championships and had only 13 winning seasons since 1969.

Dodger fans may whine about not winning it all since 1988, but down here we don’t even have that luxury. Instead we have a series of laments about bad calls and worse luck.

We’re sure that Mark Langston’s pitch to Tino Martinez in 1998 was strike three. Instead it was called a ball, and the next pitch turned into a grand slam. Game, set, match.   In 2005 the Padres faced the St. Louis Cardinals with their ace on the mound. However, Jake Peavy pitched with a broken rib, injured ironically in the team celebration of the division championship, the result being a 12 to 6 smack down.

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And who can forget game 163 against the Colorado Rockies for the division championship? That gut-wrenching seesaw,13-inning affair ended with the Padres losing when Matt Holiday supposedly crossed the plate, a call that lives on in infamy.

This brief primer should help you understand our collective angst. As we dare to hope for better days, you can start by cleaning out the front office of anyone brought in by Mike Dee. The designer of the new uniforms that have been ridiculed across the nation and perhaps the globe, as well as the creator of the most unimaginative promotions in all of baseball, should also be shown the door.

Next: A Worthy Goal

Those small actions alone will begin to win our hearts and minds and prove that you are beginning to understand the reality of being a fan of the San Diego Padres.