Missed It By That Much V.1: The Padres
In the immortal words of Warrant, "Heaven isn't too far away." Unless you're a Padres fan.
A few weeks back, I began the first of a couple recurring series I’d like to run for the foreseeable future, and this week I’m launching the second. As I write this, there are five MLB franchises who have never won a World Series, and I thought it would be interesting to take a look at each team’s closest brush with that hunk of metal that might not mean much to Rob Manfred, but certainly matters a whole lot to those of us who actually love baseball. First up is the San Diego Padres.
On the surface, the Padres are an easy team to root for. The best player in franchise history, Tony Gwynn, was a down-to-earth, folksy man of the people, who also happened to be one of the greatest hitters to ever pick up a bat. And their traditional uniforms, with their unconventional brown and mustard color scheme,* are iconic and unique. Plus, their swinging friar mascot is top-notch.
*For some reason, the Padres changed their look in the early ‘90s, resulting in a series of bland and sometimes regrettable uniform combinations centered around the color blue. Brown and mustard may not be for everyone, but at least it was distinctive. Thankfully, the Padres bowed to public demand and brought the old uniforms back in 2019. I need to redo my non-powder blue uniform rankings, because I inexplicably overlooked them the first time around. They deserve better.
They are the quintessential underdog, a small-market team in the shadow of the Dodgers juggernaut, a disparity that’s only grown more extreme in recent years, but they usually don’t act like it. In a sport where billionaire owners regularly cry poverty because they reside in a smaller metropolis, the Padres have never relied on that tired excuse.*
*At least this was true during the last decade, in which Peter Seidler was the majority owner. Now that he has passed away, only time will tell whether the Padres maintain this approach.
San Diego has aggressively spent money on free agents, and General Manager A.J. Preller seems to have a running contest with Seattle GM Jerry DiPoto for the title of most transactional front office in baseball, which has brought a lot of talent to Petco Park, including Manny Machado, Fernando Tatis Jr., Eric Hosmer, Yu Darvish, and Blake Snell, to name a few. Not all of these moves have paid off, but it’s refreshing to see an organization go for it. And they have gotten close.
In 2022, they dominated the rival Dodgers in the NLDS, giving us one of the funniest gifs I’ve seen in the process. Take a minute to look it up, if you haven’t seen it. Fresh off high-fiving another Padres fan in the stands, this guy seamlessly turns and sticks his middle finger in the face of a nearby Dodgers fan. To be fair, I’m all for civility at the ballpark and I don’t generally encourage this kind of behavior, but c’mon, that was funny.
Unfortunately, the Padres ran out of steam in the NLCS against the Phillies and lost in five. Last season, they found themselves facing the Dodgers in the NLDS again. After dropping the first game in L.A., the Padres bats bombed the Dodgers out of Chavez Ravine in Game 2, and took a commanding lead in the best-of-five series with a hard-fought win in Game 3. Then the bats ran out of juice. They didn’t score another run in the final two games of the series, and the Dodgers advanced on their way to a championship.
There was certainly no shame in losing to that Dodgers team. Los Angeles was loaded. Injuries to their pitching staff was probably the only thing that kept them from becoming a team for the ages, but their lineup could hold its own against any all-time great team. I mean, the top of their order was Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, and Freddie Freeman. That’s ridiculous, and it’s not like the guys behind them were a bunch of scrubs either.
And this gets to the heart of why the Padres still don’t have a trophy in their case. Winning a World Series is incredibly difficult. To do it, a team needs a lot of talent, and they have to perform at an incredibly high level. No easy feat, but in any given year, there are several teams who check those boxes. So what separates the champion from the rest of them? I’m going with luck.
Some of you just rolled your eyes. I know there are people out there who don’t believe in luck. Call it whatever you want, but I’m talking about things you can’t control. This can take many forms, but more often than not, if you want to win a championship, you need some of them to break your way. The most obvious example of luck is injuries, but that isn’t San Diego’s problem. No, I’m convinced they quite simply have the worst timing in baseball history.
Think about it. Of course, to win a title, you’re going to have to beat some good teams along the way. That’s just the nature of the beast. But it never hurts your chances when the baseball gods give you a kiss. When it comes to the Padres, however, the gods seem intent on handing out a kiss of death.
The Padres have amassed a ton of talent in recent years. Manny Machado finished second in the NL MVP vote in 2022, and that team had Juan Soto on it as well. Last year’s team had four All-Stars in the starting lineup every day, and that included the runner-up to the NL ROY (Jackson Merrill), but not Machado, who had a typically great Machado season, but got no love from the All-Star voters. They also had two pitchers finish in the top ten of the NL Cy Young race (Dylan Cease and Michael King).
The 2024 Padres were a championship level team. They just happened to be playing at the same time as the modern Dodgers, who are basically treating Major League Baseball as their own personal playground, spending money and acquiring talent at a rate that hasn’t been seen since George Steinbrenner’s Yankees of the late-‘90s and early-2000’s. That’s an awfully big Goliath to slay, but this is not a new phenomenon for the Padres.
San Diego has reached the World Series on two occasions, and they matched up with arguably the two best teams of my lifetime. Hell, that might even be selling them short. The 1984 Detroit Tigers and the 1998 Yankees are two of the greatest teams in the sport’s entire history. In fact, more than a few people who know what they’re talking about believe the ’98 Yankees are the greatest team ever. That’s a hard claim to prove or disprove, but take it from someone who was around to see them, they were really freaking good.
That’s not to say those Padres teams weren’t really good too, but man, that’s a tall order. The ’84 Padres weren’t a team of no-names, but outside of Tony Gwynn, their best players were past their prime. Steve Garvey and Graig Nettles were still good players, and Goose Gossage remained a formidable presence in the San Diego bullpen, but they weren’t at their peaks anymore.
Regardless, their veteran presence led them to a 92-70 record and an NL West title. They matched up with a similar upstart in the NLCS, the surprising Cubs led by MVP Ryne Sandberg and Cy Young winner Rick Sutcliffe. The Cubs jumped out to a 2-0 series lead, but the Padres stormed back, winning Game 4 with a walk-off home run by Garvey to knot the series. They trailed going into the seventh inning of Game 5, before an error by Cubs first baseman Leon Durham* led to a rally that handed the Padres the series.
*In one of those weird coincidences of history, Durham’s error was remarkably similar to the legendary miscue committed by Bill Buckner for the Red Sox two years later in the 1986 World Series. Buckner only ended up in Boston because the Cubs replaced him with Durham, in large part because of Buckner’s declining defense.
The only downside of winning the NL Pennant was that they had to play the Tigers in the World Series. Detroit started the 1984 season by going 35-5, the best 40-game start ever, and though they came back down to earth eventually, they still won 104 games and were the class of baseball. Led by Lou Whitaker, Alan Trammel, Kirk Gibson, Jack Morris, and Willie Hernandez, the Tigers smacked the Padres around. The outcome was never really in doubt, but Gibson’s dramatic blast* off of Gossage in the deciding Game 5 put on exclamation mark on the victory.
*Between Durham’s error and Gibson’s first iconic World Series homer, the 1984 postseason really was kind of a test run for some of baseball’s most memorable moments.
I was only five years old in 1984, and I didn’t really start following baseball until I attended my first Royals game the following season. But I was a seasoned fan by the time the Padres made it back to the World Series in 1998. Like 1984, they were considerable underdogs, even if they were superior to the earlier squad.
Tony Gwynn was still doing his thing fourteen years later, and though the rest of the roster didn’t feature several other future Hall-of-Famers (with the exception of the closer, Trevor Hoffman), it did consist of a lot of good players still very much at the top of their game. Greg Vaughn* won the Comeback Player of the Year, rejuvenating his career in San Diego and providing the pop Gwynn didn’t with 50 HR and 119 RBIs. Steve Finley, one of the most underrated centerfielders of the era, anchored the outfield, and Ken Caminiti manned third base with a cannon attached to his right shoulder. Kevin Brown and Andy Ashby fronted the rotation, and Bruce Bochy called the shots from the dugout.
*Vaughn is a legend in Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball for the SNES. For more on why this is the greatest video game ever and why I’m still obsessed with it thirty years later, check out this early PBN post.
I was somewhat torn entering this World Series. Under normal circumstances, the Padres were the obvious choice for the unaffiliated fan. They were the underdog, the small market team, and they were playing the Yankees, for God’s sake. It’s a given that you root against the Yankees in basically any situation. But the Yankees were on the verge of history.
I’m a sucker for history. You might have noticed that I write a newsletter about it, and it goes beyond baseball. My degree is in history, and while I specialized in medieval studies in college, I’m always excited to see it made in real-time. And let’s face it, sports history is a great kind of history to witness, because except for disappointment if your team is on the wrong side of it, no one really get hurts. It may not be as significant in the big picture of the world, but no one has to die for a team to rewrite the record books.
That’s why I found at least a small part of myself rooting for the Patriots to finish their undefeated season in 2007, despite the fact that I loathed the Patriots. And it’s why I was pulling for the Chiefs to threepeat.* And also why I wasn’t dead-set against the Yankees winning the ’98 World Series.
*Despite growing up an hour from KC, and currently residing in the suburbs, I am not a Chiefs fan. I’m not going to untangle my NFL fanhood here, but I do think it’s cool for my city when they win it all. Between that and history, they had my support in Super Bowl 59. Not that it did them any good.
The ’98 Yankees fell short of the record of 116 wins set by the 1908 Cubs, and later matched by the 2001 Seattle Mariners.* But they won 114 games and were absolutely loaded with talent, much of it homegrown, compared to later teams in that dynasty, when Steinbrenner really cut loose with his checkbook. They weren’t even really a dynasty yet, having won their first title in eighteen years in 1996. What I’m saying is they were a little easier to like than most Yankees teams. Or, at least, a little harder to hate.
*The 2001 Mariners failed to win the World Series, another missed opportunity to make history. But we’ll get to that in a later edition of this series. After all, the Mariners are also in the “no championship” club.
Whether you loved them or hated them, it didn’t matter. The Padres were overmatched. In another season, against another opponent, they were absolutely good enough to win it all, but it wasn’t happening against that Yankee team. They swept the Padres, winning their second title in three years. Unlike the Chiefs, they would threepeat, winning four titles in five seasons. To date, they are the most recent MLB team to repeat.
Perhaps the Dodgers will change that this season. Following another eventful offseason, they look to have all the ingredients in place. In order to do so, they will most likely have to go through the Padres again. They will compete for the NL West crown, and the Padres have the kind of talent to force another postseason showdown. The path has only gotten more difficult, but the Padres should be used to that by now.
Perhaps 2025 is the year San Diego finally bucks the odds and makes a little luck of their own.
Thanks for reading Powder Blue Nostalgia. If I have any Padres fans among my readers, I hope I didn’t dredge up too many painful memories. I’d love to hear your thoughts on your team and your memories following the Padres. And I’m pulling for you to finally get that parade, so long as it doesn’t come at the expense of the Royals. If they aren’t playing KC in the Fall Classic, save me a spot on the bandwagon.
While a sweep, that ‘98 WS was a lot closer than most remember. The Padres had the Yanks on the ropes in Games 1 & 3 but the bullpen let them down both times, including Hoffman in his only appearance. Yanks still may have won the series but SD wasn’t a pushover by any means.