Just a few days after getting home from Colorado and Wyoming, I headed out west again. This time I was going to California for three baseball games. I wanted to combine my nearly annual trip to Los Angeles with something else. We were going to the Dodger game on Tuesday and a minor league game on Wednesday. So that meant doing something on Monday or Thursday. I looked at the minor league schedule for Thursday and the only games out west that would be easy to get to were places I had already been to (Reno and Las Vegas) and Sacramento (which I’m hoping to get to next year for an A’s game). So that meant going to a game on Monday, but there are usually no minor league games on Mondays so I went to a Padres game. It was my third Padres game. I saw Dodgers-Padres in 2012 and Pirates-Padres in 2017.
This was Diamondbacks-Padres. I had mixed feelings about the game. Both teams are division rivals. Both teams were tied for second at 14 games behind the Dodgers. So there was no obvious rooting interest for the benefit of the Dodgers. The Padres have been probably the Dodgers’ biggest rival this decade (the Dodgers beat them in the playoffs in 2020 and 2024 and lost to them in the playoffs in 2022). But the Padres’ starter was Dodgers World Series hero Walker Buehler. I hate that Buehler is on the Padres, but I can still root for him as long as he isn’t playing the Dodgers. On the other hand, the Padres’ first three hitters were my three least favorite active players other than the cheating 2017 Astros who are still around: Fernando Tatis (cheater), Jake Cronenworth (Michigan), and Manny Machado (Manny Machado). So I guess I was rooting for the Padres to win this game 1-0 with anybody other than those guys scoring or driving in the run. Unfortunately, Walker Buehler was not good. It’s a shame he didn’t come around when pitchers weren’t throwing too hard because maybe he could have stayed healthy and had a great career. Since having his second Tommy John surgery, he is 16-18 in the regular season with a 5.18 ERA and a 1.50 WHIP. Before his second Tommy John surgery, he was 46-16 in the regular season with a 3.02 ERA and a 1.04 WHIP. He’s had a nice career with some great postseason moments, but if he had come around a couple of generations earlier, he might have had an Orel Hershiser-type career.
The bad news was that Buehler was bad, but the good news was that the Padres didn’t hit. The Diamondbacks took a 2-0 lead in the first with runs scoring on a throwing error by Buehler and an RBI single by Max Kepler. Buehler ended up giving up seven runs in five innings, with Max Kepler and Geraldo Perdomo hitting home runs off of him. Nolan Arenado added another home run later to make it 8-0. And that was the final score.
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| It's not as good as PNC Park, a great view at Petco Park. |
Petco Park is really good. It’s one of the best in the Majors (I have it ranked fifth among stadiums that still exist, but the second best to be built after Dodger Stadium in 1962). It opened in 2004, but I noticed during this trip that it has a little bit of a Fenway Park thing going on with ramps in random places a slight changes in elevation walking around the lower level. I visited the Padres Hall of Fame, which I think has been added since my last time there nine years ago. Since it's the Padres, it wasn't very big. The craft beer selection looked really good. I didn’t have one because I was definitely going to have a beer the next night at the Dodger game. I did get the short rib quesabirria tacos. They were fantastic. Being in San Diego, I was hoping for fish tacos, but I didn’t see any. I’ll take a hot dog at a baseball game any day and be perfectly happy, but these might have been the best specialty food I’ve had at a baseball game.
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| They gave me a fork, but the structural integrity of these tacos was very good. |
So to summarize, the good news was that the Padres lost and the stadium and the tacos were great and the bad news was that Walker Buehler wasn’t good. Oh well, he’ll always be fondly remembered by Dodger fans (he's on the All-Jim Team). It was 72°, attendance was 38,204, and the game was two hours and 25 minutes.
The next day I was off to Los Angeles. I’ll get to the game later, but I took the train from San Diego. I had done the opposite train ride in 2017. Going from San Diego to Los Angeles, most of the first half of the ride is right along the coast so that was cool. The stop at Anaheim is right by Angel Stadium. So I saw three Major League Baseball stadiums on this trip, but only attended games in two.
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| I took this picture from the train. |
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| Shohei Ohtani used to work here. |
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