San Diego Padres

First of all, sorry about the layoff. The past week has been filled with family, Disneyland, Universal Studios, The Reagan Library (I'm a devout liberal, but the library was still pretty interesting), All In The Timing, San Diego Zoo and PETCO Park. No time whatsoever to do any blogging, which is kind of nice sometimes.

The wife and I spent our first wedding anniversary in San Diego where, amongst other things, we took in a San Diego Padres game. The whole weekend made me wish that Los Angeles and San Diego were flipped geographically so I could drive the short 60 miles into town, park downtown, stop somewhere and get a bit to eat and a beer, and then hoof it to see a Padres game at beautiful PETCO Park rather than fight traffic, hit McDonald's so I have something to eat while I wait in the parking lot line, hike a monster hill because I'm not allowed to enter on the field level, and then sit in the parking lot for hours trying to go home at a Dodgers game. And this comes from someone who really likes Dodger Stadium.

Let me give you one big warning though. Do not, whatever you do, think that you will buy merchandise at the Padres Team Store inside PETCO Park. You will find nothing that a normal, sane person would find reasonably priced, so just suck it up and buy a t-shirt somewhere else before hitting the park. It will save you some serious gasping and moaning.

I fully intended to make a purchase on Sunday at the team store. I love all of the old brown and gold merchandise that the Padres used to wear and they now sell at top dollar. I expected the prices to be outrageous, but sometimes that's what you have to pay for quality. Well, once I looked at a Moonlight Graham shirt that was priced at over $80, my heart sunk. I perused the section some more and found nothing worth purchasing.

So I turned my attention on some new merchandise. It was then that I realized just how boring the Padres logo is (I like simple and classic, but the Padres logo and color scheme are downright depressingly dull). I walked around the store looking at $60 throw blankets and $35 plain t-shirts featuring this painfully boring logo and found nothing. My wife found a nice, simple $40 t-shirt and I nearly fainted.

Then I found it, the perfect shirt. A Nike t-shirt with the Padres script and the old Friar embroidered right on the front and the "SD" logo on the sleeve. It was a very nicely designed, classy t-shirt that I would have worn all of the time. When I looked at the $60 price tag I exclaimed very loudly "holy shit!" (the mom with her kids right behind me didn't appreciate that very much and she shot me the nastiest look). Wondering if that could possibly be right, I asked a friendly Padres employee if it was marked correctly. She seriously laughed in my face and said that it was. So I slinked out of the Team Store sad and dejected.

Luckily the rest of the day made up for it. The ballpark was beautiful, the food was good, the game was exciting and there was no traffic on the way home. I just don't have a souvenir to show for it.