Ultimate Baseball Road Trip (115 page)

Petco Park has reinvigorated the Padres fan base, the area surrounding the park, and everything else except for the team, which has struggled to score runs on a consistent basis since Petco opened. Kevin’s cousin Jeremy, who lives in San Diego, says, “Being a Padres fan can become a chore.” But we’ve heard similar sentiments expressed by fans in other cities who later changed their tunes. Josh felt that way until his Red Sox won two World Series in the first decade of the new century. Much like the surrounding area, however, San Diego fans remain a laid back bunch (Harry the Heckler aside).

While the team fades in and out of competitiveness, the Padres have yet to truly rise to an acceptable level of relevance since surging toward the World Series in 1984 and 1998—both of which they lost. Sure, things aren’t as bad as when owner Ray Kroc took over the PA microphone and said of his new purchase: “I’ve never seen such stupid ball playing in my life,” but they aren’t that good either. When you live in a place where the weather is often perfect, going out to the ballpark seems like a great idea. But so does going to the beach, or hang-gliding, or rock climbing. Like many West Coast cities, San Diego has a lot of summer activities competing against each other for patrons’ attention.

So the question becomes whether the experience of playing at Petco adds or detracts from the quality of team the Padres’ front office is putting on the field. The sad reality is, Petco doesn’t offer much to lure free agent bats to town. It’s a pitcher’s haven.

And as we’ve said before, Petco doesn’t much look like a ballpark from the outside, so the anticipation of walking through the turnstiles amidst the absence of red brick often synonymous with going to the ballpark is lost at Petco. With its white steel girders and sandstone, the Pet feels a bit like a suburban shopping mall, until you get inside and see the green grass and brown infield dirt.

But once inside, the ballpark experience is a pretty darned good one. The fans are decked out in uniforms old and new (though we prefer the brown and yellow of old), even if they’re not all as intense and die-hard as your average Phillies or Yankees fan. And a game at the Pet is sure to be played amidst beautiful weather even if the team is playing ugly. But it seems that it will take a team capable of a playoff run to get bandwagon fans off the beach and into the ballpark where they belong.

Fireblasts, Foghorn, and Fireworks. What words were you thinking of? Whenever a Friar belts one out to the beach, a foghorn blows, fireworks explode, and flames blast (visually reminiscent of the
Wizard of Oz
and smelling like a burger joint) near the center-field JumboTron. Sadly, there isn’t a guy blowing, or is it cranking (?), a real live foghorn. The sound is a canned recording of the horn on the USS
Ronald Reagan,
a nuclear aircraft carrier that once resided nearby.

This mascot is one of the most original in all of sports. The balding, robe- and sandal-wearing man of the cloth who symbolizes the Padres can’t get enough baseball. Picture Friar Tuck carrying a baseball bat instead of a staff and with the thick face of, say, Fred Flintstone. The Friar actually predates the big league club, having served as mascot to the Pacific Coast League incarnation of the Padres.

One interesting twist comes in the middle of the 5th inning when the Swinging Friar turns into a gun-slinging Friar, shooting red hot bullets of meaty hot dogs from his baseball gun out into the crowd.

Kevin:
I never expected to see that.

Josh:
What can we say but, “Amen”?

San Diego is a town that takes great pride in its servicemen and servicewomen. And the members of the Navy and Marines who are stationed in San Diego return this affection by going above and beyond the ordinary call of duty in their interactions with the greater community. Oftentimes on Sundays, a large number of Marines march into the ballpark to present the color guard, then they spend the afternoon watching the game in uniform from the outfield seats. And sometimes on Sundays the Padres wear special camouflage jerseys.

Harry Maker has spent more than a decade making life miserable for visiting left fielders in San Diego. When we spent a few innings sitting with Harry on our visit to Qualcomm years ago, he told us the Padres had already promised him front-row seats at Petco. When we returned to San Diego to visit Petco, we found that the Padres had delivered on their promise. With his handlebar mustache, ponytail, yellow and brown Padres hat, and throwback Tony Gwynn jersey, Harry is perhaps the most hated fan in all of baseball among visiting players. The man was born with a healthy set of lungs and over the years he’s learned how to use them to his team’s best advantage. Visiting left fielders cringe each time they trot to their position, because they know they’re going to hear an earful.

The great thing about Harry is that he keeps it clean and never gets personal. He doesn’t have to resort to lowbrow heckling, because he does his homework. “I spend each off-season researching all of the left fielders in the league,” he told us. “I look for their weaknesses as players—deficiencies in their games—and I write myself notes for when the season begins.”

Harry’s not a drinker either—at least not when he’s at “work” inside the ballpark. He told us he drinks lemonade instead of beer because it’s better for his vocal cords, which he needs to keep well hydrated if he’s going to last nine innings. Did we mention this man is loud, very loud?

When we were in town on our first baseball trip, Harry was riding “Larry” (aka Chipper) Jones. Before the game, Chipper had sent a clubhouse attendant out to the left-field seats to offer Harry an autographed bat as a bribe. Wow, that’s respect. But Harry gave Chipper the business just the same, complaining that the Braves star didn’t hand-deliver the bat to him. “How do I know it’s really your autograph, Larry?” Harry called to Chipper, knowing full well that Chipper Jones simply hated being called by his given name.

Bribing Harry is something many players do. He’s gotten scores of autographed bats over the years. And he also gets more than his share of balls. As each inning begins, the Padres’ left fielder tosses a warm-up ball to Harry. He keeps the ball in the first inning, then gives the remaining eight to the youngsters seated nearest him.

As for the player who got most upset at Harry’s act—hands down, Harry said, it was Barry Bonds. “Bonds swore he [would] kill me if he [could] ever get his hands on me,” Harry said. “But I eventually wear on them all. Some players give me a lot of feedback, while others hardly give any indication that I’m bothering them at all. But I know I’m getting to them.”

The only visiting players Harry doesn’t harass are out-of-town left fielders who previously played for the Padres. Harry gives them a break. Whether you love him or hate him, Harry is a San Diego institution. As a kid in the 1960s he used to ride his bike to Westgate Park to watch San Diego’s Pacific Coast League team play. Now as an adult, he’s not just a spectator but a player of sorts himself.

“It’s one game between nine players and nine players, but it’s another game between me and the one player in front of me,” Harry said. “The grass in left field is my grass, and I let them know it.”

You can find Harry the Heckler on Facebook if you want to be his “friend.”

If any mascot has transcended his role as kiddie entertainer and become a veritable folk icon, it is the Famous Chicken (aka the San Diego Chicken). The
Sporting News
even named him one of the hundred most powerful people in sports for the twentieth century, along with Muhammad Ali, Babe Ruth, Jesse Owens, and other great athletes. The chicken has appeared on baseball cards, shown up at rock concerts (Elvis, the Doobie Brothers, Jimmy Buffett, Cheap Trick, the Ramones, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis), and performed in all fifty states and numerous foreign countries. But most of all, he is associated with the San Diego Padres.

The San Diego Chicken was born as part of a radio promotion in 1974 when Ted Giannoulas signed on to wear a silly chicken suit—one his mother had made—for $2 a day at the
San Diego Zoo. Giannoulas was told to set up a nest at the zoo and hand out candy to kids as they passed through the turnstiles during the week before Easter. But this was not to be a one-week gig. The man inside the suit had a vision. He was more than just a mercenary. He was an actor at heart, a showman with unparalleled flair. The crazy bird became famous.

The Chicken debuted at San Diego Stadium on Opening Day 1974 during a game against the Astros and quickly became a mainstay at the ballpark, delighting crowds with his antics.
The Baseball Bunch
called looking for an interview, then the
Tonight Show
, and so the legend grew. Soon other teams started hatching their own mascots, but none—save perhaps the Philly Phanatic—won the hearts of fans in quite the way the Chicken did.

Then in the late 1970s the Chicken almost lost his feathers when Giannoulas and KGB—the radio station that had originally hired him to wear the suit—had a contractual dispute regarding when and where he could perform. Eventually KGB fired the Chicken. Later the California Supreme Court declared Giannoulas a free agent and he returned, wearing a brand-new chicken costume in June 1979. The return was memorable, to say the least. Flanked by a California Highway Patrol motorcade, he rode into San Diego Stadium inside a gigantic egg atop an armored truck. After the egg was lowered to the field by Padres players, the Chicken hatched out, to the roaring approval of the forty-seven thousand fans in attendance.

“Well, what do you want to do today?” Kevin asked. Our research at Petco had gone beautifully the evening before and the next game on our schedule, in Anaheim, wasn’t until the following day. We had before us an off-day in San Diego with time aplenty to kill.

Josh didn’t say anything. He just looked down into his Grand Slam breakfast longingly.

“We could hit Sea World or the San Diego Zoo. We’ve got the beach. We could go to the Air and Space Museum,” Kevin said, relishing the break in our hectic road trip schedule. “So Josh, what’s it going to be?”

“Ballgame,” muttered Josh, his head slung down toward his breakfast plate.

“We don’t have any ballgames today, buddy. We checked the schedules, remember?” Kevin said. “There’s not even a decent minor league game nearby to hit. Besides, we’re in the vacation capital of the world!”

“Ballgame!” Josh spat, and this was where Kevin became worried for his friend. It had been a long trip. We were road-weary and a long way from home. Kevin was afraid it might have become too much for Josh.