We're on to '25
Happy New Year!
First Off…
I hope that 2025 brings wonderful things for all of you, your families, friends, loved ones, etc. I often remark to colleagues of mine from around the country that the fan base here has got to be about as close-knit as any in sports. It really feels like everyone is in on this together and pulling for all the same things. Here’s to hoping that the biggest of those things is being celebrated here in about 11 months.
Speaking of Fans…
ICYMI, the Padres announced that this year’s FanFest will be one month from…yesterday! It’s always a great event and the idea about having two different ticketed entry times this year should be great, considering how busy it’s been the last few times. The kind of turnout we get for this event is decidedly NOT normal around MLB and so ya love to see creative solutions being trotted out. Hope to see you all there.
Number 25 in 2025
In honor of the new year, a list of all the guys to ever wear #25 in franchise history:
I wish I had something insightful to say about every one of them, but alas. That said, allow me to geek out a little…
Mike Cameron was one of the most rock solid and fun-to-watch guys of his generation. His Gold Glove-winning 2006 with the Padres was one of the best seasons of his career, too. His son played 66 games in the bigs last year, btw, and made his ML debut in 2020. We’re all old.
Will Venable: one of the nicest guys ever. Also the first Padre player I interviewed when I got to SD in 2014. He is now the manager of the White Sox. We’re all old.
If last year was any indication, Sean Reynolds will be a name to know in 2025.
Ben Davis: large man, great dude, excellent bunter.
mar-GAV-uh-chiss, for those who don’t remember.
The second Padre to ever wear #25, Tommie Sisk, went to the same HS as Tony Gwynn, which is pretty neat (he’s listed first on that list, but Tony González actually had 25 at the start of the season but was traded to Atlanta in June, at which point Sisk switched from #16 to 25. Van Kelly, acquired from the Braves in that deal, was originally 36, but later that year switched to Sisk’s old 16. In fact, three different guys wore 36 that inaugural season, including Fred Kendall, who would go on to wear, you guessed it, 16, for the bulk of his Padre tenure. And now we all know way, way, way more than we ever thought we would about uniform numbers back in Year One1.
I had planned on writing more about #25, but that one took a lot out of me. Need to save something for when the season begins. Speaking of which…
Spring Training Games 50 (!) Days Away
We’ll be Cactus-ing our way through February and March before you know it. The first Spring Training game of 2025 is just 50 days away (vs Mariners, 2/21) and while the team hasn’t officially released the ST broadcast schedule yet, I can assure you that we will have you VERY covered once again this season.
Between the games on the radio and our ever-evolving webcasts (which now include live video for all the games in Peoria), we will be bringing you about as much exhibition baseball as we possibly can.
Hats off to the Padres Production crew for continuing to improve the quality, quantity and bells and whistles when it comes to the video webcasts. Not easy stuff!
Rickey
I posted about his passing on social media a couple of weeks ago, but like just about every person born between, I don’t know, 1955 and 1990, Rickey Henderson was one of my all-time favorite players. One of those guys that fans coast-to-coast were attracted to, no matter who their team was or what team he was actually on. Smallllll list of guys like that.
Thankfully for Padres fans, he had a couple of stints in San Diego and obviously accomplished some very special milestones here.
Tony Jr. often says that no one made his dad laugh the way Rickey did, which is one of those things when you hear it, you can’t help but smile, right?
As a snarky 20-something in the summer of 2009, I was eagerly anticipating what I thought would be a hilarious Hall-of-Fame induction speech from Rickey in Cooperstown. About 30 seconds in I was reminded that I was a punk kid and he was one of the all-time great figures in baseball history. In my mind, his speech goes down as one of the best ever. It was just so full of life and love and appreciation for the game. If you’ve never seen it, or if it’s been a while, it’s worth your time.
FUNdamentals
I wrote the below paragraphs just after the conclusion of this year’s World Series, but quite frankly, I wasn’t able to fully commit to writing about the Series2, and it’s been sitting in the drafts folder ever since. That said, I think it’s worth throwing out into the universe as we inch closer towards enthusiastically pouring over grainy social media videos of all those fundamental drills during Spring Training.
I don’t think I had really planned to have much to say about the World Series for fairly obvious reasons, but the way the Yankees melted down in the 5th inning of Game 5 was a pretty explicit example of a running conversation Tony and I have been having on the radio for the last couple of seasons, so it’s probably worth getting into a bit here.
There has been in baseball, for let’s call it parts of the last decade and a half, in a lot of corners, a shift away from focusing on fundamentals. This is obvious to most anyone who has watched games or listened to people talk about them. And while I think the pendulum has started to swing back the other way a bit (see: 2024 Padres), the Yankees clearly had not gotten the memo. While that half-inning in Game 5 will forever be remembered for the errors and unearned runs, people who watched that team with regularity this year will tell you none of it came out of nowhere.
Further, there were reports last week about how the Dodgers’ advance scouts had sort of honed-in on this vulnerability and suggested that LA could have success by pressing the issue on the bases. And success they had.
I truly believe that one3 of the ways the 2024 Padres were able to out-perform the 2023 team despite the losses of Soto and Snell and Wacha and Lugo and etc. was that they played a truly winning brand of baseball. Clean defense, a more contact-oriented approach, absolutely stellar base running, etc.
Can a team win a World Series in the year 2025 without being fundamentally sound? Sure. But it becomes that much more difficult. And a team that maybe has a little less fire power can overcome that with good, solid baseball. It will always be talent first, but don’t for a minute think that the little things don’t matter.
Anyway, that’s about all I’ll have to say about the World Series until I’m forced to, ha.
Once again, Happy New Year to all. Is one of my resolutions to try and send a few more newsletters this year? Absolutely. Thanks as always for reading and sharing.
Talk soon…
And let’s call that 1969 timeline kind of unofficial; that info is basically what I pieced together looking at old transactions and box scores, etc.
Nor did I really think any of you would want to read anything about the Series, lol
Another, of course, would be the production they got from guys like Merrill and Profar and Higashioka