Nothing fancy here. Just my (since-deleted) tweets about the Padres’ rollercoaster ride from the All-Star Game until the NLCS elimination by Philadelphia. Had to take a bit to decompress. It was a lot.
TL;DR Bob Melvin. Tatis’ follies. Trade deadline wins. Epic walk-offs. Offensive droughts. Beating two 100+ win teams in the Wildcard and NLDS series. An improbable NLCS match.
We’d seen games in person back in April and then June (1L, 1W), but the second half was way better than we had any right to expect. What. A. Season.
***
7/19. Me installing the browser extensions that block “trending topics” when the pettiest fans in baseball gripes about SD’s all-star 2B.
As a kid I watched my favorite player, the Cubs’ perennial all-star 2B, go down in flames every all-star game. I’m used to it by now, but that doesn’t make it any less petty.
7/24. A goofy Padres loss on national TV is as good a time as any to bring back my SD Seasonal Silliness faux-dataviz. Like 2021 the Pads started pretty well, & though they haven’t yet collapsed, it’s only late July—so I will likely be laughably anxious in public about this team again.
As penance, I’m making an extra chart showing SD wins as Soft-Serve Keir (2021) and losses as Sisiphean-Padre Keir (2019), deliberate indignities reminding me that “baseball is stupid and nobody should watch it” (as a wise podcast once said). LFGSD.
7/25. Two blowouts in a row = two Sisyphean selfies.
7/30. If the Pads lose tonight, they’ll go 7-10 on Saturdays, by far their worst day of the week, win-wise.
It would make them 2-4 in the week since I posted the 2022 Silliness Chart. They do like Fridays, though. The day breakdowns are:
Sun 9-7
Mon 6-5
Tue 8-6
Wed 7-8
Thu 6-5
Fri 13-4
Sat 7-10
(perhaps not coincidentally, tonight’s game is on national TV again)
7/31. They had been on a Sunday skid for the past 6 weeks (except for the 7/3 win against LA), but Sunday’s been their second-best day for wins, and remains that today with their 10th Sunday win.
Sunday soft-serve is good.
8/1. I’ve learned my lesson; when I ignore baseball news, then new baseball news happens. [Padres trade Rogers for Hader]
Tomorrow’s MLB trade deadline hype is beginning to seep into my other hobbies. “The DM is offering to trade a 13th-level bard to another campaign for a 6th-level rogue, a sexy NPC, and a bag of dice, but the bard’s citing his no-trade clause and holding out for more XP.”
8/2. When I read the news about a certain awful Padres 1B briefly holding up the blockbuster due to a no-trade clause, I worried that I manifested it with the previous tweet.
The implication that my beloved 13th-level swords bard might somehow be an incarnation of that wretched player unnerves me. Even more so than when the radio station plays my favorite U2 song beneath the 1B’s “you’re listening to the Padres radio network” bumper.
Ok well a key difference is that my bard will not be traded to Boston and languish on a last-place team. He’s over the hill, but he’s not washed.
Blockbuster trade deadline soft-serve is also good.
8/3. Game face, or second back flat tire in three weeks face? If you guessed “both,” you are correct.
This is gonna be a fun team. [SD goes up 5-0 over COL in the 1st.]
8/5. 6:40 games > 7:10 games.
8/6. I very much dislike dropping three Sisyphean Padre Keirs in a row on the season W/L chart, but Saturday nights are always tough on SD this year, and especially so in LA.
8/7. Watching Pirates-Orioles with the Baltimore radio feed for some relatively stress-free small-market baseball, before mentally wading into the LA/SD melodrama later tonight.
I mean the radio announcers are debating the merits of lunchables and dunkaroos when comparing cold ballpark food and if I wasn’t sold before (I was) I would be now.
8/8. Until last week, the first 15 seconds of U2’s “The Fly” was 2022 bumper music for a certain ex-Padre saying “You’re listening to the Padres Radio Network.” Now it is liberated, for folks like me who like certain music from way back in the 20th century.
RHPs Mike Clevinger and Nick Martinez (the ones who literally rock when pitching) get metal songs I don’t recognize, the Caribbean & Colombian players get tunes I can’t place, & 2B Jake Cronenworth gets a weird pop jingle I’ve never heard before.
I’ve only placed a few other Padres radio bumpers in 2022:
Manager Bob Melvin: “Sweet Emotion”
LHP Blake Snell: “One Way Or Another”
RHP Tim Hill: “Love Rollercoaster”
CF Trent Grisham: “Rock the Casbah”
1B/OF Wil Myers “ABC” (or “O.P.P”)
Everything else feels…after my time.
Anyway, the idea of a relatively obscure ’90s U2 tune as part of that mix was always hilarious, especially since it was called “The Fly” and they gave it to a guy who mostly hit grounders.
Just remembered that they gave MacKenzie Gore “Semi-Charmed Life,” (a fun choice for a hot-prospect rookie) but of course he is no longer a Padre either.
8/9. From the “scouting future Padres” department: 10 years ago today the DuBois Baseball Tour made it to Camden Yards, the 9th MLB field of 15 we hit from 2004-2016. It was nearly rained out. At 3B for the Orioles, in his MLB debut: Manny Machado. At 1B for the Royals: Eric Hosmer.
Baltimore was 60-51 when they called up Manny from the minors, and the O’s made the playoffs. Coincidentally, San Diego today is 61-51 and skidding, but still clinging to a wild card spot. For now.
And Manny walks it off tonight. 💣 💣 💣
8/10. This team is fun again. SD sent 10 men to the plate this inning. Batting around was a fun experience in little league. I imagine it’s killer for big leaguers, especially to come back from zero to take the lead. [The offense came back after a long drought.]
8/12. Entirely too much news happening this week. [Tatis Jr. busted for PEDs.] In 2022 I had not expected the Democratic Party to have a better news week than the San Diego Padres. Not quite the inverse of that week in Nov 2016 between the World Series and the election, but way too close.
8/19. Only the Padres could trade for two of the game’s best hitters and the league’s best closer and end up losing two in a row, at home, to one of the worst teams, due to underperforming offense and said closer getting severely chronic yips. The collapse looks different every year, but its coming is a certainty.
8/26. They usually like to strand runners for weeks in a row, so the funny thing about random blowout wins like tonight’s is that the next like eight games will be low-scoring and they’ll go 3-5. [SD beats KC 13-5.]
But a win is a win and soft serve is soft serve.
8/27. Taking a series against a team that wears blue and white! What a concept! Ideally they remember what this feels like next weekend. Hope is a dangerous thing.
9/2. Well whaddya know, they remembered what beating a blue and white team feels like, at least for one day/ [SD beats LA 7-1.]
9/3. Best possible outcome of the cringeworthy “position player pitching” scenario. Down by 10+ runs, and the veteran utility guy comes in from LF and goes 1-2-3 with the bare minimum. [Wil Myers pitches in a blowout.]
Not quite as glorious (but certainly close) as the early 2021 incident with a 2B on the mound and a pitcher in LF.
9/4 Good to see the Nats embracing the identity of chaotic neutral spoiler, as every eliminated last-place team should.
The Rockies and DBacks will absolutely do this to San Diego in the coming weeks; I’m simply trying to mentally prepare for the inevitable
9/6. I leave the room and they start scoring. I am choosing to not take that personally.
Now Bell homers and I may never watch another game again.
I am perfectly happy to listen to games from two or three rooms away as long as I get soft serve at the end. [The offense came back after a 26-inning drought.]
9/9. April 2021 was the last time LA and SD played anything like equals. It was extra innings and exhausting and wild and SD won and it happened again tonight.
Watching a baseball team rise and fall daily is crazy-making. It’s a long season. Last year at this time SD was already collapsing. They might this year too—it’s a tough schedule to finish on.
All down by way of the Kay [Wilson relieves Clevinger and strikes out Turner, Gallo, and Thompson.]
3 wins in a row after 3 losses in a row means I’m gonna have to bike off the soft serve this weekend but it’ll be fun.
It’s silly to make comparisons but SD is *so* close to being, like, the 2003/04 Red Sox in many weird/parallel ways. Eventually the bigger badder team down the road becomes less of a monster. LA is so good this year that it might not happen immediately—but it could happen *soon.*
9/10. There’s a creepy and gross prepper-supply ad I noticed over a week ago. It’s run on almost every radio commercial break during tonight’s LA/SD game. Hey @MLB & @Padres, please don’t take money from maliciously predatory right-wing yahoos.
9/10. Tonight’s loss made them 9-15 on Saturdays, which is still their worst night this year, win-wise—but Friday is still their best:
Sun 12-10
Mon 8-8
Tue 13-8
Wed 12-9
Thu 6-7
Fri 17-6
Sat 9-15
There’s no real reason to compile these stats, and yet.
9/11. I don’t mind when they lose—I’m used to it with this team—but I will admit that I take it personally when they lose to a ruthless, boot-on-your-neck bully, and just roll over and die instead of knocking the bully’s teeth out on their way down.
9/20. My earworm of the year is the Padres Hot Tub bumper music. 🤘🏻🤎💛🤘🏻
9/21. When MLB dot tv cut out briefly before Don Orsillo could say “all down by way of the K” there was a brief riot at Chez DuBois. And someone heard us. The stream flickered back on just in time.
9/25. Good day for baseball so far: the Padres hit for a natural cycle in the third inning. Soto singled, Drury doubled, Cronenworth tripled and Myers homered. They lead 7-1.
Nine games left and I haven’t cared this much about baseball in September since 2016. I will surely be insufferable for the next week or so. Thank you for your patience.
If San Diego somehow pulls off 6 wins and Milwaukee also loses 6, SD makes the playoffs for the first time in a real season (because 2020 doesn’t count) since…2006? I will then also be insufferable in October for however long that lasts.
9/26. Revisiting The Chart two weeks later, 8 for their last 14 (with 9 games to go & 1 day before a series with the blue team), 2022 looks way better than 2021’s long Egyptian decline—with the Actium-level equivalent in St. Louis exorcised by a winning series and a bonafide winning record.
Swipe 1 of 3 from LA and then 2/3 from the Sox and Giants and they’ll be fine. That it doesn’t seem unreasonable at the moment is maybe the coolest thing about it.
9/27. They swiped it almost in spite of themselves, but a win is a win and the magic number for a playoff spot is 4.
Their numerically palindromic record of 86-68 as of tonight is also a low-key pleasant sight.
9.29. Magic numbers flyin’ all around the feed. 🤎💛
Swiping scenario proceeding as planned.
10/1. Still proceeding as planned🤞
10/2.
Good day for soft-serve. 🤎💛
….aaaaand they back into the playoffs because of “another team loses” math. I’ll take it!
Just remembered that the glorious prospect of a Vedder Cup World Series could happen this year. All-West Coast. Everyone east of, like, Salt Lake City ignores it. Two of the best ballparks in MLB. Two unique sets of team colors. Two playoff-starved, much-maligned franchises.
Listening to Mets/Braves via NY radio on the MLB app and the announcers really seem like they’re trying to talk fans off the edge. “This isn’t a collapse” and “They could still win 100 games,” and I’m thinking that Padre fans would love to root for a 98-60 team fighting for first.
A Mets/Padres first round playoff series would line up so many different fan base neuroses against each other.
Tonight the part of “celebratory playoff soft-serve” was played by mint chip ice cream.
10/3. Myers endured so many lean years but end up going to the playoffs in the last year of your contract and he put a period on it with a dead-center three-run bomb in Game 160.
10/4. I’d love to see 90 wins after Game 162. I have no idea how they’ll do against the Mets’ pitchers this weekend, but a 90-win season with a playoff appearance would work well for me.
Gonna need a slightly taller chart now. 🤎💛
10/5. Alas, only 89 wins for the year, but that was still good enough for 2nd place in the NL West and the 5th playoff seed, with at least 2 games of bonus baseball in Noo Yawk Siddy. And yes the chart has become slightly taller.
10/6. Brief look at the timeline has confirmed that most of today’s MLB playoff wisdom is garbage and I am being well served by careening through a rush design job until the weekend.
10/7. LFGSD.
I hope Daniel Camarena is celebrating this somewhere somehow. [Machado hits the night’s 4th HR off Scherzer.]
Playoff soft-serve 🤎💛
10/8. I don’t make predictions but I do have favorites. SD over NY of course. SEA over TOR because sentimentality. Seeing CLE win the year of their name change would be nice. Indifferent about PHI but STL losses always deserve celebration.
10/8. The guy who struggled at the plate all year [Grisham] has hit big bombs in both playoff games. Trent has a message for his haters.
One half of a potential 2022 Vedder Cup has advanced.
PADRES ANXIETY INTENSIFYING RAPIDLY.
Welp at least there’s one more game.
10/9. Only game in MLB today. Win or go home. 🤘🏻🤎💛🤘🏻
Absolute clown moves by the Triple-A franchise from Queens.
I was not wrong about Mets-Padres neuroses.
Playoff series win soft-serve. ✅
And again, the chart gets a bit taller.
10/11. Heavily disfavored 89-win underdog team, derided by 99% of the league and sports media, who just outplayed a 100-win Mets team, squares off against the 111-win Big Blue Borg?
Easiest choice ever. LFGSD. 🤘🏻🤎💛🤘🏻
“Umpire Reviewed Homer” is the name of my next band.
Perhaps in a month, a week, or even a day I’ll be laughably embarrassed about how much I lost my mind for an 89-win baseball team when I could’ve cared about the world’s actual problems.
But not right now. Besides, going nuts for the 2016 Cubs was Right and Good. Same vibe now.
10/12. “Back in Ventura County, but still with pre-existing commitments” edition of LFGSD for Game Two.
It must feel awesome to answer 50,000 boos with one well-placed bomb.
Had to step away to run a D&D game where my players are navigating a plague and I come back to 1) a Padres win over LA because apparently 2) a goose was on the field???
A win is a win. Soft serve is soft serve. Go Padres.
10/14. Update: Hoskins is feeling fine now.
8-year-old Keir says #LFGSD 🤘🏻🤎💛🤘🏻
Once again @bmcarlisle25 with the quick trigger finger of “SHOW ME THE SOFT SERVE” in the group chat before I even have time to think.
10/15. One more win. One win at a time. One out at a time. One strike at a time. 🤎💛
HOLY MOLY [the game is tied]
ALL DOWN BY WAY OF THE K.
Gotta lie down.
THE BLUE BORG IS BEATEN.
The chart gets significantly taller this time.
(Also: Nola vs Nola is gonna happen.)
10/16. Today’s only bummer is that there will be no Vedder Cup. Pour one out for the Mariners.
I’ve deleted many tweets but the embarrassment hasn’t happened yet. Also I rewatched innings 6-9 and am still watching the bottom of the 7th inning over and over and over.
10/17. Still mainlining all things dragon-slaying from Saturday, including this cut of the bottom 7th radio call, and was struck by one particular phrase from @jesseagler as the rally began:
“The run will score, and everybody’s safe!”
A light in the tunnel.
I have never replayed any sporting event media for the dopamine rush like this before. Not even for the 2016 Cubs World Series win.
10/18. This week’s Philly series will be tough, against an evenly-matched team that’s also been hot at the right time. I have no idea what will happen. I’m just stoked I get at least four more Padre games in October. 🤎💛
First National League Championship Series since 1998 but my vintage late-‘90s beanie ain’t workin tonight.
…annnnnd now at least three games.
10/19. The way this day is shaping up I’ll definitely need to rely on things that I can’t control for it to end well, such as a win by the San Diego base ball team.
Oh and it’s a day game, so at least I’ll get resolution earlier.🤘🏻🟤🟡🤘🏻
I actually needed this very much today. 🤎💛
10/21. This has been lots of fun to keep up with during the season: https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/34839541/padres-mark-nlcs-wins-polaroid-celebrations
My Padre bike shirt hasn’t been lucky on game days this year, but as everyone knows “the postseason is different,” so I risked it on today’s #KeirByBike and discovered, after 18+ years living in Ventura, that there is a San Diego Ave. here on the far East Side. #LFGSD 🤎💛
Actual MapMyRide screenshot of your hero as he saw the street sign, decided to go full cringe, and turn around to take a bad selfie. “Such a bandwagon fan move smdh.”
I could blame the shirt or the lack of hits with runners in scoring position, but I’m choosing to blame bad umps and baseball’s institutional East Coast bias.
10/22. I have no cringey pix and nothing else to say about tonight’s game besides LFGSD. 🤎💛
It’s become that time where I mute other Padre fans wallowing in their own doomerism.
Oh, the Padres are losing? Fans should be used to that by now. Pads did that 73 times this year and 4 (so far) times in the postseason, and all but a few other seasons in their 50+ year history. If they lose tonight there will be at least one more game tomorrow.
This has been the best Padre season I’ve seen since jumping on this bandwagon in 1998 as a long-suffering Cub fan. They beat two 100+ win teams in the playoffs (including LA). They beat their own attendance records. They spent big in the offseason and the trade deadline.
They traded away toxic players and got superstars, some of the latter surely returning next year. They did all this in spite of relentless and callous contempt from other teams, fandoms, umpires, and sometimes even MLB itself.
Maybe this is all copium or Level-1 online fan silliness but I don’t care. I have enjoyed this season immensely, especially compared to last year’s collapse and the 2020 fake season—and maybe even more than 05/06. Other people can fan how they want, but this is how I choose to.
Forgot to mention contempt from the national sports media & even some local SD reporters. More importantly, Padres who’d been struggling all year got great shining moments in the playoffs.
And again *they beat the 111-win LA team* who’d been bullying them forever. Works for me.
10/23. Same vibes today. Go Padres. 🤘🏻🟤🟡🤘🏻
On balance I’m happy with what they did this year considering all the bumps. Can’t wait to see what happens next year.
While I would have loved to debase myself for at least one more day, it is not to be. On to 2023. 🤎💛
Fairly easy to root for the Phillies in the World Series, despite today’s Padre loss to them. A 6th-seed National League wildcard/underdog, made up a bit like the Padres if somewhat inverse, with a 2016 Cub leading off against either Houston or the Yankees? I’ll take it.
10/25. This and also because during the NLCS, the San Diego Padres were “I have been in the revenge business so long, now that it’s over, I don’t know what to do with the rest of my life” personified as a baseball team: [QT @PanasonicDX4500: “The Houston Astros are a perfectly engineered baseball machine of death no one in their right minds would challenge, but the Philadelphia Phillies are ‘That sign can’t stop me because I can’t read’ personified as a baseball team.”]
