SHOWING THEIR COLORS
Stewart Cink shoots a second straight 63 for a 5-shot lead as he tries to win third RBC Heritage title. Dodgers blue not so dominant as Padres fans have good reasons to keep their tickets
Ruben Sotelo and his son Michael of Chula Vista take in batting practice Friday as the San Diego Padres prepared for a three-game series against the Los Angeles Dodgers at Petco Park. Padres star shortstop Fernando Tatis Jr., who suffered a partially dislocated left shoulder on April 6, was activated from the injured list in time for Friday’s opener.
Finding the pulse of the energized and evolving baseball relationship between the Padres and Dodgers boils down to color intensity.
How much Dodger blue was flowing through the Gaslamp Quarter on Friday, hours before the teams squared off for the first time in 2021? Mere blocks away, how much brown and mustard ringed Petco Park?
Was the cheering more robust from those wearing hats the color of the deep ocean or the others, sporting the dirt-stained hues of a sandlot?
There’s lots of proving to do for the Padres, who last won the National League West when current catcher Luis Campusano was 7. A decade and a half melted away since San Diego called itself division champs, yet a Wall Street Journal story this week blared, “DodgersPadres Has Become Baseball’s Best Rivalry.”
Any use of the word “rivalry” is a working theory, to be clear. It’s a pulse-racing peek at the horizon.
The Dodgers, the defending World Series champs, surely feel like the confident, brazen bunch to the south represent the bratty kid who inherited daddy’s company — doing little to earn the spot at the end of the boardroom table.
The Dodgers may not be seeing red, but they’re definitely eyeing a whole lot more brown.
“To quote (pro wrestler) Rick Flair, to be the man you’ve got to beat the man,” said Padres fan Pete
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“Personally, I think the Padres have to do more before it’s a rivalry.” Aldo Alcaraz • Dodgers fan
Weichers of San Marcos, dining with his 6-year-old son Jackson at Social Tap — ordering, of course, a .394 beer. “But you don’t want to take what’s going on right now for granted.”
An outfield gapper to the west at Bub’s at the Ballpark, the normal invasion of Dodgers blue had been stemmed. Padres fans easily outnumbered the enemy, as a brown-streaked line formed to enter the re-energized business operating at limited capacity.
Again, color provided the measuring stick.
“This series, the place is usually blue,” said aptly named Bub’s co-owner Todd Brown. “They take over. That’s not going to be the
case this year.”
For the first time, Bub’s is playing Padres’ road games with full sound in the bar. The reason: There’s a fullthroated market for it. Finally.
“That’s never happened in our 10 years,” Brown said. “Until now.”
So, call it a rivalry on training wheels. It’s finding its legs, its essence, its joie de vie.
The Padres continued their masterful, musical trolling of the Dodgers during batting practice. A little “Summer Wind” from Seals and Crofts. A little “Dust in the Wind” from Kansas. A little … well … “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”
When the game began, the playful nature of things changed.
Dodgers leadoff hitter Mookie Betts worked a nine-pitch walk off first-time starter Ryan Weathers in the first inning. When the Padres immediately turned a Machado-to-Tatis-toHosmer double play, the “Beat L.A.!” chant roared with countless encores to come.
Gauging the Dodgers’ take on things, however, remains an exercise in contradictions.
Third baseman Justin Turner famously labeled the 19 scheduled meetings this season “19 World Series games.” Manager Dave Roberts, just as famously, predicted any rivalry would be “a ways down the road” with a well-crafted dig that “there’s more to a rivalry than just geography.”
Dodgers shortstop Corey Seager was asked about the blooming interplay Friday, using mental gymnastics to avoid giving the notion an ounce of credit.
At times, you thought he might nod off during the Zoom call.
“It’s just another division series,” Seager said.
Two lifelong friends wearing opposite colors brushed up on trash talking as they waited to enter Petco. Aldo Alcaraz, in blue, and Manny Romero, in a brown jersey with, well, guess the name on the back, played baseball together at Steele Canyon High School.
“Personally, I think the Padres have to do more before it’s a rivalry,” Alcaraz said.
“We’ll see after this series, bro,” Romero countered.
It’s not the Hatfields and McCoys in the bruising, bellowing style of the Yankees and Red Sox — at least until the McCoys find themselves in the division race when October looms.
The Dodgers know, though, whether they admit it or not, that baseball is tuning in for this launching pad this weekend against this team.
As the crowd roared when the Friday opener lurched to life, it felt like something was changing.
This week, Dodgers superstar outfielder Mookie Betts inched toward acknowledgment.
“Obviously, we know they’re good,” he said. Then …
“But everyone’s good in the big leagues,” he said.
Padres outfielder Trent Grisham was asked to sort out the complexity of all these mixed baseball feelings, like a f leet-footed psychiatrist.
“I don’t want to speak for them, but for us, we’re going to have to see when we get out there,” he said. “It’s a new year, a new team, new faces on our side, new kind of moxie on our side. We’re going to have to get out there … (but) I’m sure that energy is going to be electric.”
Electric … brown?