Last night,
the American League defeated the National League by a final score of 4-2 at the
87th Major League Baseball All-Star Game. The MVP of the game was
the A.L.'s Eric Hosmer of the Kansas City Royals who was 2 for 3 with a home run and 2 RBIs. The National League now holds a
43-42-2 edge all time at the Mid-Summer Classic.
But rather than focus on this
specific game, I wanted to look back into the baseball history of the host
city, San Diego. I had fun doing as much for the 2015 All-Star Game host,
Cincinnati, last season (click here to see that post). I think it would be fun
to look back at San Diego as well.
When you hear about the San
Diego Padres, you don’t really think much historically. Here is a team that has
been inexistence since 1969 (47 seasons) and have never won a World Series and
have only two National League Pennants to their name. But the Padres have had
some wonderful players and memories over the years and we’ll look back at
several of them.
As mentioned already, the Padres
came into the NL in 1969, but before they were a Big League Club, the San Diego
Padres were the name of a Pacific Coast League team that was founded in 1936.
They took their name from the Spanish Franciscan friars who founded the city of
San Diego in 1769. The PCL Padres lasted until 1968—the year before the MLB
club arrived—and won four minor league championships: 1937 (led by 18-year Ted
Williams), 1962, 1964 and 1967.
The MLB Padres came into the
National League with the Montreal Expos, Kansas City Royals and Seattle Pilots
(now Milwaukee Brewers) as their expansion cousins. They struggled in their
first decade of existence and didn’t have a season where they won more than
they lost until 1978. They lost 110 games their first year and would lose 100
games or more three more times in their first six seasons.
Throughout the seventies, and
into the next decade, the Padres never made it higher than fourth place in the
National League West. Even though they had a future Hall Of Famer in the
lineup, Dave Winfield, the team never seemed to challenge for a postseason
berth.
However, with their third round
pick in the 1981 draft, the Padres would select outfielder Tony Gwynn, who
would go on to have the best career of any player ever to suit up in a San
Diego uniform. In his first full year, Gwynn would win the N.L. batting title
with a .351 average. He would go on to win seven more batting titles in his
career: 1987 (.370), 1988 (.313), 1989 (336), 1994 (.394), 1995 (.368), 1996
(.353) and 1997 (.372). He was a 15-time All-Star, won seven Silver Slugger
Awards, five Gold Gloves, and lead the Padres to the only two N.L. pennants in
their history: 1984 and 1998. Gwynn was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2007,
but sadly passed away in 2014 at the age of 54.
The Padres’ first postseason
appearance came in 1984, as the Padres won the N.L. West by 12 games over the
Atlanta Braves and would play the Chicago Cubs in the NLCS. After dropping the
first two games of the best-of-five series at Wrigley Field in Chicago, the
Padres returned home for the final three contests, needing to win all three to
avoid elimination.
They won Game 3 easily, by a 7-1
score, needed a walk-off two-run home run from first baseman Steve Garvey to
win Game 4, 7-5, and then completed the comeback in Game 5, taking advantage of
a seventh-inning error by Cubs’ first baseman Leon Durham to score four runs
and turn a 3-2 deficit into a 6-3 victory. The Padres were off to the World
Series against the Detroit Tigers.
The Padres didn’t really have
much of a chance to win the Series against the Tigers, who won 104 games during
the regular season. The teams split the first two games in San Diego, but the
Tigers won all three games in Detroit to capture the Championship. It would be
another 14 years before San Diego would play in another World Series.
In that 1998 season, the Padres
would be a completely different team (obviously, 14 years later) but Gwynn was
still the rock of the franchise. The Padres would win the NL West with a 98-64
record, 9 ½ games better than the San Francisco Giants, win the best-of-five
NLDS in four games over Houston, then knock off the favoured Atlanta Braves in
the NLCS in six games, setting up a date in the World Series with the New York
Yankees.
Unfortunately, the Padres didn’t
win a game as the Yankees swept their way to their 25th World
Championship. Since that World Series appearance, the Padres have only won two
N.L. West titles (2005 & 2006) but have had no success in the postseason.
The Padres have retired five
numbers in their history: #6, Steve Garvey who played with San Diego from
1983-1987; #19, Tony Gwynn (1982-2001); #31, Dave Winfield (1973-80); #35,
Randy Jones (1973-80); and #51, Trevor Hoffman (1993-2008).
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