SAN DIEGO -- Peter Seidler was at Yankee Stadium on Oct. 18, 1977. He was 16, sitting alongside his uncle, longtime Los Angeles Dodgers president and owner Peter O'Malley, when Reggie Jackson belted three home runs to famously clinch another New York Yankees championship. Seidler, now 60 and presiding over a San Diego Padres team with similar aspirations, can still recall the feeling.
"My body was shaking because the building was shaking," he said. "It was a lifetime memory that you just can't shake. As a Dodger fan, it was intimidating. At the same time, it was awesome. It was a thrill."
Seidler couldn't help but think back to that moment last October, with the Padres in the postseason for the first time in 14 years. The COVID-19 pandemic had kept San Diegans away from Petco Park, preventing them from witnessing one of the most exhilarating teams in franchise history. As the wild-card round progressed, and the Padres won two close elimination games to advance into the division series, the only audible cheering came from a small suite that accommodated the players' wives. Seidler, eight years into his ownership tenure and weeks away from officially supplanting Ron Fowler as the Padres' control person, often wondered what it would have felt like under normal circumstances.
He thought about how it might compare to 1977.
"Except in Padres brown," Seidler said, "with this city shaking that building."
Something close to that occurred on Thursday night. Petco Park was operating at full capacity for the first time since September of 2019, a 21-month stretch when this franchise transitioned from intriguing upstart to indisputable force. But the Padres, languishing off a 1-5 road trip, remained hitless through five innings.
Then Fernando Tatis Jr. launched his 22nd home run in the bottom of the sixth, igniting "MVP" chants from a sold-out crowd of 40,362. Manny Machado followed suit in the seventh and was serenaded as he returned to the dugout to don the extravagant "Swagg Chain," replicas of which quickly sold out. Two innings later, Eric Hosmer hit a game-tying home run and Victor Caratini added a walk-off homer -- and downtown San Diego radiated.
"It felt like a playoff game," said Padres starter Joe Musgrove, a lifelong fan of the team who grew up about 15 miles from Petco Park. "It's exciting because this city has waited a long time for a team of this caliber to come through."
That atmosphere, which will undoubtedly rise to another level with the Dodgers in town for a three-game series this week, further validates a mantra that has been adopted by the Padres' principal decision-makers -- that if they provide this championship-starved, football-deprived city with a superior product, the support will justify its cost.
Seidler -- grandson of Walter O'Malley, the influential executive who brought the Dodgers out West in the late 1950s -- can only operate off glimpses and hunches. They come to him when he sees all the outdoor bars tuned to Padres games on nighttime jogs through Pacific Beach. Or when he watches old videos of celebrations from the team's World Series runs in 1984 and 1998, a custom that, he said, "gives me chills every time." Those anecdotes are his answer to persistent questions about sustainability, with the Padres operating at unprecedented payroll levels in a city that is not quite known for passionate baseball fandom.
The inescapable reality: All of this, really, is a leap of faith.
"We felt we needed to make the first move to put that type of team on the field, and then over time we're gonna continue to see how the fan base responds," Padres CEO Erik Greupner said. "We made the move with great faith in our fan base and the response that we've already seen and we think we're gonna continue to see. We see an opportunity to make a first move and then build from there. If you don't make that move, and you don't have the support of ownership to make that kind of commitment, you're never gonna know how the fan base would respond, and you're never gonna know what you can accomplish. And so we're trying to find the absolute best of what we can be in this town."
Padres history is littered with ownership groups that never made a similar commitment. The first hint of a shift was a flawed one, when A.J. Preller, fresh off being brought in to run baseball operations, bloated the payroll with the likes of Matt Kemp, Justin Upton and James Shields heading into the 2015 season, only to follow promptly with another rebuild. What sprouted from that was a deep farm system -- headlined by Tatis -- and a willingness to spend like never before. It began with Hosmer, then Machado, then, this past offseason, Yu Darvish and Blake Snell.
Preller's relentless maneuvering has spawned what amounts to a franchise's dream scenario -- a deep, talented, controllable 40-man roster sitting atop a minor league system flush with high-ceiling talent. The Padres have carved out an identity as a young, exuberant group. They've locked up a generational talent. And they've proven -- through seven intense, back-and-forth games this season -- that they can stand toe to toe with a Dodgers team that has won its division each of the past eight years.
The Padres operate in what Nielson considers the 27th-ranked media market. But their payroll sits at $174 million, 60% greater than their previous record set in 2015, and they're already on the hook for an industry-leading $153 million in salary commitments for 2022. Consistent support, mostly through attendance, is the only way to sustain that.
"There's an inflection point right now," Greupner said, "and we're gonna find out how far we can take this. But we feel good about it because of how committed and passionate our fan base is."
Tony Gwynn Jr. experienced that in 1998, when his father helped guide the Padres to an improbable World Series appearance against the Yankees. The younger Gwynn was 16 then, at the peak of his baseball fandom, and was shocked to see so many cars decorated with Padres flags as he rode down Interstate 15.
"It was just like this place was so infatuated with the Padres at that time," Gwynn, who hosts a local radio show and serves as a Padres analyst, said. "And just think -- that was one year."
The Padres made the playoffs only twice over the next two decades, suffering 16 losing seasons in 21 years. In the latter part of that stretch, the NFL's Chargers left for L.A., leaving the Padres as the only major professional sports team in town -- and its only remaining hope for a first championship.
"I certainly think that the fan base has changed in the years since the Chargers have left," said Darren Smith, a radio host on XTRA 1360 who has worked in the San Diego market for 17 years. "People get tired of the Chargers being referenced here in San Diego, but it's absolutely part of the story that this market really got knocked down, that this market was really demoralized, and people here felt terrible about the sports landscape. And I think the Padres have played a big role in just our own collective confidence, us rebounding here, from ownership and into the players themselves, since that team left."
Gwynn, who has spent most of his life in San Diego, acknowledges the city's appealing distractions but believes the term "fair-weather" might be "a little strong" as a descriptor for its sports fandom. Lately, Gwynn has sensed "an effort to change the way people view San Diegans as far as how they view their sports." Smith has noticed it with the way they handle tickets for this upcoming series, with more of an emphasis to re-sell to Padres fans so that Dodgers fans don't continue to dominate Petco Park.
"The Padre fans here want to take their ballpark back," Smith said. "They wanna make it difficult for Dodger fans to make a bunch of noise."
The Padres say they are encouraged with the way fans have responded to their rise thus far, with record ratings for their Regional Sports Network and a 50% increase in season-ticket sales since the start of 2020. But the restraints of the pandemic have left lingering uncertainty. And so for validation, Seidler prefers to reference those old news clips he watches from '84 and '98 -- and how the city rallied behind a winner.
"The parks were filled, the streets were filled, the bars and restaurants -- everybody was talking about it," he said. "This is a great baseball city and county here, and what we've aspired to do -- and time will tell -- is put a consistently exciting and winning product on the field for our fans. If we do that, regardless of external things, we believe the support will be outstanding."