On a fairly regular basis this season, in a newspaper account of a midweek Padres game, there has been a phrase similar to: "in front of the third-smallest crowd in the history of Petco Park" or "witnessed by the second-smallest crowd of the season."
The Padres of 2010 have gone a long way to prove out two of my pet theories.
1. Petco Park is in a terribly inconvenient location for most baseball fans, so those 8-10 visits to Qualcomm Stadium per season for many people are dropping to three or four.
2. The generally held theory of San Diego sports fans only supporting a winner is not valid.
I've already harped on the inconvenience of Petco Park's location already this year (check San Diego's Best Sports Values by clicking on April under "Blog Archives" to the right). When I did traffic reporting years ago, the traffic flow patterns before and after Padres games showed the fan base was in the North County. If you live there, you're not going downtown any more than you have to. The transportation, walking, ticket prices, dinner in the Gaslamp, all make a Padres game a major event. People don't do major events 8-10 times a year. Maybe three or four, and they'll wait until summer when it's more convenient.
On supporting a winner, I've always responded that what San Diegans will support is a quality product. It might seem like semantics, but there is a difference. Is watching the team fun? Is there hope that the team will become a contender? Remember those really dull teams that won the NL West a few years ago? That's when the attendance began to dip. People around here are either sitting on their hands waiting for GM Jed Hoyer to acquire a hitter or waiting for the roof to cave in. Padres games aren't a lot of fun this year. I'm actually partial to well-pitched, low-scoring baseball games, but not because I know they can't hit. The joy of great pitching is that they're shutting down big bats. I can't admire someone striking out Will Venable because I know half the high schools in town have hurlers who can K the guy.
Some of San Diego State's biggest football attendance years came when they were mostly hovering around .500, because there were star attractions in Marshall Faulk and, to a lesser extent, Dan McGwire and Darnay Scott. Then they started fiddling around and losing in strange ways, and when coach Ted Tollner picked up the pieces and fielded teams that won 8 games and challenged for the WAC championship, the attendance was generally smaller. The Chargers have had little trouble selling out games whether in last year's 13-3 or 2008's 8-8 mark because they're fun to watch.
I think the Padres attendance will pick up markedly in the next homestand, which is at the end of this month. School will be out, so fans will come based on their own convenience. Someone will report that the locals are starting to believe in this team. Nice.
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Local prep product P Sergio Mitre was quietly putting together a big year as a reliever --mainly -- for the Yankees before going on the disabled list this week with an oblique strain. He was 0-1 with a 2.88 ERA with just 16 hits allowed in 25 innings.
Monte Vista HS's Brooks Conrad is still performing heroically for the Braves, winning a game recently with a bunt single. He's at .275-3-12 in 51 at-bats, which is pretty good in this year of the pitcher.
Speaking of the Braves, Carlsbad HS's Troy Glaus is tied for second in the NL with 49 RBI and tied for eighth with 13 HR.
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Not a local kid, but what will baseball be like without Conrad's and Glaus' teammate, Chipper Jones? He'll leave a void.
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Note to Hoyer: the Diamondback's trade of disappointing OF Conor Jackson to the A's may have signaled the beginning of trade season.
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