Sorry to bum out you who are Padres fans, but the truth about ESPN and other national media is they love, love, love the 2023 Padres.
A fan base that moans about East Coast bias whenever the Pads appear on a national telecast will have to find new targets to lampoon.
It's come to this: the Pads are in the midst of becoming media darlings.
Media folks welcome delight interesting stories, and for intrigue, none of MLB's other 29 clubs can match the '23 Pads' combination of star power and snooze-proof narrative.
A "small market" team outspending the Dodgers, Red Sox and Phillies in pursuit of the franchise's first World Series trophy? That script would induce mop-top Ken Burns to get a buzzcut.
The Padres are fresh, they're fun and, visuals being important, too, they're the only MLB team that wears brown and gold. Successfully, I'll note.
They're not another bland, faceless baseball team.
As mic'd-up Manny Machado said a few times Sunday night, in a chat with ESPN's crew as he played third base in a road rout of the Braves, the Padres have swagger. And they also smell like swagger, Manny copping to Eduardo Perez that he was wearing Louis Vuitton cologne during the game. (Certainly not inspired by Bull Durham, small vials of the Frenchy stuff are priced at $300 to $385 on the brand's website).
Out there on the East Coast, my seamheaded colleagues with the Bristol Mother Ship and the MLB Network admire Peter "Go Big or Go Home" Seidler for investing some $250 million in this year's payroll.
They want to talk Padres, and Machado is fast becoming San Diego's most prominent ambassador to Big Media. On MLB Network's staff are two of Machado's favorite baseball people: Alex Rodriguez, who like Machado grew up playing shortstop in Miami, and brother-in-law Yonder Alonso.
Making the Padres a telegenic team, almost everyone knows someone on the club — whether that someone is the team's soon-to-return, former face of MLB, Fernando Tatis Jr. (mentioned by 10 of 13 soccer-loving schoolchildren in Vista when I conducted an unscientific survey last month) or Machado, Japanese star Yu Darvish, former Red Sox star Xander Bogaerts, South Korean standout Ha-Seong Kim or former D.C. star Juan Soto.
So, even though San Diegans poked fun Sunday night when an ESPN broadcaster declared the Pads have always been the only team in town, praise for the San Diego franchise ran through much of the three-hour telecast.
Former ace pitcher David Cone raved over Seidler's gusto. It's refreshing, said the former union man, to see a smaller market team field so many high-salaries stars.
Perez pronounced the Padres a legitimate World Series threat. When a colleague balked, saying he'd like to see more of them, Perez floored the gas pedal. "Now, now," he said, following the season's 10th game.
In Media Land, the '23 Padres are putting to mind the ZZ Top lyric, "I'm bad, I'm nationwide."
Only they're also going international, thanks not only to their roster's geographical range but the ever nimble Digital Age.
As MLB enters an era of massive disruption in how the ballgames are consumed by viewers outside of ballparks, a topic to be revisited is how the Padres' star power may be setting them up for financial gains in live streaming. Theory: the buying and marketing of players, as a result, will become a better business model than building and marketing a team. Was private-equity wizard Seidler ahead of this coming game, much as when former Padres presumptive owner and CEO Jeff Moorad made a killing for himself and his fellow investors by correctly anticipating circa 2010 that growth of regional sports networks would hugely inflate the Padres' revenue potential?
TBD.
But regardless, you can expect to see plenty of the Padres on national TV game telecasts and highlight shows in the months ahead. It's time to put to rest the "sleepy San Diego" talk.
