Tuesday (9 Apr) - A Good Day at the Park

Tuesday (9 Apr) - A Good Day at the Park

The sun shone brightly down on a capacity crowd at sold out Petco Park for the Padres home opener against the rival Los Angeles Dodgers. We arrived early to avoid a potential parking shortage since in the infinite wisdom of the city fathers, a downtown block party had been scheduled on the same day as the Padres opener. There's hardly enough parking with only one major event going on. Our usual route to the stadium was, of course, re-routed for the downtown party, but fortunately we did not have any major problems.

We made it to our seats in time for the opening ceremonies ringing in the new season. There were the usual speakers and the usual fireworks and the usual flag waving, but we enjoyed it anyway. We had sunshine, we had beer, we had ball park hot dogs, and did I mention we had beer?

In the first inning the Padres second baseman botched an easy play, there was a mixup that added another base runner, and a hit batter. Before the sounds of the National Anthem had faded the Dodgers had loaded the bases with nobody out. Well. At least there was beer.

Then a small miracle occurred. The Padres worked out of the bases loaded situation and survived the first inning without giving up a run.

In the bottom of the first inning, the Padres Will Venable smacked a solo homerun over the right field fence. That fence corner was once 360 ft from hone plate, but had been moved in a few feet this season, to 348 ft. Did Venable get that homerun just because the fences had been moved closer to the plate? Nope, Venable's drive went 381 ft, so it would have cleared the fence either way. However, a Dodgers homerun to the same spot later in the game traveled only 354 ft, and would have been caught if the fences had not been moved.

We also had a bit of a fracas in the stands. A fan returning to his seat directly behind us knocked over the beer of the man next to him, and a rather loud argument ensued over whether a new beer would be purchased to replace the lost one. No one noticed what happened to that spilled beer at first - that is, until Judi's seat back started to feel a bit wet and we saw a pool of beer-ish liquid seeping out from under her seat. Luckily the spill wasn't too bad, and we got it cleaned up, but nobody offered to buy US a beer for the inconvenience.

The Dodgers tied up the game 2-2 in the fourth inning. But after that everything went the Padres way. The Padres won, 9-3. Opening day just doesn't get any better than that.

League	Date/GM#	Team	Result	Score
Actual	9 Apr/008	Dodgers	Win	9-3
Reality			Win	3-2
Promise			Win	4-2

Comparison	W  L  GB	BA	Runs	ERA
Padres 2012	76 86 18.0	.247	651	4.01
Reality Autoplay	84 78 10.0	.243	667	3.69
Promise Autoplay	80 82 10.0	.249	688	3.81
2013 Season	W  L  GB	BA	Runs	ERA
Actual Results	2  5  2.5	.224	23	5.90
Reality Results	5  2  ---	.286	33	3.80
Promise Results	6  1  ---	.284	39	3.63