Tagged: san diego padres

June Gloom

I keep thinking that I should be blogging more, but then I think, what’s the point? The Padres are TERRIBLE.  That’s all there is to it. I’m not going to recap the games here because they’re just too painful.

We’ve really reached an odd part of the season here. It’s not even the All-Star break yet and people are ready for football season (despite the fact that the Chargers most likely won’t be any better.)

It sucks to be a Padres fan. I’ve been doing this thing for six years and I’ve watched many, many more losses than wins. It doesn’t seem like the front office is willing to do ANYTHING to get this crap show back on track. Of course there’s all the injuries too, but you have to wonder if anything would be different if all those guys were healthy.

It’s absolutely pathetic. Yesterday’s game was one of the worst I’ve ever seen. And I’ve seen some bad games. There was something in the air that had a negative foreboding. It didn’t help an ounce that June Gloom was descending on the stadium – literally and emotionally.

Now, I’m in this for the long haul. There is nothing that will make me stop being a Padres fan. But because I do care so deeply, I’m 100 percent allowed to be incredibly angry at this situation. It’s not fun to lose and it’s not fun to lose miserably. All the time.

Heading out to a couple of games for the next series. You know that phrase “you can’t go anywhere but up?” So not true for this team.

GO PADRES!

SLIDESHOW: Padres vs. Angels 5/20/12

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Yeah, so I do consider myself somewhat of a photographer. I took a class this past semester and learned a ton. Since I had great seats, a great camera and a great lens this last Sunday, I thought I would share some of my photos, which are hands down the best I’ve ever taken at a Padres game. Please do enjoy them, these should be more bearable than my 1000+ word post about the weekend. Oh, and all photos are copyrighted by me.

GO PADRES!

Looking forward to a weekend of baseball…

My boy Andy Parrino. (Photo by Kaity Bergquist)

I’m back! I am happy to announce that I have officially finished my freshman year of college – meaning that I actually have time to blog now. It’s been forever, I know, but I am really excited to get back into writing about the boys.

Not that there’s much to say about them. We lost 8-1 today against the Dodgers, all thanks to former Padres pitcher Aaron Harang. He was dealing. We couldn’t get a thing off of him.

The positive, of course, is that we “split” the series with the Dodgers. One game each. I don’t feel like you can really call a two-game series a series, but whatever. We’re grasping for straws here.

Currently our record is 14-25. Miserable. Not that anyone cares, but we’re 11.5 games behind first place. So much fun.

But there was a huge bright spot to today, which was that Orlando Hudson was released and Jason Bartlett was put on the DL. That should improve at least Padres fans’ morale for a while. I am actually thrilled that the Padres finally, finally made these moves. I’m really excited also because this means that Andy Parrino will hopefully get more playing time.

Parrino is definitely becoming my new Padres crush. He’s adorable.

Looking ahead to the weekend, we’re starting Interleague Play against the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim and Albert Pujols. I’ll be out at all three games – so excited to get out to the ballpark to see the boys. It should be a fun weekend. I am actually excited to see the Angels. They’re only slightly better than the Padres record-wise, so it would be great to win at least one good game against them.

It’s good to be back.

GO PADRES!

Winning Padres = Happier Fans

So good to see the Padres actually playing some solid baseball this past weekend. I can stay a fan for a long time (it’s been six years, yo), but it’s always so much more fun to be a fan when the team is winning.

I’m happy. The team should be happy. Hopefully we will have a great series against the Nationals.

GO PADRES!

Oh, and you should read these blogs: Green Grass Love Affair  &  Nater Tater’s Friar Fritters

Crisis Averted: PADRES WIN!

We finally did it! We got our first win of the season!

And not just by some wimpy walks with the bases loaded. No, today we were strong. We brought out our bats for real and sent those Dodgers out of town with a loss on their record. Just one, but it was enough.

Starting pitcher Clayton Richard was phenomenal. He was dealing. He threw seven innings, allowing only two hits and no earned runs (two unearned though) with no walks and three strikeouts. He deserved the win.

On the offensive side, we had 12 hits. 12! We needed that breakout after the miserable three games before it.

In the bottom of the first, we got our first lead of the season by Jesus Guzman’s single. Then Yonder Alonzo hit a sacrifice fly. It was remarkable. Your San Diego Padres had a 2-0 lead.

Things stayed pretty chill until the bottom of the third, when John Baker hit a single that score Guzman. We now had THREE runs to our name.

Then in the bottom of the fourth, Andy Parrino hit a bomb to left-center. It was massive. That gave us a 4-0 lead, and we were pretty happy. Unfortunately, we left the bases loaded in that inning.

In the top of the sixth, Matt Kemp hit a two-run homer. Boooooooo.

The bottom of the eighth was the best though. We led off the inning with three straight singles, and then Chase Headley came up to the plate. He took a swinging strike, and then sent that thing out of the ballpark. Grand slam, 100 percent. He knew it and everyone in the stadium knew it. It was gone.

So that gave us an 8-4 lead. It was truly amazing. That was Chase’s first hit of the season and he couldn’t have picked a better time to do it.

In the top of the ninth, Andre Either did hit a two-run home run, so if we hadn’t gotten that grand slam, we would have been in trouble. But thankfully, we did get it and we got the win.

It’s obviously not ideal, only winning one out of four games. But let me tell you, it’s a huge relief. We needed that win so badly and I’m so thankful that we finally got it.

GO PADRES!

Check out my Storify story on this game.

Follow me on Twitter.

Like “Unfinished Business” on Facebook.

Hoping for a breakthrough…

Field view from Opening Day.

What are we going to do with this team??

Tonight we lost our third game in a row. Meaning that we’ve opened the season with three losses. This is miserable. We absolutely can’t hit, and our pitching is not strong enough to keep us in the game long enough to score some runs. We’ve only scored eight runs in the whole season, and five of them were tonight.

Oh, that’s good, you might be thinking. Five runs in a game is not bad. BUT what you do not realize is that we only had four hits and three of the runs came in by walk. Nothing to say for our hitting prowess, just the weakness of the opposing pitcher.

Don’t get me wrong, the comeback we had was huge. We were down 5-0 going into the bottom of the fifth, and we were able to get five runs to tie the game in that inning. Chase Headley, Jesus Guzman, and Nick Hundley got the walk-in RBIs. So that was a crazy inning.

The game stayed tied all the way until the 11th inning, when that kid Dee Gordan hit an RBI double to break the tie and put the Dodgers up 6-5. Then the bottom of the 11th was really frustrating. We got the lead runner on by walk, sacrificed him over, and then got two quick outs. Naturally, we’re able to get the potential tying run on base and then decide not to do anything about it.

On the bright side, we had no errors.

The starting pitching so far has not been very good at all. Dustin Moseley went five innings today, allowing five hits and five runs. Then a bazillion guys came in from the bullpen and did very well until the 11th.

So we’re 0-3. Against the Dodgers. In Opening Week. This is not fun.

Hopefully we will be able to at least pull of the win tomorrow. PLEASE.

GO PADRES!

Check out my Storify story on this game.

Follow me on Twitter.

Like “Unfinished Business” on Facebook.

Storify Stories

Thanks to my journalistic connections, I recently discovered this awesome website called Storify where you can pull content from all sorts of websites and make a story. It’s especially effective with Twitter. I made one for Opening Day today, and then made one for tonight’s game. Since Padres fans are such entertaining tweeters and Storify is so much fun, I might make a habit of it. Here are the two that I’ve done so far:

Enjoy!

GO PADRES!

My Opening Day Adventure

Padres pitcher Edison Volquez, who started Thursday's game against the Dodgers. (Photo credit Kaity Bergquist)

Opening Day is magical. When you’re in the ballpark. But when you spend over an hour looking for parking and dealing with horrible traffic before the game, it was hard to settle down and enjoy. But thankfully, we did.

Word to the wise: if there’s a 4:05 Opening Day start, you should probably leave for the ballpark around 8 a.m.

So that was miserable. We missed all of the pre-game festivities. We were sort of able to see the flyover, and we did see Jerry Coleman throw out the first pitch. But that was it.

We were also in the nosebleeds of the nosebleeds, and there were some very unpleasant Dodgers fans up there. Right behind us was a group that was extrememly loud and obnoxious for the entire game. It was miserable having to endure them the whole time. I do not appreciate the fans who come in here and think that this is their stadium, and that they can say whatever they want and insult people as much as they want. There was one guy who was literally insulting Padres fans for the entire last half hour of the game.

Thankfully, Colleen and I are going to be sitting in a classier section for tonight’s game.

The game itself was not good. I was really impressed with Edinson Volquez for the first three innings. He was spot on. But then he suddenly lost it in the fourth inning and walked in two runs. I was not happy.

Though this is a new season, I felt like I was watching last year’s team. Weak offense, somewhat strong pitching with a lot of weak moments, and pathetic defense. We had three errors. None of those helped the cause at all.

We only had five hits in the game. Cameron Maybin had two, one of which was a two-run homer. Jesus Guzman had one, and then the pitcher and a pinch-hitter each had one. That was it. None of our “big” players had any hits at all. Not that we really have any big players, but guys like Chase Headley, Nick Hundley, Orlando Hudson and Chris Denorfia did not contribute.

Hundley did have two exceptional defensive plays, though. In that fourth inning where Volquez was busy having a meltdown, Nick was able to get an out at the plate with the bases loaded. That was HUGE. He also caught a critcal runner stealing.

Pitcher Anthony Bass did well in relief, but Brad Brach did not. He allowed two runs in the eighth. Ernesto Frieri was also okay, but he’s soooo slow.

So overall, a very disappointing game with the 5-3 loss. Not what we were hoping for, that’s for sure. Hopefully we will be able to turn things around tonight.

GO PADRES!

One week until Opening Day!

(mistycabal/Flickr.com)

We are officially one week away from Opening Day. Padres vs. Dodgers. Petco Park. 4:05 first pitch. Be there.

Well, hopefully a lot of you will be there – the game is sold out. Thankfully, I have tickets for the game, and I am so excited because it’ll be my first time at Opening Day.

It’ll also mark the beginning of my sixth season as a Padres fan. Sixth! It doesn’t even feel like it’s been that long.

I feel like the team is in a lot of tumult right now. Our ownership is up in the air. We lost some good players over the offseason. Nobody really knows where any team will stand when we’re here at the beginning, but I feel like we REALLY won’t know how the Padres are going to do. We never do.

We’ve actually done very well this spring training, though. We’re 18-12 right now, which isn’t a bad record for games that don’t matter. I feel like our offense has been pretty strong. I’m SO excited to see how we do next week though. SO excited.

It’s been too long since we’ve had regular season baseball. I can’t wait.

On a small side note (okay not that small), I was at the Journalism Association of Community Colleges State conference last weekend and won first place in the sports competition. It was pretty sweet. We had to cover a women’s lacrosse game between Occidental College and Allegeheny College. I had never watched a lacrosse game in my life, and pretty much didn’t know any of the rules. There were about 60 writers in the competition.

We watched the game, had a press conference, got on a bus and drove back to the hotel, and then had an hour to write the story. I didn’t feel like I had done particularly well or terribly, and I ended up winning first place. So I’m pretty much the best community college sports writer in the STATE. So exciting!

GO PADRES!