Follow the Friars
The Long, Slow Goodbye
I write to you from a little townhouse in southern Arizona, the dust still on my boots and my bags still unpacked. The whirlwind tour of following the Friars is over — Home again, home again, jiggety jig.
Debbie and I rolled back into Arizona late on the night of October 12. The only highlights of the drive home were our, roughly, three hour hunt for a copy of the latest edition of the San Diego Union-Tribune (we had zero luck finding one) and a stop off in Yuma for ice cream. More like Yum-ma, am I right?
Jokes aside, stopping in Yuma was a fitting final stop on the journey since the Padres, from 1970 to 1993, used to play at Desert Sun Stadium during Spring Training.1 We thought about visiting the old stomping grounds, paying our respects as it were, but the stadium is now a soccer complex. Oh, well.
Speaking of paying respects, it would have been a poor trip indeed if we had not stopped at the Peter Seidler mural in downtown San Diego. It’s lovely, if unassuming, and shows Seidler smiling away from the viewer. It’s a remarkable likeness of a man who did so much for not just a sports team, but for San Diego as a whole.2 The mural has become something of a pilgrimage for Padres fans, so it was only fitting we stopped by.
Several versions of a final “Follow the Friars” dispatch have made the rounds inside my head. Nothing complete, just fragments and hints of ideas. I knew from the get-go that I would need to write one of these eventually; I had hoped it would be from the “World Series” side of “World Series or Bust.” Instead, well: bust.
Debbie, that incomparable fount of undiluted baseball wisdom, told me before Game #4 that we had to win because she did not want to go back to LA — no way, no how, no thank you. Heading back to LA, back into the dragons lair, was full of menace. And no, she wasn’t just talking about the parking situation.3
After leading the NLDS 2-1, the Friars dropped two-in-a-row to the Dodgers. Let’s just say, Debbie knew.
I could bemoan (and will, if just for a moment) Dave Roberts’ crying wolf and the shenanigans of writer Ken Rosenthal, or the fact that our bats went cold for twenty-four consecutive innings — the longest postseason scoreless stretch in MLB since 1991. However, could is the operative word. At the end of the day, the Padres lost. Game over, man.
The funny thing about losing is that it’s the opposite of winning — no kidding, I hear you cry. Except, here’s the thing: Fans don’t care how you win, just that you do. Fans care deeply and passionately about how and why you lost, almost as much as the fact that you did. If you get the “dub” all is well, if you “take the L” no one is safe. Not even Luis Arraez — who, you’ll recall, just won his third-consecutive batting title — is safe from criticism.
Fun fact, but Arraez had been playing through the pain of a torn ligament in his left thumb since mid-June. In spite of such a debilitating injury he played in 70 of the team’s final 78 games; he also played in all seven of the Friars’ postseason contests. Anyone who’s ever hurt their hand, let alone a finger or thumb, knows how much more difficult doing anything is, let alone playing baseball or winning a third-consecutive batting title. Sheesh. Some fans really are that cataclysmically dumb.
While “Follow the Friars” has come to an end after seven dispatches, yours truly will be up in Phoenix this coming week to catch some Arizona Fall League baseball games. As an added bonus, my wife will be joining me!
We’ll be seeing three games in two days — two of those games featuring the Peoria Javelinas whose squad includes highly-rated prospects Ethan Salas and Leodalis De Vries. I know, I have a problem and the only cure is more baseball. If all goes well there may even be a dispatch in it.4
Of course, this newsletter won’t go away. It’ll switch back to its original premise of “microdosing life’s marginalia from deep in the American Southwest" which entails whatever I interpret that to be on any given Sunday, but has usually been: history, poetry, contemporary issues, music, and the weird. The dispatch archive can be found here and my website, where these writings also live, is here.
Other then that, I shall continue watching the postseason and rooting very, very hard against the Dodgers and Yankees. Thank you all for reading along, commenting, and subscribing. As hokey as it sounds, I really do appreciate all of the support and love. Thank you. Really.
And for the remainder of the 2024 postseason it’s: Go Cleveland and Go Mets.
Until next time.
Follow the Friars
Debbie, of course, knew this off the top of her head. During our Petco Park tour (on October 4) whenever the tour guide would ask questions, asking if we knew what this or that thing meant, she always knew the answer.
Outside of baseball, Seidler spent a lot of his time (and fortune) on improving the plight of San Diego’s homeless.
We were charged $50 to park in the stadium’s lots. Yeah. I know.
Of course, if I write any more about baseball I should probably just start a second substack. Oh, dear.