What is it about San Diego teams running counterculture to what makes San Diego so great?
You know our enviable checklist: great weather, pristine beaches and a sunny attitude among the locals that have many referring to it as “San Diego Chill.”
But executives with the San Diego Padres and San Diego Chargers (remember them?) often took that chill too literally.
Does “frosty” arrive after “chill?” Because that describes the relationship between the top brass of the current Padres and the departed Chargers while building their clubs.
Hey, can’t we all just get along?
The Padres, fresh off a season that was toe-tagged long before they were eliminated, released a statement this week promising to fix their mess.
Not sure other professional organizations are privy to this stunning approach, but the Padres claim they will, in part, “perform a thorough assessment of our organization, beginning today.”
Shouldn’t that be the quest every day? It needed a bow to be placed on the most frustrating season in Padres history to reach that conclusion?
The Padres’ word salad of a statement drones on, and do pass the ranch dressing, please. There were a bunch of flowery sentences that sounded as if a lawyer wrote them or someone keen with the English language in a way that says a lot without saying the most important thing.
A.J. Preller, the man constructing the roster, and Bob Melvin, the gentleman managing the roster, are the Hatfields and McCoys of baseball. If they went out to dinner, it would be in separate Ubers and two tables of one.
But not a word in the statement on how they will find common ground.
Sound familiar with the Padres and Chargers?
The Padres really did sour once on future Hall of Fame manager Bruce Bochy.
When then-Padres CEO Sandy Alderson sent down lineups crafted by the Ivy Leaguers punching the keyboards, Bochy, or Leucadia’s Tim Flannery, his third-base coach, would alternate wadding them up and aiming for the dumpster.
Alderson got miffed and all but left the help-wanted ads on Bochy’s desk. With the San Francisco Giants seeking a manager, Alderson didn’t squawk when Bochy left, only to go on to win three World Series titles.
Remember when the Chargers went to Super Bowl 29? Shocking, I know.
What was nearly as baffling was that not two years later, general manager Bobby Beathard, another one with Leucadia roots, had grown tired of coach Bobby Ross.
In a power struggle between those headstrong men, Beathard showed Ross he was the boss and fired the only person to coach the Chargers to a Super Bowl.
Fast forward a couple of decades, and it was Chargers GM A.J. Smith locking horns with coach Marty Schottenheimer. That pair wouldn’t trade glances in a narrow hallway or speak if confined in an elevator.
When Archie Manning, father of Eli, dined with the duo prior to the 2004 draft, what he saw scared the daylights out of him. He angled to avoid plopping his kid into such a dysfunctional family.
Schottenheimer was gleefully shown the door when a playoff loss eclipsed a 14-2 record in 2006. Smith never got his ring, and now all of this rings true again with the fractured Padres.
To think Preller and Melvin will start singing “Kumbaya” after this ambiguous statement is balderdash. One of them needs to go, and callers filling the sports-talk radio lines are split over which one, or both, hits the bricks.
Read the organizational ladder if reading the room.
The higher-ranked executive, especially if they possess a longer contract, seldom exits in these situations. Meaning Melvin, in the last year of his deal, is heading somewhere (Giants, Mets, retirement) soon.
It’s doubtful Preller, signed through 2026, will find his backside on Petco Park’s spinning door.
But something is amiss as the Padres missed a golden opportunity with a star-studded lineup that produced an epic faceplant. The chatter now is about subtraction, not addition, to a payroll that could cascade from $250 million to $200 million.
What we know is money can’t buy love between executives not pulling the rope in the same direction. Good luck in trying to wish that away.
It’s Padres chairman Peter Seidler’s team, and he’ll do as he pleases. But to think running it back is an option, with Preller and Melvin unable to play nicely in the team’s sandbox, is a farce.
The Padres’ slogan last season was “Bring the Gold.” If they’re peddling the Preller/Melvin card for next season, “Fool’s Gold” will be more appropriate.
Contact Jay Paris at [email protected] and follow him @jparis_sports on X.
