Padres Use Manziel to Spit on Fans

When is the last time you dined at a Planet Hollywood?  Hard Rock Cafe?  For those who have been to San Diego, did you eat at the pier on Seaport Village?  Austinites, have you ever eaten at the Oasis?  Gueros?  Those of you with kids, have you eaten at Chuck E. Cheese's?  Let's just say, if you have been to any of these places or restaurants like them, you weren't there because of the food.  It's about the side show or decor or view.  After you've been once, there's no need to go back.  In fact, you're probably questioning the reason you went in the first place.

That's what the San Diego Padres are to professional sports.  Petco Park was inaugurated in 2004 following a brief run of success.  The park is beautiful and befitting a city as picturesque as San Diego.  It was at this point in team history that ownership stopped caring about their true fans.

The Padres became a tourist ball club.  Why spend money to cater to the few true fans and San Diego natives when you know you can draw enough tourists and opposing fans to turn an excellent profit?  You're not in San Diego for the baseball, you're there for the weather.  Hard Rock Cafe doesn't need the locals to eat at their restaurants, the tourists will take care of that and buy a T-shirt.

It sucks being a Padres fan.  There is a 5:1 pain to pleasure ratio.  As a lifelong Padres fan you actually become accustomed to it.  In a way, it is easy to pervert your thoughts to think that a championship would be that much more special because you had to put up with so much heartache leading there.  It is the closest thing sports has to an abusive relationship.  Ownership tells you how much they love you only to turn around and slap you in the face with the way they do business.

Cleveland sports fans are generally recognized as the most maligned.  The Cubs are synonymous with baseball futility.  San Diego sports fans don't even count.  We're like Sasquatch, rumored to exist but few who believe, and less that have seen.  I wont get into the anguish of being a Chargers fan, but believe me, that's no picnic either.  No one cares about us, least of all ownership.  We have been abused for so long, we feel like it is deserved.

Well, I'm breaking the cycle.  I can't put up with it anymore.  Not after the front office decided it would be funny to draft Johnny Manziel.  It's not enough that they have fed us the same garbage for years.  It's not bad enough that currently the Padres are the worst in the majors in batting average, runs scored, on base percentage and slugging, or that they're 14 games out of first place a month before the All-Star break.  It's not enough that they swindled the tax payers out of money for a new stadium with the promise of fielding a competitive team.  Nope.  After all that, they decided it's okay to waste a draft pick on a publicity stunt.

Manziel is not a baseball player.  He didn't play in college, and even if he did he will never play professional baseball.  I'm not going to waste words taking down Manziel as a person (although I could), that's not the point.  It's not his fault the Padres are run by a bunch of jackasses.  This organization cannot afford to waste picks with their history of misses in the draft.  They don't spend money on free agents and refuse to keep talent in the organization.

Instead, the philosophy is to develop prospects.  Prospect like Manziel?  I don't care if he was the 837th pick.  There are thousands of four year college players that would have been thrilled to be drafted anywhere.  That's someone's dream that the Padres handed to a football player with no prospects of playing baseball.

The worst part of drafting Manziel is the realization that the organization literally doesn't give a shit about their fans.  That decision proves it.  No one in the room thought,

"Hey guys, uh, maybe it's not the right time to flush a pick down the toilet to get some cheap publicity.  Maybe our fans won't see the humor considering how bad we suck and have sucked for years.  It's been eight seasons since we've made the playoffs and thirty years since we've won a World Series game.  Maybe we should at least try to make it look like we're trying to build a competent team."

No.  No one thought it.

MLB just got new TV deals for all thirty teams.  At MININMUM, the Padres will net $750 million on the deal.  Big changes should happen but they won't. Ownership will pocket the money and continue to make a profit thanks to the tourist bucks while the locals who pay for the stadium get screwed.

The current roster is filled with underachievers, guys suspended for performance enhancers and retread veterans.  Even with an excellent pitching staff, this team as currently constructed, has no hope.  Aside from that, they will lose Andrew Cashner, Tyson Ross, Huston Street and Joaquin Benoit after this season through trades or free agency.

What hope is there for the future?  Johnny Manziel, I guess.

I'm done.  I have been a fiercely loyal Padres fan and will continue to be when the current front office and ownership is different.  Until then, I'm not eating the same shit they're serving, regardless of the scenery.  In every relationship there has to be a give and take.  It's been all take for a decade.