Beyond Underdogs: The Whale's Vagina Padres

Calling them the “Whale’s Vagina Padres” is neither here nor there; I just wanted to be splashy. Anyways, it’s a good thing no one in San Diego knows the Padres are still there because, if they did, they’d be upset.

I’m starting to think GM Jed Hoyer made an agreement with previous GM Kevin Towers to continue his legacy of intentionally remaking the Padres into the most anonymous team in all of MLB. Except I think Hoyer will take it one step further and turn it into some sort of avant-garde performance piece. By June he’ll have dealt away Chris Young, Adrian Gonzalez, Kevin Kouzmanoff and Heath Bell, strictly accepting obscure Double-A players only. Then soon afterwards he will arrange to have all the players’ names removed from the backs of their jerseys, rendering them unrecognizable to the announcers and fans. There will be no media programs published; MLB.com and ESPN.com will be forced to sign confidentiality agreements agreeing to never post the identities of the Padres’ players on their sites. At the end of the season at some art show in SoHo there will be a retrospective of the 2010 San Diego Padres season to commemorate the team’s visionary artistic achievement.

But seriously, what happens if they trade Adrian Gonzalez and Kevin Kouzmanoff? Will the league have no choice but to demote them to Triple-A? Will they be put up on foreclosure, bought by Mark Cuban, and moved to Las Vegas, San Jose…Dallas? I kind of want this to happen the same way people want the government to get so corrupt it collapses on itself in a fascinating wreck of dysfunction and chaos.

What would the city of San Diego do with that stadium they worked so hard to make the centerpiece of the downtown landscape? Would they just remodel it into a football stadium and let the Chargers play there? Would they upgrade to stainless steel appliances and granite countertops and hope to find a buyer willing to pay full price (desperate Southern California homeowner joke)? It does have great curb appeal…

The most amazing part is that despite all this, the Padres vastly outperformed their circumstances. They overachieved like a bastard in 2009. Their 2009 Pythagorean W-L record was 67-95. Long story short, that’s what their record SHOULD have been based on the team statistics. Their actual record? 75-87 – 8 games better than what it should have been. In baseball that’s pretty significant. Then if you look at their season month-by-month, you see that if they had just managed to go .500 for June and July they would have ended up 85-77 – above .500 and better than the Cubs, Brewers and Reds – and finishing 5^th versus 8^th in the wild card standings.

I suppose that’s all hypothetical gibberish since they DIDN’T do any of that, and were a pretty crappy team that in a fluke went 17-9 in September. But it begs a question for the management of the organization. You really can’t just do a little bit better? Is the team really that bankrupt? How can you be totally unable to keep any veteran good players? How much of this is simply the ubiquitous corporate mentality of profit-not-product first? I don’t know the details of the team’s financial situation. I know the owner went through a nasty divorce this year and was allegedly…apparently…trying to devalue the team since it was his biggest financial asset so that he would owe less to his wife.

So my second question is for someone like Mark Cuban, who kicked the tires on a franchise that would cost him about a bajillion times more to buy (the Cubs), why not put in an offer on the Dads and spice up the NL West a whole lot? Good time to do it with the ridiculous 2011 free agent class looming. Carl Crawford and Joe Mauer would look good in those Padres fatigues uniforms...*

*No, they wouldn't. I was just saying that as an ending to my column. Those are the ugliest uniforms in the history of baseball.

Jayhawks: Over-Underbird

I have one team that's not an Underdog at all. They're consistently good, they recently won a national championship, and my fanship totally makes me look like a front-runner since I'm not from Kansas. But I was raised on Jayhawk basketball and I've been by their side through thick and thin. That journey is why I can boldly state that they're an Underdog. A 10-0, #1 ranked Underdog.

Until '08, when they beat Memphis and I developed a monumental man-crush on Mario Chalmers, the Jayhawks hadn't claimed a title in 20 years. Yeah yeah, some teams have never won at all, blah blah blah, shut up, Gonzaga. In that 20 year span, I'm guessing Kansas had somewhere around eight #1 rankings (tried to research that stat, got bored, gave up). At some point, "Number One" became synonymous with "Disappointment". Being the favorite is when KU does some of its worst work, as seen with the Jayhawks' first round losses to 13th and 14th ranked teams in the '05 and '06 tournaments, respectively. And since the rest of the teams I faithfully support can't make the playoffs to save their lives, forgive me for preparing for the hard fall when my #1 seeded Jayhawks lose to the Corn-Weasles of Southeastern N. Dakota Technical Institute in an upset that forces the B- state of Kansas out of the Union.

I will not blather on about the "target on our back". That's one of my least favorite sports analogies. Top seeds don't lose because of a #1-shaped bullseye. Everybody wants to beat everybody. If anything, the favorites win more games because their opponents play scared. Isn't that right, 49ers against the Colts in week 8? You don't lose because teams are gunning for you, it's because you're awesome and you get comfortable and then you blow it. Isn't that right, USC vs Texas in the '05 Rose Bowl? And until '08 when Fabio Chalmers saved the world, I had watched the Jayhawks get comfortable and blow it a lot. Like, every year. Like, all the years when they were stacked, with Pierce, LaFrentz, Ostertag, Vaughn, Gooden, Collison, and lots of other players that haven't amounted to much in the NBA (Pierce excluded. Calm down, Boston). And when you're the consensus #1, blowing it is really the only option other than winning the whole thing. You either win every game and get crowned National Champion, or you lose and are a failure.

This is not to say that I don't love winning and the decent chances of taking it all. It's awesome. Two titles in three years will alleviate almost all of the misery caused by the Golden State Warriors. But I can't get excited about Jayhawk wins. We're supposed to win every game, usually by 13+ points. After a season of Giants baseball and 3/4 of a 49er season where every win is like a little kiss from Jesus, this is tough. It seems I'm much better equiped to cheer for shitty teams. Certainly more qualified to write about them.

In truth, I'm miserable. My team is awesome but they're not allowed to lose. And if they do, I won't be able to say, "At least the _________s are good," because all my other teams are bad. I'll only be able to say, "Typical." They have to win it all, or else the whole season will just be another joyless turd to go with all the other turds my beloved sports teams have pooped.