On a recent Friday night at Petco Park, 11-year-old Ysabella Diego was giving it everything she had.
Ysabella and her younger sister Alexis stood on the right field rail for several innings, faces red, throats sore from screaming —“Ta-tis! Ta-tis! Ta-tis!” — as they tried to get the outfielder’s attention. Then, finally, there it was: A look, a smile, a wave and later, a ball that landed comfortably in Ysabella’s outstretched glove, which she raised triumphantly into the air.
Fernando Tatis Jr. had given them a moment. The moment.
“I was about to cry,” said Alexis, 9. “It just feels like happiness…”
“It felt amazing,” Ysabella said as she looked over the wall that separated her and Tatis.
“I feel like … I feel like jumping at him, but …” Ysabella trailed off, before her sister proclaimed: “I love him!”
Welcome to the right field seats at Petco Park. Here, you’re not just watching baseball. You’re watching a show. And Tatis is the master of ceremonies, dazzling fans with his plays, personality and playful antics in his first full season as an outfielder.
The return
It all started with an embrace.
On May 1, Tatis played in front of Petco Park fans for the first time since serving his 80-game suspension for testing positive for a performance-enhancing drug. Seven months before, he had watched his team make a deep playoff run during his absence and felt both the joy it brought San Diego and the pain of missing out. He had seen how Padres fans showed up in droves, selling out the stadium and filling the surrounding streets in .
“They’ve been loud, they’ve been amazing,” he said before the May 1 game. “I can’t wait to put on a show for them.”
So he did. After the pregame lineups were announced, after the singing of the national anthem and the throwing of the ceremonial first pitch, Tatis sprinted to his new home in right field and heard fans scream his name for the first time since September 2021.
As he reached the right field wall, he extended both arms wide and shuffled his way to centerfield, before taking a bow in appreciation.
He’s done that every home game since.
“It just happened,” he said, refuting the notion that the gesture was pre-planned. “I’m just pumped and the crowd is always loud when I run out there. It’s a way to say hello and also to show respect. It gives me energy and it’s just a genuine moment.”
It’s become a can’t-miss ritual for the fans in right field. They stand and raise their arms as he floats by, screaming as if Bad Bunny or Taylor Swift or insert-favorite-artist-here had just stepped onstage and they had front row seats to the concert.
“He does a big bow like a rock star,” said Matt Montoy, a season-ticket holder who sits in Section 131, with Tatis directly in his eyeline. “You can tell he just loves it, that he missed it and now he’s happy to be back.”
Before this season, Montoy and his wife had considered moving their season tickets to a different location at Petco Park. Once they realized Tatis would be playing so close to them, they changed their minds.
The right-field stands have become one of the hottest tickets in town.
On any given night, in between breathtaking plays and the mundane nature of being an outfielder, Tatis will break out a salsa step or shimmy his hips while waiting for the next pitch. Chants from fans will sometimes garner a pivot and an acknowledgment, much to their delight. The ebbs and flows of the game will be matched by his body language —feigned shock at a bad call, hands on his head when a pitcher grabs a comebacker, applause in the air as he runs off the field after an inning-ending double play. Some games are feistier than others, but there is typically some sort of theater.
Tatis isn’t the only player to interact with fans while in the outfield; many have moments, for better or worse, with home and opposing fans.
It is rarer to see a player address the fans every game. Sammy Sosa, in his day, would sprint to right field and raise his arm to fans along the way. Juan Soto, who played with Bryce Harper in Washington, re how Harper would run to the outfield, take his cap off and bend toward the ground, letting his hair fall over his head before dramatically whipping it back and saluting the crowd.
“The fans go crazy every time,” Soto said.
Soto himself has a subtle gesture; since 2019, when he runs to left field, he raises his arm and points his thumb, index and pinky finger to the sky, motioning “I love you” in American Sign Language. He first acknowledges the sections along the third base line before making his way to the deepest part of left field.
“It’s just one way to say thanks to the fans for coming,” Soto said. “Thanks for coming and cheering for us and everything. … You got to give some love to the fans. They show up all year long.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3QA4Ekyc_E&feature=youtu.be
Tatis’ entrance is more pronounced, and it seems to set the stage for the rest of the game. It’s as if he is telling the fans that there is little delineation between he and them; that for nine innings, while he is in his playground, they are in this together.
He reminds manager Bob Melvin of another sensation: Ichiro Suzuki, who Melvin managed with the Seattle Mariners in 2003-04.
The scenarios are a little different, Melvin said, but the gist is the same: They understand their duty as superstars.
“Ichiro understood the perception of him,” Melvin said. “He came to the ballpark to be an entertainer every day.”
Melvin offers a story about the time he gave Suzuki his first day off. Suzuki never wanted a day off, he said, but during a series in Chicago, the organization felt it was necessary. So he broke the news to Suzuki.
“I said, ‘You’re gonna get tomorrow off’ and he just looked at me,” Melvin said. “But he was very respectful. The next day, he comes in. I said, ‘Try to take it easy.’ But then he’s out 20 minutes before the game, batting gloves on, cleats on, sitting on the bench.”
Melvin asked Suzuki what he was doing and at that moment, coincidentally, a kid walked by wearing the outfielder’s jersey.
“Suzuki kind of nodded. I went, ‘Uh-huh. I get it,’” Melvin said. “Suzuki is very aware that yes, we play a game and yes, it’s all about the team, but he understands the value of being an entertainer. So does (Tatis).
“It’s different now than back then. The reins have come off a little bit in the entertainment value for this game. … (Tatis) is consistent with it. It’s not like he hangs his head one day and he doesn’t go out there and acknowledge everybody before the game. He’s really consistent with it because he understands the entertainment value that he brings.”
Melvin was asked if the antics ever give him pause.
“No, because our fan base embraces our team and him so much it, I think it works very well,” said Melvin, in his 20th season as a major league manager. “Now, I’m old school and if I embrace that, then I think there’s a place for it.”
Prepare to be entertained
On an unseasonably cool night at Petco Park in mid-June, Tatis had one of those games.
In between the doubles, the home run, the steal and throwing out the runner at first base from the outfield, he put on another performance — this one for the fans in the right field seats.
His stretches deepened as he worked out kinks in his body. The ladies cheered.
His hips moved back and forth and every so often he would flash a dance move. The kids cheered.
He waved to a fan in the crowd — at one point, engaging in a short conversation — and the hollering ascended to high-pitched screams.
In the ninth inning, Tatis sat cross-legged on the grass like a kindergartner, unbothered, while the opposing team challenged a throw he made for an out. When the replay was ruled in his favor, he spun from the ground to a standing position, took off his hat and bowed to the shrieking spectators.
“Seems like the fans love it,” said Trent Grisham, Tatis’ neighbor in centerfield. “He’s easy to love. I mean, he’s a great baseball player, great charisma … Just really cool to watch him go about his business.”
When asked if he thought about doing any showmanship of his own, the stoic Texan grinned.
“I think that would be against my character a little bit,” Grisham said. “… But entertainment is part of the business that we’re in. So if that’s your personality and that’s how you want to go about your business, I think more power to you.”
Out in right field, it’s the kids who have the best shot at receiving a wave or a smile or a ball from Tatis. Plenty of them stand at the rail and shout his name each inning, but they aren’t the only ones.
From her seat behind the Templeton Rye Barrel Deck, Cardiff resident Aislin Parker, 23, waved a white sign outlined in gold glitter that read “Tatis, take me to dinner.” She and her older sister Rae had tried to get his attention every inning. In the eighth, he threw them a ball.
“I love that he’s interactive with the fans out here,” Aislin said. “Everybody loves it and it just gets the energy going.”
The right-field seats have been particularly popular with the ladies.
“A lot of dancing,” Montoy said. “The ladies love the stretching and the movement. My wife is a big fan.”
Feel the vibe, go with the flow
Tatis has always emphasized that this game is for the fans. Growing up in and around baseball, the joy of running and sliding in the dirt and grass, of hitting a ball deep into the San Pedro de Macoris sky, has never left him.
He maintains that none of it is scripted, that there is no rhyme or reason to his theater.
For example: when he sat with his legs crisscrossed on the outfield grass, awaiting the results of a challenge?
“I actually just sat down because I was tired,” Tatis recalled as he threw his head back, laughing.
Hence the magic of the right field seats. Some games are more business; others are more party.
“I’m just giving them a good time,” Tatis said. “Whatever is going to happen out there — sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes not happening at all, but I just go with the wave. Just go with the flow. Feel the vibe, go with the vibe. … I don’t have (anything) planned. It just happens when it happens. The fans are being loud and I just go with it.”
The showmanship is ed by the intensity with which he plays. Tatis runs hard on the basepaths, hustling to create opportunities when other players might concede an out. He covers ground in right field with ease, tracking balls he should never have a chance at catching. He throws runners out who dare — not many, now that the word is out — to try to take an extra base on him and then blows the smoke out on his finger guns before putting them back in his fake holsters.
Yes, Tatis is confident. But the smiles and the giggles and the way he motions “I love you” to fans in sign language as he runs off the field at the end of a game mixes in a unique humility.
“He has fun,” said Montoy, who was watching the game with his 7-year-old son, Henry. “He’s like a kid. It’s like watching your son out there having fun. That’s what I love the most about it.”
Perhaps most interesting is the genuine nature with which Tatis has approached his new normal. He moved from shortstop, a position he loved, to right field. He’s taken the lumps surrounding his suspension with ability and sometimes, with flair.
No matter how he is labeled by others, Tatis remains true to who he is at his core: A kid who loves the game.
“Being able just to embrace the fans, to enjoy it, to embrace everything that comes with it, not only the good things,” Tatis said after being asked about his attitude in right field. “And knowing that at the end of the day, this is a show. This is entertainment and we play this game for them.”
Not just the good, Tatis has said repeatedly this season. The good and the bad, he stresses. He has learned to embrace them both.
Before the season started, he was reminded by pitcher Joe Musgrove of what was most important: To make peace with the past and move forward. There will come a point when you need to simply get back to being who you are, Musgrove told him.
“He’s obviously, you know, playing the game really well,” Musgrove said recently. “At home, I mean, that’s his corner over there. Those people buy seats out there to sit there and watch him. So yeah, he’s giving them everything they want and it’s not taking away from his attention and focus on the game. He’s a superstar and he’s doing what he should be doing.”
Tatis smiled at the news that fans were flocking to right field.
“That’s amazing,” he said. “We’ve created this beautiful environment, some beautiful energy.”
