Teammates took to calling him “The Foreman.” Not because of Phil Nevin’s occasionally gruff demeanor, either, and not because he played baseball like he should be wearing a hardhat.
Rather, the nickname stemmed from the inordinate amount of time Nevin spent at Petco Park before it ever opened, before it actually began to take shape as a ballpark, back when it was little more than a blueprint, a flattened patch of downtown dirt and dormant caterpillars.
Back, essentially, when it was a non-construction construction zone.
“Even when building was stopped for two years and nothing seemed to be getting anywhere with the new ballpark, I still went down to look around,” said Nevin, referring to the lengthy shutdown of Petco Park construction due to lawsuits. “I mean, I was down there all the time.”
Brian Giles, an El Cajon native who grew up going to games in Mission Valley and played at the “Q” as a visitor with the Pittsburgh Pirates, knew when he was traded to San Diego on Aug. 26, 2003, that he’d have a significant role in the inaugural of Petco Park the following season. He’d already closed down Three Rivers Stadium and opened PNC Park, one of just two or three ballparks that now rival Petco Park for sheer beauty.
Giles had barely gotten off the plane at Lindbergh Field, too, when taken for a ride by his unofficial tour guide.
“As soon as I was traded to the Padres in ’93, Nev drove me right down to the Petco Park site,” said Giles. “He couldn’t wait. None of us could, really. Being a kid from here, with all the times I’d watched the Padres at Jack Murphy Stadium, I really couldn’t wait.”
Petco Park at 10
The promise, the reality, the future of San Diego’s downtown ballpark.
The wait for everybody ended on April 8, 2004. It ended with a game that would’ve been memorable if played in July or any month of any year in any ballpark in America, certainly for the Padres, a 4-3 winner in extra innings over a San Francisco Giants club (and one particular slugger) that had vexed San Diego for years.
With a circus catch by center fielder Jay Payton over a chain-link fence at the deepest part of the biggest ballpark in baseball, the Padres came back from within an inch of disaster to christen their Taj Majal with a walk-off, two-out single by Sean Burroughs that made the fourth game of the season feel like Game Four of a World Series.
Understand, too, that Burroughs already had given the Padres a 1-0 lead with a ground-rule double in the third and tied the game with a ninth-inning single. All three of Burroughs’ RBI were scored by Khalil Greene.
“It was like out of a fictional novel, almost,” said Burroughs of what surely was the greatest night of his major league career. “Opening Night … anticipated for so many years. Full house. (Barry) Bonds almost hits a homer to tie. There were things that went on in this game that I think we’re never going to forget.”
Ten years later – not to mention the thousands of games they played over their careers – many of the principals in that opener of openers at Petco Park can recall details like it was last night.
“With what’s gone up around Petco Park since, it actually feels like a lot longer than a decade,” said Trevor Hoffman, the likely Hall of Fame closer who’s back with the Padres as a minor-league pitching coordinator and the special assistant to general manager Josh Byrnes. “But it was such a beautiful ballpark and the vibe inside it was something special.”
Above all, though, the ex-players the spectacle and electricity of the capacity crowd. The stark contrast between playing in a baseball-only facility right next to San Diego Bay after years in a multi-purpose facility, stuck between freeways, that basically had been altered to suit the Chargers. They’d gone from an enclosed, circular, concrete edifice that could’ve been anywhere on the map to a diamond of a diamond that looked and felt like no other.
There was the sense that everything about Petco Park was the best of the best, superior in so many ways to virtually every other team’s, spiffy new digs that even Padres players from all over the Western Hemisphere were proud to call home.
By moving downtown, the low-rent Padres had moved uptown.
“We go in there and it’s everything we’d heard it would be,” said Nevin, now the manager of the Reno Aces, the Triple-A of the Arizona Diamondbacks. “Everything about the place was absolutely incredible. The playing surface, the clubhouse, the workout facilities, absolutely everything was top-rate.”
Designed as it was to suit Southernmost California in architecture and atmosphere, Petco Park also was specifically designed to house a winner, or at least a more affordable kind of winner. It was built for pitching and defense, an antidote for the kind of steroidal smashball that was still so prevalent in the early 2000’s, and that first game surely indicated that a new day had dawned in San Diego.
“We wanted to make it a hit from the minute we went into that ballpark,” said Kevin Towers, who put together that ballcub as general manager and now is GM of the Arizona Diamondbacks. “We’d promised our fans that once we got the ballpark, we were going to put a very competitive team on the field.”
In between the lines, too, the Padres had made sure to have some San Diego touches. Not lost on locals, to be sure, was the fact that Giles recorded the first-ever hit at Petco Park, a first-inning, line-drive single into right.
“At the time, I really didn’t think about it, because all I thought about was figuring out a way to beat the Giants,” said Giles. “It was a big deal after the game, having my mom and dad and family there, but I think it’s taken 10 years for it to really hit me.
“Looking back at how it transpired, that was pretty cool. It was all very cool.”
Clearly with the idea of wanting Giles’ specific skill for getting on base and playing a solid right field, then general manager Kevin Towers traded for the left-handed veteran from Granite Hills High who remains the only Padres player to bat .300 in any season since 2003. Giles did it twice.
Likewise, the Padres had saved 41-year-old David Wells for just that occasion, withholding him from the first three games to have his turn in the rotation fall on the Petco opener. That he’d been an American League workhorse with a perfect game at Yankee Stadium was resume enough, but “Boomer” was from Ocean Beach and Point Loma High, and what better choice was there to throw the first pitch at Petco?
(Actually, the ceremonial first pitch was thrown by no less than ex-president Jimmy Carter, a very close friend of former Padres majority owner John Moores.)
“Looking back, the game itself was kind of a blur,” said Mark Loretta, then the Padres’ second baseman. Smiling, he said, “We won that game, right?”
Indeed. Barely.
“Seriously, here’s what I do ,” said Loretta, now a special assistant in the Padres’ front office. “That’s just how important it was to us to win that game.”
Especially with him in the game. Perhaps it was someone with a sadistic or curious streak that scheduled the Giants as the visiting team for that particular series, given the way the Padres had been pummeled over the years by Barry Bonds, who’d literally left a farewell dent in the Qualcomm Stadium scoreboard with one of the 39 homers he’d struck there.
Sure enough, Bonds got into a Wells delivery in the sixth inning, a drive that looked headed for the sandpit beyond the 411-foot mark in right center field. Even if it had landed in the sand for a game-tying solo homer, imagine the devastation that might’ve been done, the deflation of 45,000 people watching Bonds come into the Padres’ new ballpark and go right back to blasting away with his usual impunity. Think of the psychological damage that could’ve been done if he’d cleared the farthest away of fences.
“All I’m saying,” said Hoffman, “is that I’m glad it got caught.”
If he never did another thing for the Padres – and he only played that one season in San Diego – Payton earned a permanent place in franchise lore with his impeccably timed leap and grab atop the fence. He made it look easy, really.
“He was playing me back on the warning track, that little runt,” Bonds said afterward. “What the [heck]! I hit the ball hard.”
Other than those in the sandbox, the best view of Payton’s catch was had by Giles, coming over from right. As soon as Payton’s glove came back with the ball, Giles’ first impulse was to glance in at Bonds.
“You could see the frustration in his face,” said Giles. “His face said, “I hit that ball pretty good and it didn’t get out.”
It would become a facial expression that seemingly every player — home or visitor — would wear at one time or another after hitting into a very long out at “Petco National Park.” Marquis Grissom did hit Petco’s first homer off reliever Antonio Osuna in the 10th inning, putting the Giants ahead 3-2, but it took six games before a Padres batter put one out.
Loretta. Of course.
“I was teasing Mark about it after we threw out the first pitch at the (2014) home opener,” said Giles. “The announcer said “Loretta droooooove a ball 368 feet over the fence.”
Also involved in that ceremony to commemorate the 10-year anniversary of Petco were Wells – who shut out the Giants on four hits over seven innings – and Hoffman. For the latter, it was not only a special occasion, but a weird one.
Considering the 601-save career of a closer who was the epitome of dependability over 16 years in San Diego – a pitcher whose efficiency had helped get the Padres their new ballpark in the first place — how bizarre it was to see get tagged for a two-run double by Ray Durham in the ninth. Thus a shutout win by the Padres into a 2-1 lead for the Giants.
“I’m not gonna lie to you — that was pretty tough,” said Hoffman, who was known for his short memory after both good and bad games. “You only get one first. I’d have liked to stick around for the end of that one. Fortunately, we won.”
Burroughs took care of that. In stunning fashion.
For one day, it was like Burroughs was back to being the Little League World Series legend, coming through with all the huge hits at the right times. The son of a former MVP (Jeff Burroughs) and a first-round draft choice in his own right, the easy-going third baseman will always remain a bit of an enigma in San Diego, the top who never quite met expectations and later fell into the depths of drug use.
The Padres always wanted more power out of Burroughs, but he got the job done just splendidly with that ground-rule double and two singles. The winner came off David Aardsma, scoring Kerry Robinson and Khalil Greene, the latter of whom also was a No. 1 pick whose time in San Diego was effectively cut short by an anxiety disorder.
The winning pitcher? Eddie Oropesa, a fourth-year southpaw who’d be out of the majors for good by the end of that May.
The Padres of 2004 went on to post an 87-75 record — the first winning record in San Diego since the World Series that won over voters to the construction of a new ballpark.
“This is 2014,” said Nevin, noting emphatically that he’d never let his exasperation over Petco’s hitting dimensions diminish his appreciation for the ballpark. “You go to other cities now, 10 years later, you realize how state-of-the-art you still have it in San Diego.”
SPECIAL REPORT: PETCO PARK AT 10
- Is Petco success on ballfield, at box office?
- East Village: The next 10 years
- It all began with a walk-off in the Park
- Petco among the best, what about the rest?
- What to make of Petco Park
- Promised renewal of East Village largely fulfilled
- Petco Park timeline: 20 yrs of MLB
- East Village artsy, with an urban edge
- Ballpark district development: The numbers
- Petco: 10 memorable games
- Six reasons to catch a game at Petco Park
- How Petco Park changed the downtown dining scene
- 10 years in, were Petco naming rights worth it?
