SAN DIEGO _ It will look different, with a $300 million game-changing gamble parked at third base. It will smell different, a whiff of genuine spring possibility hanging in the Petco Park air. More than anything, though, Opening Day will feel different.
Seismically such. Freshly. Wholly.
The start of baseball in San Diego is a time to dream again, a moment to hope boundlessly and without hesitation, imagining the kinds of ballpark tomorrows so rarely lived by the Padres _ an organization with just five playoff seasons in a half-century and none since 2006.
This isn't a collection of charred retreads, from Chase Headley and Alexei Ramirez to Jered Weaver, straining our belief systems on the first trip to the ticket window. When the Padres trot on the field Thursday against the Giants, the shift in times and perception is such that the owners responsible for hiring one-time "rock-star GM" A.J. Preller are flirting with celebrity status of their own.
The decision to lock down All-Star Manny Machado _ the boldness, the blizzard of bucks, the bewilderment it fueled across Major League Baseball _ reshaped much for the Padres, a market still known to many across the country for animated poultry.
There's belief that things truly could be different. There's retooled buy-in on Peter Seidler and Ron Fowler. There's real money and real proof and real bottom-line effort.
Walk the walk, fans demanded. Then they did.
"It tells you a lot, really," said Seidler, the team's general partner, of the unique buzz building for Opening Day. "Number one, it tells you frankly how dismal and few and far between the success stories have been over 50 years.
"We need to grow more Tony Gwynns, more Trevor Hoffmans, more Randy Joneses. We need to win. We want people to look at us 10, 20, 50 years from now as being good leaders."
That's the power of the big buy on Machado, a generational player who could anchor third through the heart of a generation. That single player acquisition, paired with the No. 1 farm system in baseball, the spend on Eric Hosmer, the unexpected arrival of shortstop Fernando Tatis Jr. and burgeoning pitching depth and outfield promise, began rewriting the story of those running the Padres.
For many, Seidler and Fowler (the club's executive chairman) generally were considered well-intentioned, say-the-right-things caretakers. With Machado in the fold, they blossomed into something powerfully more _ unexpected change agents announcing plans to sit at baseball's table.
The shift was personified in a single photo posted to Twitter by President of Business Operations Erik Greupner. A fan, dressed in a camo Padres jersey and sneakers, quietly pointed a sign toward the front offices while standing on an island in the middle of Park Boulevard.
