SAN DIEGO _ Let's start with curses, which have a colorful niche in baseball history.
These days, the baseball world gives curses no credence due to the Cubs and Red Sox finally winning a World Series.
No one gnashes teeth over a billy goat's exile from a tavern, or that Babe Ruth was traded.
Or, in this little slice of the baseball universe, that the Padres failed to pour holy water on home plate in 1969.
What could inspire curse talk with the Pads, though, if baseball hadn't become so serious, is the trend of players coming to or staying in San Diego on some type of big-money deal, and then falling short of the dollar-inflated expectations or falling off _ a few of them far off.
The Pads make a splash, they get splattered with mud.
That's how it's gone in the past two decades, with players on the team's bigger-money deals.
I'll start by saying that Pads newcomer Manny Machado, the four-time All-Star who Tuesday got a $300 million guarantee and perhaps Coronado Island as well, should perform a lot better for the Pads than how the Nevins and Peavys, the Kemps and Shieldses, and, from what we've seen so far, Wil Myers and Eric Hosmer, performed after the Pads went large on them. In fairness to some of those guys, injuries hit hard.
Start with Machado's age _ 26.
In comparison, three of the aforementioned players were in their 30s when the Pads set a club spending record for them.
Corner infielder Phil Nevin was 31 _ an old 31, at that _ when his $34 million extension took effect in the 2002 season.
Outfielder Matt Kemp was headed to his age-31 season when the current front office and ownership assumed $75 million of his contract, a Pads record for a trade acquisition. In contrast to how many insiders perceived him with the Dodgers, the Padres unwisely projected Kemp as a face-of-the-franchise leader. He would gain too much weight.
Three months later, the team made pitcher James Shields, 33, the priciest free-agent addition in club history with a $75 million deal, which cost the team a top-15 draft pick (valued by several clubs between $10 million and $20 million).
None of the three came close to living up to the long-term dollars the Pads pledged them, though Kemp wasn't so bad a hitter and eating money to unload Shields, who had good stretches, brought from the White Sox a rookie-ball shortstop, Fernando Tatis Jr., who has evolved into one of the sport's top prospects.
How about the three others mentioned above? Like Machado, they were in their 20s.
Jake Peavy was 27 when the club-record $52 million extension triggered in 2009.
Myers was 26 when the current front office signed him to an $83 million extension, and his replacement at first base, Hosmer, was 28 when he came aboard last February for $144 million.
By '09, Peavy was past his prime and with the White Sox would suffer a ghastly injury a year later, a torso muscle tearing off bone.
We'll see if Myers and Hosmer can turn it around. Perhaps the new guy will benefit them.
