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.


Owners … I’m sorry … thank you

At least two beers in town — the Murky Machado Hazy IPA by Bay City Brewing and the Mango Machado Hazy Double IPA by Creative Creature Brewing in El Cajon — have risen from the Man Diego buzz. Sports Illustrated’s baseball preview editions in the western part of the U.S. feature Machado and Tatis Jr., the first time the Padres have been spotlighted for on-field reasons since the influential magazine labeled Gwynn “The Best Hitter Since Ted Williams” on July 28, 1997.

Ownership did what no others have done before them. They saw the big button. They pushed it.

They changed opening day.

“If you picked 1-through-30, who would make a move on Machado, I doubt highly that anyone would have put the Padres in the top 20 before this happened,” ESPN’s Pedro Gomez said. “It depends what happens the first month. And you still have to pitch. But I think it’s already different because people aren’t saying, it’s the same old sleepy Padres.”


Tickets, expectations soar

Preller estimated he was approached by an average of 10-15 fans per day during spring training, an unprecedented parade of thank you’s and organizational enthusiasm. Fowler said the texts and messages ran well into the hundreds.

Seidler marveled at the stream of emails causing his in-box to bulge, from the owner of another National League team, to the president of a university, to a 19-year-old who boasts he’s followed the franchise with purpose “since T-ball.”

One fan encapsulated a feeling ripe and rippling across San Diego: “No matter how the Machado contract turns out long-term, no one can say you didn’t try. All I’ve ever asked for.”

It’s something opening day begged for, but far too rarely enjoyed.


According to ticket broker StubHub, the Padres witnessed the league’s second-highest jump in ticket sales on the site a season ago at 44 percent. The company indicated its sales spiked 280 percent the day after Machado’s signing became official.

How swiftly did the narrative shift? It almost required a neck brace and traction. One move squashed the thoughts that the franchise never would sign a $300 million player. In just 24 hours, it created the belief for plenty that they might actually sign a second $300 million-plus guy as Bryce Harper navigated free agency.

“I think it changed their image,” Bob Chandler, a Padres broadcaster from 1972-2003, said of ownership. “Let’s be honest, the Padres have been pretty lousy. They haven’t tried to sign someone this big in the market since Steve Garvey back in 1982. Machado is only 26 (while Garvey was 34 when he signed).

“In my opinion, there might be more overall talent in this camp than any spring training I can remember.”


Seidler plows through the email evidence. One swoons, “I’ve got tears in my eyes. Never felt this good as a Padres fan. Thank you!” Another cauterized a painful past, “I have been a Padres fan for 35 years. …. I just wanted to take a minute to say thank you for signing Machado. Being a San Diego sports fan can be extremely trying at times, but today is a day I can puff out my chest and start to dream a bit.”

Yet another summarized the trickiness of the climb: “Just wanted to say thank you for making the Padres relevant. San Diego needed this. First bringing back the brown (uniforms for 2020) and now Machado. Don’t stop now. Keep hitting home runs.”

Fowler said the plan to really spend, to fully try always existed. The timing, however, was partly dictated.

“In a perfect world, we’d be doing this (chasing a big name) in ’20,” Fowler said. “But we heard stuff that (Colorado’s Nolan) Arenado wasn’t going to be a free agent. We heard (Nationals’ Anthony) Rendon was not going to be a free agent. You saw the (Mike) Trout stuff.


“That’s what we decided to pull the trigger in 2019, because (Machado) wouldn’t be here in 2020. Frankly, we thought it was a smart baseball move. That people are pleased is a plus.”



Vibrant new chapter

Seidler and Fowler know that sports ownership popularity can shift as quickly and wildly as Pacific tides. Shaking the dust from a franchise’s fan base that hungered for a winner offered a benchmark.

They say Machado makes one opening day memorable. Add more, though, and opening days to come become meaningful, too.

“We didn’t spend a lot of time patting ourselves on the back,” Seidler said. “Hell, all we had to do was write a big check.”


The truth of the momentum they’ve seeded, though, is that it came through a drip, drip, drip commitment of writing other checks. It quietly came in the international market, where they poured in $78 million during one lap. It came by assuming more than half of pitcher James Shields’ remaining contract in a trade with the White Sox to land a 17-year-old kid named Tatis.

It came when the Padres sold high on All-Star reliever Fernando Rodney to buy low on a current pitching sparkplug named Chris Paddack.

“I think that guy’s sign (from Greupner’s Twitter feed) reflected 50 years, not our years,” Seidler reasoned. “In fairness over our six years, we like these guys but they haven’t all proved it yet. It wasn’t so much, ‘We didn’t believe in you, sorry.’ It’s more that we’ve shown we can believe in you.

“If we stop with Machado, we’re not going to get where we want to get to. There are more steps to come of all shapes and sizes.”


Stoking hope rarely hurts. Inching up the bar is wise, but also necessary. Fowler understands that when you lift up a fragile franchise that needed this much work, much remains left to do.

Only the Rangers and Brewers have been in baseball longer without realizing a world championship.

“We’re not sitting here celebrating Manny,” Fowler vowed. “We’re figuring out what we need to do next. We’ll let the fans celebrate Manny.”

Opening day, indeed.