The other night I had a fun Padres dream. Part of the context involves a confession (surely appropriate for a Friars blog), a request for penance and a question as well. So I'll take a detour, but I promise I'll get to the gruntling dream in a moment.

So, I'm applying for a major grant that would give me the money and teaching leave to look at the development of fan culture in the late 1800s to early 1900s around Aussie Rules football, soccer in the UK, and of course baseball in the US. And I need to choose a city for each. While I wish I could choose SD, the city needs to be on the East Coast cause baseball got big there first (this is the confession part, please forgive me seeking to study them!) - the options are NY, Boston and Chicago, and I'd chosen NY, but a Bostonian colleague reviewing my draft application said Boston was closer in character to Melbourne and considered more sports mad than NY. So I told him that I hated the Red Sox slightly less than the Yankees, and I am now leaning a bit towards Boston cause it seems a decent fit and the term "kranks" was developed their to describe obsessed fans. So my question is which East coast city should I choose and why?

Anyway, my colleague was speechless when I noted my antipathy to the thieving Sox, which might be why, in a later email, he told me that he didn't think he'd ever met a Padres fan in his life! This snooty revelation helped spark the dream, along with the imminence of spring training and the glorious promises that this entails.

So in the dream our wonderful Padres are in another game 163 and victory will take them into the playoffs.Exactly who we were playing was unclear, but I hate all our opponents anyway.

I'm watching the game on MLB TV, and after a tense first few innings when the Friars fritter away opportunities, the suddenly start dominating. And I'm not just using the D word to excite Drama. The details of the game passed me by in a dreamy, delirious blur, though I do remember that I was constantly replaying hits, home-runs and enemies flailing helplessly at pitches (I guess young Josh Spence must have been throwing some flames). By the time the 9th inning begin, the Pads are up by a mere 26-3.

You know who I spotted playing second base? A spry David Eckstein himself, back with all his scrappy panache! Just as I enjoying seeing him do his little-man strut of his stuff, he catches the final out. And the dream ends with the announcer (Matt Vasgersian?) yelling out that you might not know any Padres fans, but they're in the playoffs, and they're gunning for your team!

I'm sure this will be trumped and fair enough, but couldn't find the game thread, and I wanted a to chat about our Pads before having to go off and buy some chooks (Aussie for chickens).

As I write Richards has already struck the cold knife of fear through the hearts of these retrogades and the away town commentators are saying that our batting linwup sucks. I wouldn't want to argue with that, but shouldn't they still be cringing with embarrassment about the three guys who hit HRs yesterday?

So my baseball trip ended with a glorious bang, but to understand the complete (mini) epic nature of it it's worth going back to the beginning.

My father's sister and parents moved to SD when I was very young, which meant we visited here a few times when I was growing up. I quickly came to love SD and  it's sports teams, but baseball was especially hard to follow when I got back to Australia as we had almost no coverage of it. I knew Gwynn was god and enjoyed seeing him bat well over .400 when I was here once, but that was as far as it went.

I've travelled here two times before as an adult, but only saw the Padres play once when one of my cousins took me in 1998 but didn't know any of the players on either team except for Gwynn, who was now a much bigger god! More recently however, I've been able to follow the Friars on the net, and via the glorious GLB, have started to learn something of the game. So when I had the chance to come over to the US for a sports history conference I was desperate to catch some Padres games in person.

When I left Melbourne for the US last Friday, the thing at close to the top of the list was the two Padres v Mets games that I hoped to fit into my schedule. My trip didn't begin well however (read the rest after the jump).

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As well as being a Padres fan I make a living teaching and researching about the passions of sports fans. I'm going to be in and around San Diego in early June (after going to a sports history conference in Orlando), and am looking to interview sports fans about the joy they find in thinking and talking about sports statistics.

Please let me know if you're interested in participating in the study - the formal details are below the jump.

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I'm coming over to the US in a couple of days for a sports history conference in Orlando, and will be coming to LA and San Diego after the conference. Among other things I'm hoping to go to a couple of Padres games (my first for 17 years, and my first as a proper fan). And I'd like some advice about a couple of things.

Firstly, I'll be arriving in at LA airport at 3:05pm on Tuesday June 1 and am hoping to catch the Padres v Mets game that evening in SD (as well as the game next day). The direct flights seem hideously expensive, so I'd like some advice on other ways I might be able to get to the game. My initial plan is to catch the train to SD (which I've done before). There's a train that leaves Union Station in LA at 4:10pm and arrives in SD at 7pm. Does it sound reasonable to plan on making that connection?

Of course if someone is driving down from LA I'm happy to pay for fuel and also to buy a ticket for them (from the stub-hub website).

Which brings me to my next question. I've only seen one MLB game live and wouldn't have a clue where it's best to sit? I'd like a place where I get a good sense of the game overall without having to take out a second mortgage on my house. Obviously stub-hub has a heap of options but I don't have a clue how to evaluate which is a good deal.

Thirdly, it would be nice to meet up with some GLB'ers - I'll be on semi-holidays, so am happy to meet up for a drink before or after either of the early game v the Mets on Wednesday June 2. (I'm staying at my Aunt's place so probably won't go out after the game on the Tuesday).

As well as being a Chargers fan I make a living teaching and researching about the passions of sports fans. I'm going to be in and around San Diego in early June (after going to a sports history conference in Orlando), and am looking to interview sports fans about the joy they find in thinking and talking about sports statistics.

Please let me know if you're interested in participating in the study - the formal details are below the jump.

Continue reading this post »

I'm not sure if Shawne would approve, but my youngest one (now 3 months old) has pretty much had a mohawk from birth that reminds me of the one he had. 

The pictures my wife took don't quite capture it - it's getting late so she's not smiling (even at the thought of sacking a quarterback), and one of them is a bit blurry, but they give you a bit of an idea. You can see them after the jump.

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I'm enjoying trying to think more about this game you call football :), so I thought I might do one or more posts along the lines of  - a view from Oz - in the hope that it might help me learn more and might be of some interest...

I was already familiar with the criticism of Norv for predictable play calling. But a post from Wonko opened my eyes to some of the complexity around this. In basic terms, Norv doesn't want to give away his best plays until he really needs them. So he'll go 'vanilla' for as long as possible. [Is Rivera adopting a similar philosophy? :)]

I don't mind this as a starting position, but you'd want them to be 'bread and butter' plays that are solid and generally lead to an accumulation of first downs. To do this they need to play to your strengths, and I'm not sure that the set of plays done over and over against the den of iniquity, do this. With little help from the o-line or blocking back, it's hard for me to see how a game-plan based on predictable running plays is going to help get us down the field. Surely the strength at the moment is the passing game, so why not base the game-plan around a set of passing plays that are also fairly predictable but harder to stop?

I'm sure it's not quite so uncomplicated, and look forward to hearing why. Is part of the reason that setting up for the pass - in a shotgun formation say - will offer Rivers even less protection?