Can I graduate?

These are not the same old San Diego Padres. They've changed in a way that feels more important than whatever happens in the 2024 MLB playoffs.

Can I look in faces that I meet?
Can I get my punk ass off the street?
I've been living on for so long
Can I graduate?

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Before I get into it, here’s a very brief intro that I feel obligated to write in case you didn’t come from my post on Threads, where I have a healthy 273 followers…

About 15 years ago, I got a tattoo on my forearm of a quill sitting in a jar of ink. I told myself that this would be my reminder to never stop writing. Because, in my 2024 parlance that has been borrowed from my young daughter, “my brain is scribble” when I don’t write down my thoughts.

If I remember to make time to come back here and write some more, things will probably change. I’ll write about a lot of stuff and not just the Padres. But, occasionally, I’ll write about the Padres. Or something Padres-adjacent. And today is one of those days.

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Someone asked me, a few weeks back, if I would write a post on this Substack that recaps the magical season the 2024 San Diego Padres just had. I thought about it, but that’s not really worth my time or yours. My thoughts on this year’s team are no more valuable or useful than the ones you can get from Craig Elsten, Steven Woods, Ben Higgins, Kevin Acee or any number of people who put our daily content about this team.

But I did want to talk about graduating. Or, rather, the way our brains try to trick us into thinking that the world and its people are changing faster than they are….

(If you want to skip my background story and get right to the Padres stuff, scroll down until you see the bolded part.)

I think it was my 18th birthday when it first happened. I expected to feel different when I woke up that morning. Older, more adult.

I did all of the things on that day. I got a (small) tattoo, bought a pack of cigarettes (which is funny only because I had already been smoking for 2 years at that point) and went into an adult video store. These were new avenues that hadn’t been available to me the day before and I was going to find out what the fuss was all about. I would’ve voted on that January afternoon, had they let me.

By the end of the day, I remember feeling let down. I had pumped up the day to be a coronation of sorts. All of the adults in my life, lining up to welcome me into this club. But, more than that, I had expected an actual change in who I was and how I felt.

Instead, I just felt like the same person. I felt no older. The videos at the adult store were the same as the ones on the internet. The cigarettes were the same as the ones I got from the store across town, where the cashier was my friend’s older brother and he wouldn’t ask to see my ID. The tattoo…..well, I liked that part. But I was the oldest in my group of friends, so that experience oddly made me feel more alone.

Was 18 just the same as 17? Pretty much.

This same pattern has repeated throughout my life:

• I graduated high school and all I felt was the incoming rush of expectations and the loneliness tied to not seeing my friends every day.

• I moved out of my parents’ house shortly after high school and didn’t feel any more responsible, even if I had more responsibilities.

• I got married at 23 years old, eager to get to the “grown up” version of myself. I woke up the next morning with a nasty hangover and an even nastier realization that I’m still the exact same person.

• I bought a house at 24 years old, thinking that owning property was the thing that was missing in my adult life. And yet, I still felt like a kid. I still had the same thoughts, organized in the same way, with the same anxieties and weaknesses.

I was trying to change who I was by walking through doorways, only to find that changing the room doesn’t change the person. Don’t worry, I’ve been to therapy since then to diagnose a little bit of what I was doing and why I was doing it.

The one moment that did feel different was the birth of my aforementioned daughter. I remember sitting in the hospital room and being handed my baby for the first time. I stared at her and thought “Things are different now.” And, in some ways they are, but it’s because my motivations have changed. Instead of trying to change who I am, my priority is often in trying to mold who she is going to be.

And here’s where I bring it back to the Padres…

I am no longer the co-host of Padres Hot Tub, but I do occasionally show up on episodes. After the team beat the Braves in the wild card round, I jumped on to talk with Craig Elsten and Chris Reed about what had taken place and what came next.

One of the listeners that joined us on stage asked a question that I had actually been thinking about for a couple of weeks (ever since I watched this): Can you know that a team is going to win a championship before it happens?

The answer, of course, is no. If we could, nobody would watch. The beauty of sports, and specifically the playoffs, is the chaos and unpredictability. Anybody can beat anybody. Upsets happen every year. If they didn’t, the joy and rush of winning a championship wouldn’t be felt by anybody outside of the players, coaches and team executives.

For the fans, the thrill and the rush comes from knowing that it all came together. The team played their best, the fans created the environment to make it happen, and the magic necessary to win the championship was there.

Now, the fans at Petco Park have certainly created an environment that feels like it meets the mark. And, whether due to Peter Seidler’s death (and the man he was before he passed) or something else, there definitely feels like there is some magic with this team, but that’s not why I feel more confident in this team than any Padres team since 1998…

The 2024 San Diego Padres don’t trip on their feet. They don’t shrink from the moment. The bats don’t go cold for days or weeks on end. To put it succinctly, they take care of business. They beat the teams they are supposed to beat (I’m going to ignore anyone shouting “Rockies!” right now and direct your attention to the last 2 games against the Braves), as much as you can say one baseball team is supposed to beat another baseball team (baseball is stupid!).

This is new. This is different. Sure, the Padres got to the NLDS in 2020. They made it all the way to the NLCS in 2022, and that was without arguably their best player. But those teams still scared me. They felt like a high-wire act. They still felt like their strengths could, and sometimes would, disappear when the lights got too bright. They had the talent, but they didn’t always take care of business.

The 2024 San Diego Padres find a way. Some will attribute that to determination and some will attribute it to ghosts and magic. It doesn’t really matter which one you believe in, the thing that has changed is the belief itself.

When the Padres are trailing in the middle innings, it finally feels okay to believe that they’ll come back. When they have a lead that is being whittled away, it finally feels okay to believe that they’ll hold off the opposing team and cross the finish line first. The 2024 San Diego Padres are worth your time, worth your energy, and worth your trust. They’ve earned it, finally.

After decades of us fans wondering how the team could go from being a laughingstock franchise to just another MLB contender, and wondering if we would ever feel ready to trust them completely or if there was some sort of curse put on the team that would doom them to eventual embarrassment every year, I feel like we’ve made it.

They didn’t just walk through a doorway or into the next season, they came to grips with who they are and started building a stronger foundation to support it. This isn’t the graduation that leaves you concerned about the lack of change, this is the moment that opens your eyes to the change that is happening around you and prepares you for the journey that’s ahead.

Does it mean they’ll beat the Dodgers? Or go further than that? Of course not. As previously mentioned, baseball is stupid and nobody should watch it. But sometimes impactful change happens in little ways that are not accompanied by fireworks, and that doesn’t make it any less important or valuable. Sometimes, it’s more about changing who you are than waiting for the change to happen itself.

Things are different now. The 2024 Padres have changed in a way that feels revolutionary, even if they’re still the Padres. Maybe its a change in priorities or belief, but it’s certainly a change that has allowed me (and, I hope, other fans of the team) to let go of some old baggage as we get ready for the ride.

Go Padres.