These are indeed trying times for the Padres, where they are in the standings, what was expected, and what is happening on the field.
 
But Padres baseball is more than this 4th place record, this sub-500 season so far.  It’s more than just Matt Kemp losing 70-points off his batting average in the month of May.  More than hot-and-cold starting pitching, or up and down relief pitching.  More than a  two season drought like slump to Jedd Gyorko or the injuries to their two first baseman.
 
No, Padres baseball is also about setbacks, not in the standings, but to those pitchers trying to comeback from surgeries.
 
Josh Johnson has been shutdown a third time this spring, trying to comeback from forearm surgery, after having come back from bone chip elbow surgery.
 
Corey Luebke has just begun the process of throwing live batting practice at extended spring training, slowly coming back from back-to-back elbow ligament transplant surgery.
 
Casey Kelly is buried in the bullpen in San Antonio, trying to come back from two years of elbow woes too.
 
The starts and stops of pitchers in rehab are numbing, to an organization that hopes all three can get back to past levels of performance.  Hard on the team, disappointing for the fans, but think about the hurlers themselves.
 
Josh Johnson is fiery, combative, competitive.  It has been awhile since he went (31-14) in a two plus year of dominance pitching for the Florida Marlins.  He has known nothing but setbacks since he went to Toronto.  He’s earned 9-million from the Padres, but hasn’t pitched a regular season inning yet in two years.
 
He looked all the way back, coming off bone chip elbow surgery,  after good outings in the Cactus League in 2014, then encountered forearm problems.  Another surgical procedure, and now this series of setbacks.  Within a month, tricep issues, soreness above the right elbow, and now a neck issue.
 
Luebke showed so much promise so early, he was given a 5-year contract.  He promptly broke down, after never having had arm problems.  A torn elbow ligament was finally diagnosed, and the Tommy John procedure.  But the ligament graft did not take, and after a full year or rehab, another surgery, and another long off season with trainers and doctors.  He is throwing now, but is still a long way from being major league ready.
 
Kelly came in the original Adrian Gonzalez trade.  A torn ligament, then a stress fracture in the elbow a year after the operation.  It has been a slow rebound for him, but at least he is pitching in San Antonio.  Some good outings, some rocky outings.  One time you look at his numbers and you see an ERA of 9.00.  Two weeks later, he has reduced it to 3.60, but he is constantly being monitored.  You never know if there will be a problem the next time they give him the ball.  He’s a long way from the mound in San Diego, and I’m not talking airline mileage.
 
The Padres have so much tied up in arms trying to get healthy.  The mental strength it takes to cut loose, and hope you don’t get cut down by another injury is something.  The constant worry does this pain after pitching mean there are more problems?  JJ, Luebke, Kelly are members of the organization, but are really an island unto themselves, at least till they prove they can pitch again without pain.
 
There’s more to baseball in San Diego than games with the Dodgers-Giants-Angels.  The Padres season is such a grind.  And rehab is such a long, lonely road too.

He’s back in town and facing the biggest decision of his career, the future of the family business, the San Diego Chargers.

Dean Spanos, gifted the operation of the franchise by his father in the mid-1990s, is cut from a different cloth.  The father Alex was a self-made man, who started in business selling sandwiches to migrant workers in the Central California valleys, to building a construction empire.

He was bold, competitive, somewhat abrasive, and successful.
Son Dean received great things by virtue of that family, including the title to run the team his father purchased in 1984.  Dean has been benevolent in San Diego to charities, much like Alex has bankrolled so much good in their hometown community of Stockton.

Alex, befriended by Al Davis, knew nothing of running a professional sports franchise, and had little knowledge of what he was purchasing from Gene Klien, a team on its last legs, Dan Fouts’ legs, in the waning years of the Air Coryell era.  It was a painful rebuild.

But Alex knew people, and he put in place Bobby Beathard, Super Bowl architect from says in Miami and Washington, and that begat Bobby Ross as coach, which brought a Super Bowl team to this city.

Dean knows more about pro football thanks to his tenured time serving under the father.  He has seen the bad, the cyclical part of sports, seen the good, the Martyball era, tasted the bad, Ryan Leaf to Norv Turner.

But now he is facing the decision of a lifetime, not just a decision about the business part of football, but a decision that will impact the Spanos name, and his legacy.  Stay in San Diego and find a way to get a Stadium built, or seek out the riches, and move to Los Angeles where the dollars are mightier.

Spanos is back in town, diving into the analysis of what was proposed by the Stadium Task Force group, trying to compare apples to oranges, what other owners got from their cities to what he is being offered to stay in San Diego.  He knows real estate, he knows values, he knows revenue streams.

What Dean Spanos doesn’t know is how to make the right decision, for when faced with key decisions, he hasn’t done well.

It’s right there in the history book.  He refused to get in the middle of the Beathard-Ross dispute over coaching staffs, let Ross quit and saw the franchise fall apart in the Kevin Gilbride era.

It took the intervention of the then still-healthy Alex, to straight out that mess, by mandating the hiring, strange as it was at that point, of the much disliked Marty Schottenheimer.  It headed the team in the right direction.

But then, after watching John Butler’s life snuffed out by cancer, and the reigns given to incoming GM-AJ Smith, Dean failed to make the right decision a second time.  AJ and Marty operated at different ends of the spectrum in philosophy and personality.  The owner let the GM-run off the coach.  Thus the arrival of Norv Turner, and the return of mediocrity.

Spanos went outside his limited knowledge circle, to get input when he finally cleaned house.  The consultants delivered GM-Tom Telesco and Coach Mike McCoy and they have embarked on a drive to shore up the franchise in the final days of Philip River’s great career.

Now Dean faces an ultimate challenge.  Stay-or-Go.  His hire of Mark Fabiani as his point man, hasn’t brought much success, unless you feel venom scores you points.  The franchise theory that they tried for 14-years to build a stadium, carries little credibility, in that all they did was float ideas, present schemes, build it here, put it down there, give my my luxury house, here are the plans, pay for it.

It was a hollow attempt to get something done, while Americans lay face down in the gutter after 9-11, the collapse of the Global economy, near bankruptcy in San Diego over the pension dispute, incompetent mayors, then Wall Street.  San Diego was paralyzed, and the Spanos’ expected a near destitute city, in a country going thru bad times, to give a rich man a stadium.

For the first time in a long time the other side, Mayor Kevin Faulconer has delivered something with dollar signs attached to it.  A game plan of ideas of how his people, in business and with football experience, think this can get done.  Like any blueprint, it will be reworked.  But for once, there’s something there to negotiate off of, not just some glitzy picture, with a note “give me what I want and pay for it”.

It’s convenient, and I have, to rail against Spanos, saying he wants to stay in San Diego, while spending all those resources, and hiring all those people to work on the Carson project.  He utters he wants to take care of his family in the future.  Yes you can by owning a football franchise.  Or he could sell that $84M investment for probably $800M now and have the generations in Stockton and San Diego live happily ever after.

Let’s give Dean this next window of a couple of months to see is the two sides can find the working finances in the middle to get a deal done.  He deserves to be treated fairly in the next couple of months to show he can be a team player with the city and county, rather than just a man demanding a corporate welfare check.

When was the last time he made the right decision though?  Not Beathard-Ross, not AJ-Martyball.  Maybe the ‘third time will be magic.’  Or maybe it will be ‘strike three-you’re out;.

Big decision coming.  Whether he likes it or not, Dean Spanos legacy in his adopted home town will be written one of two ways.  We call it Spanos Field in Mission Valley for keeping the franchise here, or we watch him and the Mayflower moving vans leave in the middle of the night for Los Angeles.

This community remembers fondly Barron Hilton and the Coryell-Klein era.  At stake is what they will say about the Spanos family name.  No amount of money donated can change how the community feels if you make a bad choice.  Just ask John Moores.

There will be plenty of time to salute him with praise or sully him personally-professionally. Hoping he makes the right decision for the town and team.  Fearing he will make another Spanos decision, based on past track record.  This time, Alex the father, can no longer help out, as dementia has taken over his life.

For all this community has given him, it’s right for San Diego Chargers fans to use the Jerry McGuire movie quote “Show Me the Money”.

Dean will say it is strictly business.  Every football fan in this community, who bought his tickets and his jerseys, will call, it very personal.

 Lonestar JR and AJ…Johnny Rutherford and AJ Foyt.
The Boys from Brazil..Emerson Fittipaldi and Tony Kanaan.
 
It’s the Foreign Legion…Ari Luyendyk and Dario Franchitti
It’s Big Al and Little Al…the Unsers.
 
The Gasman and the Spiderman…Tom Sneva and Helio Castroneves.