new ownership<\/a> of Jose E. Feliciano and Kwanza Jones. But the 44,698 in attendance were rocking on Saturday night. Expect it to step up to another level.<\/p>\n\u201cIt\u2019s home, the guys bring it up during the season,\u201d Machado said about their 22-year-old home field, where the Padres were 50-30 this season. \u201cTo come home and play just like we play in front of them, it\u2019s always great. To open the postseason here and start a run at home it will definitely be exciting, that\u2019s for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Machado collected his eighth season of 15 with 30 or more homers by hitting that clutch shot on Saturday night. It\u2019s been a strange season for him at the plate. He\u2019s struggled along hitting .216, but with the 30 homers and 90 runs batted in and a .710 OPS.<\/p>\n
\u201cThirty is a big number,\u201d Machado said. \u201cIt\u2019s huge. But we want more than just that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Padres have a short but illustrious playoff history with the Cubs.<\/p>\n
Last year, they lost a three-game Wild Card Series to the Cubs at Wrigley Field that wasn\u2019t as competitive as it sounded.<\/p>\n
But in 1984, the teams played one of the classic National League Championship Series in history. There was no Wild Card back then, no division series. Clubs had to win their divisions to get in. The Padres were 92-70 to win the West, their best record in club history up until then and their first trip to the postseason. The Cubs hadn\u2019t been in since losing the 1945 World Series to Detroit.<\/p>\n
The Padres traveled to Wrigley for the opening two games and were walloped by a combined score of 17-2. It was the last year of the best-of-five LCS, and the Padres came home having to win all three games at their home at the time, Jack Murphy Stadium in Mission Valley. No one expected that to happen. But San Diego baseball fans came of age in that series and thousands turned up at the stadium when the downtrodden team came home that night on team busses after Game 2 in Chicago.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were all shocked,\u201d Garry Templeton, the shortstop on that team recalled years later. \u201cNo question, it juiced us all up.\u201d<\/p>\n
With apologies to Petco Park, which can seat between 42,000 and 47,000 and is raucous as any ballpark in this era, The Murph (later known as Qualcomm Stadium) sat nearly 60,000 and was filled to the brim for each of the three games. The Padres, for this season-finale series have been passing out yellow towels to the fans to enhance the atmosphere.<\/p>\n
\u201cHome field advantage for us, that\u2019s huge,\u201d said Machado, who\u2019s 34 and wasn\u2019t born until 1992.<\/p>\n
Imagine adding about 20,000 people to Petco. The Murph was a bowl built for football. The crowds during five postseason games in 1984 including the first two games of a five-game World Series loss to the Tigers were deafening. There was no need for enhancements.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s damn sick,\u201d Machado said. \u201cI\u2019m going to have to Google it and check that out.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 1984, Ed Whitson pitched a gem, and the Padres won Game 3, 7-1. Steve Garvey hit a walk-off homer against Lee Smith to win Game 4, 7-5. And the Padres came from behind to win Game 5, 6-3, when Tim Flannery\u2019s grounder shot through first baseman Leon Durham\u2019s legs and Tony Gwynn\u2019s hopper bounced over second baseman Ryne Sandberg\u2019s shoulder for a double.<\/p>\n
Five guys in uniform for that series were eventually inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame: Sandberg and Smith for the Cubs, Gwynn, Goose Gossage and manager Dick Williams for the Padres.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s on the table for this year\u2019s Padres is vanquishing last year\u2019s loss to the Cubs, not genuflecting on some series that is part of baseball history. The Padres lost five of six regular season games to the Cubs this year, which all came during the first half when they were struggling.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Cubs are a great team,\u201d said first year Padres manager Craig Stammen who was in the front office in 2025. \u201cThey kind of had their way with us when we went to Chicago this year. Played a couple close games here at home, but it should be a great series. It\u2019ll be highly contested. They\u2019re the ones that knocked us out of the playoffs last year, so we\u2019ll have to bring our A-game.\u201d<\/p>\n
In baseball and in dominos.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When the doors swung open to the Padres clubhouse after their resounding 10-7 win over the D-backs on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":477616,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[1334,74,76,75,2611,187449],"class_list":["post-477615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-mlb","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-san-diego-padres","tag-wild-card-series"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=477615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/477616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}