\u201cThe Dodgers are the dragon up the freeway we\u2019re trying to slay,\u201d Seidler said in August 2022, during an in-game interview with ESPN as the two teams played a \u201cSunday Night Baseball\u201d game at Chavez Ravine.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a lot of respect for them, obviously. But our goal, and San Diego knows this as well, is to win a championship.\u201d<\/p>\n
And from that pursuit, one of baseball\u2019s most heated modern rivalries has sprouted.<\/p>\n
To the rest of the baseball world, the Padres have been a plucky feel-good story over the last half-decade. They\u2019re a small-market team that has become an annual postseason contender. They have an aggressive front office, a roster full of big personalities, and an ever-pulsing current of emotion and intensity reverberating from the dugout through their frenzied home crowds.<\/p>\n
In Los Angeles, however, the perspective couldn\u2019t be more different. The Dodgers have long been the ruling power in the National League West, champions of the division 11 times in the last 12 years. The Padres, on the other hand, are the rebels who won\u2019t surrender, the barbarians at the door trying to steal their crown.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just think that it starts with them wanting to overtake us,\u201d manager Dave Roberts<\/a> said this week, ahead of the Padres\u2019 latest visit to Dodger Stadium on Friday. \u201cI think that we\u2019ve clearly dominated the division in the last decade. \u2026 But I think that they\u2019re trying to overtake us. I think that with that, that certainly brings out emotion.\u201d<\/p>\n While the Dodgers have quelled similar challenges during their decade-long reign in the division, the Padres have proved to be a different kind of foil \u2014 coupling a contrast in style and culture with enough staying power to fuel increasingly contentious bouts.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s just two contrasting styles,\u201d third baseman Max Muncy<\/a> said, \u201cthat have just grown into this beast.\u201d<\/p>\n There was the Dodgers\u2019 sweep of the Padres in the 2020 NL Division Series<\/a>, then the Padres\u2019 payback in a postseason upset two years later<\/a>. Last fall, a tight division race came down to the last week of the season. When their paths again crossed in October, yet another NLDS went all the way to a decisive fifth game<\/a>.<\/p>\n This year, more tinder has been added to the fire, thanks to a flurry of hit batters and a benches-clearing melee during a series at Dodger Stadium<\/a> in June.<\/p>\n And this week, ahead of a 10-day stretch in which the clubs will play their final two regular-season series, the Padres provided another plot twist, erasing what once felt like an insurmountable nine-game deficit in the standings to arrive in Los Angeles with a stunning NL West lead.<\/p>\n The dragon, of course, hasn\u2019t been slain yet. The Dodgers are still the defending World Series<\/a> champions, even if their recent middling form<\/a> has complicated their title defense.<\/p>\n Still, the conquest that Seidler \u2014 who died after the 2023 season<\/a> at age 63 \u2014 long envisioned has never seemed so attainable.<\/p>\n The threat posed by the Padres has never felt so real.<\/p>\n \u201cI feel like we\u2019ve just been facing each other in [a lot of] big spots,\u201d Dodgers infielder Miguel Rojas<\/a> said. \u201cEver since that [playoff] series in \u201822, this team took it a little bit personal over the next couple years. Obviously last year, going through them to go all the way to the World Series was a big part [of our run]. But it feels every time we face each other, even in the regular season, it\u2019s a big spot.\u201d<\/p>\n While the Dodgers and Padres have shared a division since the latter\u2019s founding in 1969, much of their coexistence featured very little shared history.<\/p>\n For most of the Padres\u2019 first half-century, the club was mired in mediocrity. Before 2020, they\u2019d made the playoffs only five times. Whereas the Dodgers boast eight World Series titles, the Padres own the distinction of the league\u2019s oldest team to have never won any.<\/p>\n There was one close division race between the clubs in 1996, when the Padres swept the Dodgers in the final series of the season<\/a> to claim the NL West by one game. In 2006, they tied atop the standings, but both flamed out in the playoffs.<\/p>\n After that, the Dodgers ascended to annual contender status. The Padres, meanwhile, searched for an identity amid a 13-year playoff drought.<\/p>\n At the start of 2019, one finally arrived.<\/p>\n While Manny Machado<\/a> was productive during his brief Dodgers tenure at the end of 2018, helping the club win a second straight NL pennant<\/a>, his style of play was an awkward fit with the team. He wouldn\u2019t always hustle, and wouldn\u2019t always apologize for it. He burnished his reputation as an occasionally dirty player, and never seemed too interested in trying to change it.<\/p>\n The Dodgers never really planned to bring him back as a free agent. But they also didn\u2019t expect him to wind up in San Diego, where he signed a $300-million deal with the Padres ahead of the 2019 season.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s about bringing a championship to San Diego,\u201d Padres general manager AJ Preller<\/a> said the day Machado was introduced. \u201cA lot of people over the last few years have been very patient as we\u2019ve tried to build something that\u2019s going to stand up long term. Obviously, it\u2019s an exclamation point here today with the signing of Manny.\u201d<\/p>\n And in the six years since, the Padres have been crafted in his fiery image; built around similarly unabashed stars such as Fernando Tatis Jr., Jackson Merrill, Jurickson Profar and Joe Musgrove.<\/p>\n The Padres\u2019 Manny Machado follows through on a two-run home run in Game 1 of the 2024 NLDS against the Dodgers.<\/p>\n (Robert Gauthier \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n That ascent began in 2020. The Padres embraced their \u201cSlam Diego\u201d moniker, adopting a noticeable, fiery edge. They weren\u2019t afraid to flip bats or talk smack or taunt fans. Their brand of baseball, at least in the eyes of that dragon up the freeway, was rooted in their persona as much as anything; a sharp juxtaposition to the Dodgers\u2019 more subdued, even-keeled approach.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you look at what the Padres have become, it\u2019s a team that plays with very high energy, very high emotion. And they\u2019ve created an atmosphere down there that drives off that,\u201d Muncy said. \u201cWe are almost the opposite. We play on very little emotion. And I just think those two styles contrast very differently. You started seeing that in the games.\u201d<\/p>\n The Dodgers\u2019 perpetual perch atop the standings stoked San Diego, too, making the Padres\u2019 performance in the long-dormant rivalry a manifestation of their championship ambitions.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I was there, we always wanted to beat the Dodgers,\u201d said Blake Snell, who played for San Diego from 2021 to 2023 and will face them for the first time since joining the Dodgers on Saturday in Los Angeles. \u201cBecause that\u2019s the team you gotta go through to get to the World Series.\u201d<\/p>\n That dynamic was evident in the 2022 playoffs, when the underdog Padres conjured an intensity the Dodgers couldn\u2019t match.<\/p>\n It was at the forefront of last year\u2019s October rematch, too, when the Padres ran away with a Game 2 victory punctuated by Machado throwing a ball toward Roberts<\/a> in the Dodgers\u2019 dugout, and the Chavez Ravine crowd showering trash near Padres players on the field.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat I got out of it was a bunch of dudes that showed up in front of a big, hostile crowd with stuff being thrown at them and said, \u2018We\u2019re going to talk with our play; we\u2019re not going to back down,\u2019\u201d Padres manager Mike Shildt said that night.<\/p>\n \u201cThat is kind of part of their game,\u201d Muncy countered ahead of Game 3. \u201cTrying to get under your skin and trying to have the emotion come out and get you to do something that you\u2019re not normally doing.\u201d<\/p>\n This time, the Dodgers responded, prevailing in a five-game series that Roberts compared to a \u201cstreet fight.\u201d On the verge of a potential slaying, his team instead breathed fire back.<\/p>\n \u201cI just felt last year, where they were going, how they were kind of feeling, and our mindset and psyche, we needed to kind of match their intensity,\u201d Roberts said.<\/p>\n The fight is no longer confined to news conference taunts. This year, the rivalry boiled over into physical clashes. And at the center were the two respective managers.<\/p>\n Over the years, there\u2019s been plenty of pettiness imbued into Dodgers-Padres games, from a scoreboard graphic of a crying Clayton Kershaw<\/a> at Petco Park, to Will Smith<\/a>\u2019s description of the since-departed Profar as \u201ckind of irrelevant\u201d last year.<\/p>\n But this June, the antagonism was ratcheted up, after the teams combined for 11 hit batters \u2014 and not-so-veiled accusations of intentionality \u2014 over seven games played in a 11-day stretch.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/1755303250_938_hqdefault.jpg\")
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