Padres in town to get crushed by the Nationals! UGH!

I had the joy of going to Nationals Park on Friday to watch a rare Padres victory against, as we've learned by the end of the series, the vastly superior Washington Nationals. It was the first time I've been able to go early to a game and catch batting practice. Luckily, with Padres fans being so sparse around these parts, it was relatively easy to meet the players. Jake Peavy, Heath Bell, David Eckstein and Mat Latos in particular were very accessible. Peavy spent about 10 minutes meeting fans. I was lucky enough to get this:

Mat Latos, who was starting that night, was also friendly, although he told us that he "doesn't do pictures". He does do autographs though. Check out this crappy autograph I got on a too-glossy card:













Anyways, the Padres totally destroyed the Nationals. The Nationals blundered their way to 4 errors, and it felt great that the last 7 games I've seen the Padres play in DC, they've won. Unfortunately they got smoked Saturday, and despite a heroic Kyle Blanks bomb, lost in extra innings to... awful Austin Kearns.

Thanks to all the Padres that were nice enough to chat with fans and sign autographs (Peavy, Latos, Brian Giles (who was looking awfully tan), David Eckstein, Will Venable, Mike Adams, Heath Bell, Chase Headley, and saw Kouz signing for some servicemen).

Here are some more photos of the pregame:

Welcome To My Misery

I am a lifelong Padres fan. It has been hard. I've been suffering for the majority of my life as a result. Obviously, there have been moments of glory. 1998 was great. Until we got to the World Series and got swept. A string of NL West championships in the past few years was nice except we kept getting owned in the 1st round of the playoffs. Regardless, I still watch as many games as I can on MLB.TV and in person at Nationals Park (local stadium). Then I get depressed and crawl into a ball after our putrid middle relief blows another game. Or when Josh Geer gives up 4 bombs in 4 innings. Whatever, a fan is a fan. I'll say Ugh, Padres, and then I'll be right back in front of the screen watching the next night's game. A real glutton for punishment.

More recently, I've gotten really back into baseball card collecting, which will be the focus of this blog. Obviously I love collecting Padres cards, and it's nice being on the East Coast where no one cares about the Padres and Padres can be picked up cheap. I am also super into set collecting, am active on Sports Card Forum, and read as many baseball card blogs on my Google Reader as possible. I love the community of bloggers that support each other and look forward to joining in. Too bad I'm too late to take part in Gint-A-Cuffs!

Hopefully you find plenty of value in this blog, or at least enough to check periodically or add me to your RSS reader. Look forward to talking with many of you!