Written by SDPads1
| 02 March 2010
So I was reading my daily Padres blogs today and Friar John had a story about the Padres dedicating their 41st Little Padres Park today and it just so happened to be right in my neck of the woods....Santee. I've never been to one of these things before so I figured... what the heck the great Randy Jones is going to be there, so I'll go and check it out. It started at 4:00 and I got off work a little early, so thinking ahead I drove by there around 3:00 to check it out and see how packed the place was. There was a long line of cars entering the parking lot so I figured I'd walk there to save me the hassle. Now I'm not a big fan of walking places, but I'm a bigger non-fan of hassle. I got there a little before 4 and immediately see that the parking lot had plenty of room and realize that the kids at the elementary school must have gotten out of school next door when I previously drove by. Awesome. Little rug rats were running around all over the place having a ball. I immediately started scanning the crowd of people and spotted RJ and talked with him for a while. Johnny Midnight AKA John Weisbarth was also there covering the event for Postgame that will air tonight on Channel 4. He was busy doing important stuff though so I didn't bother him (right away). The Friar and 2 Pad Squad members were running around greeting all the kids too. After a while Padres owner Jeff Moorad & President Tom Garfinkel showed up. Garfinkel said hi briefly before he had to go to the chairs and Moorad just passed by everyone and went straight to the chairs. They all talked at the podium for a bit then did this little ceremony thing where they poured some Petco Park dirt right in front of home plate. Not sure what this was all about, but apparently they do it at all of these things. After this the kids lined up and ran the bases and then the whole group posed for a photo behind home plate. I turned away for a second and apparently Moorad and Garfinkel time warped or something because they were no where to be found. RJ was being a trooper and was signing every last autograph for the kids. Finally as I saw Weisbarth wrapping things up to leave I approached him and introduced myself and chatted for a bit. Overall it was a pretty cool event for the kids and it's good to see the Padres do so much for the community. For a more detailed look on today's events check out this story from Padres.com
