2/13 Fan Fest @ Petco Park 10AM-5PM

2/18 Spring Training - Pitchers & Catchers Report

2/24 Spring Training - Position Players Report

3/4 Spring Training - 1st Game vs the Mariners 12:05PM

3/6 Single Game Tickets Go on Sale

4/4 Set 25 Man Roster

4/5 First Regular Season Game vs the Diamondbacks 2:10PM

4/12 Home Opener vs. the Braves 3:35PM

In his first interview since coming to the Padres, recently acquired outfielder Aaron Cunningham was nice enough to sit and chat with RJ’s Fro. Enjoy!

RJ’s Fro: Let me start out by saying welcome to San Diego. Being a recent addition to the club, why don’t you introduce yourself to the fans of San Diego.

Aaron Cunningham: First off I would like to thank you for the interview and for giving the fans a chance to get to know me. I’m a 23 year old outfielder that plays all 3 positions, but will be playing as a 24 year old next season. I am married to my high school sweetheart, who has been a soldier for me, she’s helped get me to where I am today. I’m also a very laid back person, so you will never see me doing the Gatorade cooler chuck, or the helmet throw haha. I love and respect the game of baseball and can’t wait to get my opportunity so I can get my career started in San Diego.

RJ’s Fro: Let’s not beat around the bush and get the toughest and most important question out of the way right off the bat…. How big of a breakfast fan are you?

AC: To be honest I am not much of a breakfast fan. Sorry if that upsets anybody. I have a very small appetite in the morning, so normally my go to’s are a bowl of Captain Crunch or a bowl of fruit. Normally something pretty light.

RJ’s Fro: Uh oh, that answer doesn’t bode well for you. Perhaps I can put in a call to Garfinkel and let him spare you just this one time. Tell me how you found out about the trade and what your initial reaction was?

AC: I found out from the Assistant GM David Forst. It was funny because when the phone rang, and I saw it was Forst, my wife and I immediately started laughing. Since we have been through this situation a couple times before, we figured he wasn’t calling to ask about my well being. He said “I know you have had a couple of these calls before, but you have been involved in a trade that is sending you to the San Diego Padres.” My reaction may not have been what he was expecting though because I was pretty damn excited. Earlier in my career when I was with the White Sox my family asked me what other teams I would like to play for? I said the Padres, Diamondbacks and the A’s. As it stands now I have been a part of all three of them. I would like to think that doesn’t happen to often.

RJ’s Fro: You were actually born in Alaska. According to The Baseball Almanac there have been only 11 major league players ever to come from that state. How many of them can you name?

AC: I have been informed of the list, but I cant remember who was on it. I believe one of them was on the A’s last year but I cant remember who. Maybe David Wells is on that list. Like I said I cant remember, maybe you could jog my memory.

RJ’s Fro: You & Daniel Schlereth were the only 2 to play in the majors last year…and I believe the tubby starting pitcher you are thinking about is Curt Schilling…not David Wells, he’s from San Diego. You’ve put up solid numbers throughout your career in the minors but have never really been given a chance at the major league level. Does it ever get frustrating?

AC: The thing is every bit of playing time you receive is an opportunity. You really need to take advantage, when you can. I haven’t really gotten much consistent playing time, but that doesn’t make it an excuse for me to say that’s the reason for my poor numbers in the majors. Yes it is frustrating, but you have to be happy with any bit of playing time you are receiving. I feel lucky to have been with the A’s the last couple of seasons because they tend to go with their youth more than other teams. Who knows, maybe if I was with another team I would have never gotten the opportunities I have received, at the age I did.

RJ’s Fro: Describe a normal off-season day for Aaron Cunningham?

AC: My off-season program at this time is a little different than normal. I had a minor surgery on a sports hernia, so it’s pretty slow at the time being. I’m just trying to get healthy by going to physical therapy and having light workouts at the gym. On a normal healthy off-season day I wake up around 8 am and take care of the dogs. Then I will head to the complex around 9:30 or 10. Once at the field, we start with conditioning and throwing, move on to our weight training and finish it off with a few rounds on the tee and some batting practice. After all of that I head home and hang out with the dogs, maybe play a little video games and then spend time with the wife after she gets off work. We watch a lot of movies. I also try to get a round of golf in whenever I can.

RJ’s Fro: There’s a rumor going around that you sold a car to Ice-T and his wife Coco a few years back. Tell me True or False? And if it’s true we want to hear all the details on how that all came about and if you keep in touch with them. (h/t Gaslamp Ball)

AC: The answer is True. I had my car on Autotrader and a guy named Tracy had been calling me about my Lincoln Navigator. Of course at the time I didn’t know that Tracy was Ice T. I talked to Tracy for a couple weeks til he finally came out to my house. He calls me up and says he was at my place and I proceed to open the door and see Ice-T and Coco standing there. I was definitely surprised. He actually ended up buying the car for Coco. We didn’t keep in touch on purpose really, I guess she saved my number in her phone and most of the time my name is at the top of peoples phone books so she would butt dial me pretty often. Its not like we became friends but I would send text messages back just saying I enjoyed talking to your purse and what not. They have invited my wife and I to some parties, but we didn’t attend because we aren’t big party people. Coco did send some signed magazines and calenders to me so I could give them to a teammate of mine that was a fan of hers.

RJ’s Fro: Coco probably butt dials people in the Z’s with the goods she has. Please tell me I’m going to see them in the stands at Petco Park next season wearing Padres gear. We all know nothing says gangsta like San Diego Padres baseball.

AC: I am sorry to say I don’t think that will be happening. To be honest they probably don’t even remember my name.

RJ’s Fro: Thank you for taking the time to answer some questions Aaron and we look forward to seeing you roam the outfield of Petco Park next season.

AC: Thank you for having me. I am always open to fan questions, you can have me on any time. I cant wait to wear black spikes again and sport the blue, sand and white.

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In regards to the Kevin Kouzmanoff trade, I was twittering and posting on Facebook & this site as it was all happening. Then I thought, well before I do a whole breakdown of the trade I at least want to make sure that these are the exact players involved. I woke up the next morning and found about 40 breakdowns of the trade already up on various blogs. So I figured meh what else can I say regarding the trade that hasn’t already been said. If you were wondering though, I like the deal mainly because we don’t have two 3rd baseman on the field now & Scott Hairston gives us some flexibility in the OF.

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One last thing check out all the other pages on the site. The 40 man roster is up to date with each player having their own page dedicated to them with tons of info. There’s even a past Padres pages up that will showcase some of the players of Padres past. In fact I just added the first player! I also recently added the 2010 Payroll page that just has actual contracts listed (no “projecting”).  And I will keep up to date on every single trade, signing & draft that new GM Jed Hoyer is involved with.

PS-Follow us on Twitter & Facebook too!

*SDPads1 NOTE: I had this meeting a while back, but decided that I wanted to save this write up for the launch of the new site. The launch came a little later than I expected, but here it is, finally, in all it’s glory. I’d like to thank Padres President Tom Garfinkel for taking time out of his busy schedule to meet with me. It’s not every day that some guy who runs a blog get’s the chance to have a sit down chat with not only the Owner of his favorite team, but also the President & newly appointed General Manager (I’ll get to that in the post) all in the span of a month. I truly feel lucky and cannot thank them enough. Enough of my babbling….enjoy the post*

On October 30th, 2009, I awoke from my slumber to check my e-mail as I do every morning. As I glanced through my subject headings, a certain e-mail just so happened to catch my eye. The subject read….”Arch Rival”. At the time (what can I say, I guess I go through a lot of arch rivals) there was only one person that it could have been. GARFINKEL! I immediately opened it up to read the e-mail. Sure enough it was from Padres President & COO Tom Garfinkel, and he recently talked to Padres owner Jeff Moorad about our meeting, read my blog and was asking to meet me. At first I was excited….then my excitement turned to terror as I thought, “perhaps he was running late the day I met with Mr. Moorad & he wants to finish the job he originally planned by killing me”. Then I thought, “hmmm I wonder what’s for breakfast”. Was it a coincidence that immediately after reading an e-mail from him that I became hungry for breakfast? You be the judge.

So we set up a meeting for November 17th, down at the Petco offices. I was going to bring my huge 3 ring binder titled, “SDPads1’s A Million and One Ways to Improve the Padres” with me to the meeting hoping to get some kind of job out of it, but someone had already beaten me to the punch and used that idea. I waited briefly in the lobby and then finally he came down the stairs to meet me. Somehow at that moment in time a tumble weed rolled right by my leg, despite being in the Padres offices. Our eyes met and there was no need for introductions. In case you are unaware of the situation, I’ve been very critical of Mr. Garfinkel in the past on various Padres message boards. Upon his arrival in San Diego some of his comments in the media gave the impression that he was a Friar hater, a breakfast lover & wanted to change the uniforms to Red, White & Blue. Not exactly stuff that the fans of San Diego wanted to hear. Anyways, he then proceeded to give me a tour of the offices. The season ticket offices were getting an extreme overhaul. There were some tarps hanging from the ceiling and it was almost completely gutted. He mentioned that they had increased the amount of season ticket specialists and in the process needed to make room for them. Starting this season each customer will have a specific specialist in charge of their account. I think this is a great idea, and if I had season tickets it would make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside knowing that I had one person in charge of my tickets, as opposed to calling and talking to a different person every time that I called with an issue.

The next stops consisted of a tour of the players locker room, the training room & the players dining area. After a couple hacks with a leftover bat still in the locker of Adrian Gonzalez, we headed to the Padres dugout. I’ve actually been in the dugout a couple times now, but there’s just something about walking through those doors and seeing that ball field sitting right in front of you. It’s an amazing sight. Once there, we began talking about the ballpark. The first thing I brought up was signage. You see other ballparks on TV and you absolutely know that it’s that specific teams ballpark. Where is the San Diego Padres signage? He said that when he first came to the Arizona Diamondbacks it was the same way. He began taking some sponsor signs down & began putting up Diamondbacks signage. People thought he was crazy for throwing sponsorship money away, but as the signage space became limited, it also became that hot commodity that companies would pay more for, balancing things out in the end. After that we finally got to the infamous Bill Center interview. Despite having the best intentions in that interview, stuff didn’t come out as he meant. He doesn’t hate the Friar and the uniforms will not be changed to Red, White and Blue. But one thing is true……he is a breakfast lover. Speaking of which, I have a very important announcement regarding an integral part of Padres baseball. Sunday breakfast’s will be returning next season!! I didn’t get a chance to go to one this past season, but according to Garfinkel it was a success. I’ll definitely be attending one this next season and get my breakfast on. After reminiscing about some great Padres moments from the past season we made the trek up to his office.

Once in the office the first thing we discussed were the ticket prices. Despite being told that all season ticket prices would either stay put or decrease for the 2010 season, some season ticket holders were shocked to see their price actually increased. He admitted that it was a mistake to not include the words *FULL SEASON* to the letter that was sent out, since a very small amount of short season ticket holders saw their price go up a bit. I was then shown a super top secret binder (what is it with all these 3 ring binders??), assembled by the great Paul DePodesta & Co., that showed the ticket breakdowns for last season and this season. This same binder actually had every stat, every breakdown & every theory you could think of in it too. In fact, I  may or may not have seen the equation for everlasting life in it. Bottom line is the previous ticket breakdown just didn’t make sense and I fully agree with him. Hence why certain parts of the ballpark were consistently empty time after time (COUGH TOYOTA TERRACE COUGH). Being that I run the Padres merch site .400 in ‘94 as well, I asked about the Padres Fan Fest. It will be making it’s triumphant return on February 13th, 2010 and my favorite part, the garage sale, will be back as well. I look forward to this event every year and will definitely be walking out of there with tons of random stuff. I also asked if the 5 for 5 deal would return, but as of now the concessions have yet to be finalized, so no word on that just yet.

The conversation then turned to the team. He asked what I thought of the team this coming year. At the time Jed Hoyer was GM for roughly 23 whole days so I told him the truth: I really don’t know what to expect, because I don’t know what Jed is going to do with this team. It isn’t reported to the fans what an Assistant GM does and doesn’t do. All the credit for every single trade goes to Theo regardless of who orchestrated it. Shortly after mentioning this he got up from his chair and spoke with his assistant briefly and then came back. A couple minutes went by and then there was a knock on the door. Who could it be? None other than new Padres GM Jed Hoyer. That Garfinkel guy is a sneaky fellow. Hoyer then came in and Garfinkel said I told him that I didn’t know what this Jed Hoyer guy has done or could do, to which Hoyer replied that all he really did was get Theo coffee while he was in Boston. Hoyer then asked what spots in the lineup I thought needed improvement. After making some suggestions position wise, I also mentioned health as being a big factor with the past Padres teams. Sure enough in Depo’s magic binder there was a couple pages of stats dedicated to health. Hoyer mentioned how overused some players are so early in their careers and it burns them out. The first name that came to my mind was Mark Prior. I said how if you look at the 2003 season the Cubs starters of Wood, Prior, Zambrano & Clement were all well over 200+ IP and all of them were in the top 15 in the NL in K’s. Meaning they threw a heck of a lot of pitches that season. We both blamed Dusty Baker for his crazy managerial skills. Hoyer then had to make a quick exit since he was scoping the minor league free agent list right at that time.

Before I had to leave I had to ask THE question that was on everyone’s mind at the time. Will Adrian Gonzalez be traded? I mentioned how in the recent season ticket brochures Adrian was not featured prominently. Garfinkel said that people were looking to much into that, and that they basically just picked pictures that they really liked. He then said if your house is worth 400,000 dollars and someone comes up and offers you 900,000 dollars, despite the house not being for sale would you take it? In other words they aren’t looking to deal him but if someone pays the right price then they will consider it. Makes sense to me, but I still would have marketed Adrian more since they are trying to make that connection with Mexico. Finally it was time for me to leave. I asked Garfinkel if we should take a picture of us waving our fists in the air at each other…but then he said…..we don’t need to do that….we’re no longer enemies. And I actually agreed with him…that is until Bill Center decides to interview him again.

Little known fact: There is a picture of Tom Garfinkel and his family from this past Halloween, in his office….what was he you ask?

A Friar.

I’ve been browsing the various team websites on MLB.com recently and I noticed that a lot of teams have their newly launched marketing slogans posted at the top of their websites. Which got me thinking….what’s the Padres new slogan going to be? Now these slogans are always super cheesy & normally get recycled from team to team from season to season. In recent years the Padres have used such slogans as “Our Team. Our Town.”, “On a Mission”, “Mission October”, “Play Downtown” & “Padres Baseball. Catch It!” to name a few off the top of my head. Also if a team is lucky they’ll have some sort of Anniversary year, like the Padres had last year & the Astros have this year, and they don’t technically need a slogan. There’s also the opening of a new ballpark that gets a team off the hook, and this year the Twins took full advantage of that. Here’s a quick rundown of current slogans for each team…..

Angels – Fan Strong
Astros – 45th Anniversary
A’s – 100% Athletics. 100% Baseball.
Braves – The Excitement of Turner Field
Dodgers – This is my town. Dodgertown USA (They announced it would be back for 2010)
Giants – Your Giants
Indians – Are You In the Tribe?
Marlins – It’s Where You Wanna Be!
Nationals – Get Your Red On. NatsTown
Orioles – This is Birdland
Pirates – Pride. Passion. Pittsburgh Pirates.
Tigers – Always a Tiger
Twins – Inaugural Season 2010
White Sox – There are Traditions. And There are White Sox Traditions.

So I started looking around for the Padres and came across this image……

Now let’s be clear. This wasn’t on a MLB site or any Padres site. It was on a branding agencies website. And I know that multiple firms will join the bidding war and only one will be picked. It even states that they were one of the agencies pitching their idea, but it doesn’t say if they got the job or not. But come on.”SD Stands For San Diego”? Really? So are you calling the fans of San Diego dumb? Are you saying we don’t know what SD means? Everything else on the billboard is fine. “We take the words PLAY BALL seriously” is right there with the other cheese-tastic phrases we are used to reading. Am I crazy for not liking this slogan? Oh well I guess we’ll have to wait and see. Bottom line is it’s going to be hard to top the “Keep the Faith” days.

*SDPADS1 EDIT-I forgot to give the link…..here it is…….. Ihook Creative. Also my dislike for the slogan is no knock on the Ihook company. I can only imagine how difficult it could be to come up with cheesy slogans that Major League Baseball teams are known for. Looking at all their work they do fine work. Once again….I just hate the slogan.*