Dodgers Broadcaster Preaches Something Padres Fans Need to Hear and Accept
The Dodgers have defeated the Padres five times in six tries so far this season, including five games in a row. As the two teams entered their first series a little more than a week ago, all the talk was about the rivalry. The Padres beat the Dodgers in the postseason one time and that was enough to even up a decade's worth of losses at the hands of Los Angeles.
One way the Padres organization really messed up is with the flashing of that "crying Kershaw" meme two Fridays ago in San Diego. The Friars had the win -- the first game in the season series -- and got too cocky too fast.
Not that the players actually had anything or wanted anything to do with that scoreboard incident, by the way. But those players are the ones bearing the brunt of the fallout of that incident. And that combined with the pressure of the free spending ways of team owner Peter Seidler has the club spiraling two weeks into May.
Year in and year out, the Dodgers and their players preach the "one game at a time" mantra -- no single game or match up is any more important than the next or than the last. The club respects the game and the opposing organization on the other side of the field. FOX Sports and SportsNet LA analyst, Dontrelle Willis, talked about where the Dodgers and Padres differ greatly in their mindsets, at least at this moment.
"The Dodgers respect the Padres, but the Padres fans and that team eat, breathe, and sleep the Dodgers and the Dodgers do not. They respect them though. Like, 'this is a team that could beat us' and they experienced that [last October], but they respect them on the same level as the Atlanta Braves, the Mets, teams like that. The Phillies. But I think the Padres are solely just looking at the Dodgers. They're the blueprint, if we knock them out, that's all that matters. And you saw the bounce back after that in the championship series. There wasn't that intensity, they didn't play as well, they didn't play like they were playing the Dodgers in front of them and that's the little brother big brother effect right now."
The full conversation between Willis and co-analyst Mark Sweeney is great (and embedded below), but this point Dontrelle made really stands out. The same point has been made in the past -- including by me in past editions of the Blue Heaven Podcast -- the Padres don't seem to care about winning as much as they care about beating LA. Yes, the two usually go hand in hand, but with San Diego, it just seems different.
It feels like the franchise would be more interested in posting a "Dodgers Lose" on the scoreboard than "Padres Win." And we saw an example of that with the "crying Kershaw" incident.
These two teams won't face off again until August. Hopefully by then the Padres have grown up a bit more for their own good, and for the good of the budding rivalry.
