Inside The Padres

Dodgers All-Star Praises Padres Crowd After Series at Petco Park

J.P. Hoornstra

A crowd of San Diego Padres fans looks on from the outfield during the fourth inning of the Padres' game against the Pittsburgh Pirates at Petco Park on June 1.
A crowd of San Diego Padres fans looks on from the outfield during the fourth inning of the Padres' game against the Pittsburgh Pirates at Petco Park on June 1. / David Frerker-Imagn Images
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Most of the talk about the rivalry between the San Diego Padres and Los Angeles Dodgers this week seemed to come from outside the two clubhouses.

Among players on both sides, there seems to be more respect than animus. The most recent evidence came courtesy of Michael Conforto.

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The Dodgers' left fielder, who homered in the Dodgers' 5-2 victory Wednesday at Petco Park, praised the sold-out crowd of 45,481 following the series finale.

“The atmosphere was great. It’s one of the more loud parks that you go to around the league,” Conforto said, via Bill Plunkett of the Southern California News Group. “But it definitely felt different in this series … It’s a good start to my (Dodger) career with this rivalry and I’m looking forward to more of it.”

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Conforto is in his 10th major league season, and his first with the Dodgers. He spent the last two seasons with the San Francisco Giants, a franchise whose rivalry with the Dodgers dates back more than a century and spans two coasts.

Earlier this week, Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy declared the Giants, not the Padres, his team's one "true" rival.

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The atmosphere in San Diego this week suggested otherwise.

Outside the two clubhouses, the chatter focused on the bad blood between the two teams.

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"The Yankees and Red Sox have historic hatred. These two teams feel like they hate each other in 2025," the New York Post's Joel Sherman said in a recent segment on MLB Network. "Which is what really resonates. Do the Cardinals and Cubs hate each other? Do these Yankees and Red Sox hate each other? I don't think so. But these teams, there is something more on the field when they're playing."

In the course of drumming up the rivalry for the San Diego Union-Tribune, columnist Tom Krasovic wrote Monday: "My tangential October talk here in June, before summer has shown up, is one good reason former Padre (and Dodger) Greg Maddux coined the term 'media mumbo-jumbo.' It’s also an example of why ballplayers are better off concerning themselves only with the game at hand."

As long as Conforto is noticing the Petco Park crowd at all, good on him for noticing they turn out.

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J.P. Hoornstra
J.P. HOORNSTRA

J.P. Hoornstra is an On SI Contributor. A veteran of 20 years of sports coverage for daily newspapers in California, J.P. covered MLB, the Los Angeles Dodgers, and the Los Angeles Angels (occasionally of Anaheim) from 2012-23 for the Southern California News Group. His first book, The 50 Greatest Dodgers Games of All-Time, published in 2015. In 2016, he won an Associated Press Sports Editors award for breaking news coverage. He once recorded a keyboard solo on the same album as two of the original Doors.

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