Three years later, the quote nonetheless resonates.
In terms of the Dodgers and the San Diego Padres, late Padres proprietor Peter Seidler framed the dynamic greatest.
“The Dodgers are the dragon up the freeway we’re attempting to slay,” Seidler mentioned again in August 2022, throughout an in-game interview with ESPN as the 2 groups performed a Sunday Night time Baseball sport at Chavez Ravine.
“We’ve a whole lot of respect for them, clearly. However our objective, and San Diego is aware of this as effectively, is to win a championship.”
And from that pursuit, one in every of baseball’s most heated fashionable rivalries has sprouted.
To the remainder of the baseball world, the Padres have been a plucky feel-good story over the past half-decade. They’re a small-market staff that has turn into an annual postseason contender. They’ve an aggressive entrance workplace, a roster full of huge personalities, and an ever-pulsing present of emotion and depth reverberating from the dugout by means of their frenzied house crowds.
In Los Angeles, nevertheless, the attitude couldn’t be extra totally different. The Dodgers have lengthy been the ruling energy within the Nationwide League West, champions of the division 11 instances within the final 12 years. The Padres, alternatively, are the rebels who gained’t give up, the barbarians on the door attempting to steal away their crown.
“I simply assume that it begins with them desirous to overtake us,” supervisor Dave Roberts mentioned this week, forward of the Padres’ newest go to to Dodger Stadium on Friday. “I feel that we’ve clearly dominated the division within the final decade … However I feel that they’re attempting to overhaul us. I feel that with that, that actually brings out emotion.”
Whereas the Dodgers have quelled comparable challenges throughout their decade-long reign within the division, the Padres have proved to be a distinct form of foil — coupling a distinction in fashion and tradition with sufficient endurance to gasoline more and more contentious bouts.
“It’s simply two contrasting kinds,” third baseman Max Muncy mentioned, “which have simply grown into this beast.”
There was the Dodgers’ sweep of the Padres within the 2020 NL Division Sequence, then the Padres’ payback in a postseason upset two years later. Final fall, a good division race got here all the way down to the final week of the season. When their paths once more crossed in October, one more NLDS went all the way in which to a decisive fifth sport.
This 12 months, extra tinder has been added to the hearth, because of a flurry of hit batters and a benches-clearing melee throughout a sequence at Dodger Stadium in June.
And this week, forward of a 10-day stretch during which the golf equipment will play their last two regular-season sequence, the Padres offered one other plot twist, erasing what as soon as felt like an insurmountable nine-game deficit within the standings to reach in Los Angeles with a shocking NL West lead.
The dragon, after all, hasn’t been slayed but. The Dodgers are nonetheless the defending World Sequence champions, even when their latest middling type has sophisticated their title protection.
Nonetheless, the conquest that Seidler — who died after the 2023 season at age 63 — lengthy envisioned has by no means appeared so attainable.
The menace posed by the Padres has by no means felt so actual.
“I really feel like we’ve simply been going through one another in [a lot of] massive spots,” infielder Miguel Rojas mentioned. “Ever since that [playoff] sequence in ‘22, this staff took it a little bit bit private over the subsequent couple years. Clearly final 12 months, going by means of them to go all the way in which to the World Sequence was a giant half [of our run]. Nevertheless it feels each time we face one another, even within the common season, it’s a giant spot.”
Whereas the Dodgers and Padres have shared a division ever for the reason that latter’s founding in 1969, a lot of their co-existence featured little or no shared historical past.
For many of the Padres’ first half-century, the membership was mired in perpetual mediocrity. Earlier than 2020, they’d made the playoffs solely 5 instances. The place the Dodgers boast eight World Sequence titles, the Padres personal the excellence of the league’s oldest staff to have by no means gained it as soon as.
There was one shut division race between the golf equipment in 1996, when the Padres swept the Dodgers within the last sequence of the season to say the NL West by one sport. In 2006, they tied atop the standings however each flamed out within the playoffs.
After that, the Dodgers ascended to annual contender standing. The Padres, in the meantime, looked for an identification amid a 13-year playoff drought.
At the beginning of 2019, one lastly arrived.
Whereas Manny Machado was productive throughout his temporary Dodgers tenure on the finish of 2018, serving to the membership win a second straight NL pennant, his fashion of play was an ungainly match with the staff. He wouldn’t all the time hustle, and wouldn’t all the time apologize for it. He burnished his fame as an sometimes soiled participant, and by no means appeared too taken with attempting to vary it.
The Dodgers by no means actually deliberate to deliver him again as a free agent. However in addition they didn’t anticipate him to wind up in San Diego, the place he signed a $300-million take care of the Padres forward of the 2019 season.
“It’s about bringing a championship to San Diego,” Padres basic supervisor AJ Preller mentioned the day Machado was launched. “Lots of people over the previous few years have been very affected person as we’ve tried to construct one thing that’s going to face up long run. Clearly, it’s an exclamation level right here in the present day with the signing of Manny.”
And within the six years since, the Padres have been crafted in his fiery picture; constructed round equally unabashed stars like Fernando Tatis Jr., Jackson Merrill, Jurickson Profar and Joe Musgrove.
The Padres’ Manny Machado follows by means of on a two-run house run in Recreation 1 of the 2024 NLDS in opposition to the Dodgers.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Instances)
That ascent started in 2020. The Padres embraced their “Slam Diego” moniker, adopting a noticeable, fiery edge. They weren’t afraid to flip bats or discuss smack or taunt followers. Their model of baseball, at the least within the eyes of that dragon up the freeway, was rooted of their persona as a lot as something; a pointy juxtaposition to the Dodgers’ extra subdued, even-keeled method.
“While you take a look at what the Padres have turn into, it’s a staff that performs with very excessive power, very excessive emotion. And so they’ve created an environment down there that drives off that,” Muncy mentioned. “We’re nearly the alternative. We play on little or no emotion. And I simply assume these two kinds distinction very in another way. You began seeing that within the video games.”
The Dodgers’ perpetual perch atop the standings stoked San Diego, too, making the Padres’ efficiency within the long-dormant rivalry a manifestation of their championship ambitions.
“Once I was there, we all the time wished to beat the Dodgers,” mentioned Blake Snell, who performed for San Diego from 2021 to 2023 and can face them for the primary time since becoming a member of the Dodgers on Saturday in Los Angeles. “As a result of that’s the staff you gotta undergo to get to the World Sequence.”
That dynamic was evident within the 2022 playoffs, when the underdog Padres conjured an depth the Dodgers couldn’t match.
It was on the forefront of final 12 months’s October rematch, too, when the Padres ran away with a Recreation 2 victory punctuated by Machado throwing a ball towards Roberts within the Dodgers’ dugout, and the Chavez Ravine crowd showering trash close to Padres gamers on the sphere.
“What I acquired out of it was a bunch of dudes that confirmed up in entrance of a giant, hostile crowd with stuff being thrown at them and mentioned, ‘We’re going to speak with our play; we’re not going to again down,’” Padres supervisor Mike Shildt mentioned that evening.
“That’s form of a part of their sport,” Muncy countered forward of Recreation 3. “Attempting to get beneath your pores and skin and attempting to have the emotion come out and get you to do one thing that you just’re not usually doing.”
This time, the Dodgers responded, prevailing in a five-game sequence that Roberts in comparison with a “road combat.” On the verge of a possible slaying, his staff as a substitute breathed hearth again.
“I simply felt final 12 months, the place they had been going, how they had been form of feeling, and our mindset and psyche, we would have liked to form of match their depth,” Roberts mentioned.
The combat is now not confined to press convention taunts. This 12 months, the rivalry boiled over into bodily clashes. And on the heart had been the 2 respective managers.
Through the years, there’s been loads of pettiness imbued into Dodgers-Padres video games, from a scoreboard graphic of a crying Clayton Kershaw at Petco Park, to Will Smith’s description of the since-departed Profar as “form of irrelevant” final 12 months.
However this June, the antagonism was ratcheted up, after the groups mixed for 11 hit batters — and not-so-veiled accusations of intentionality — over seven video games performed in a 11-day stretch.
The Padres took exception to a few totally different plunkings of Tatis. The Dodgers had been doubtful of two balls that pelted Shohei Ohtani. By the point Tatis was hit within the hand within the last sport of the latter sequence, Shildt had seen sufficient, shouting in Roberts’ route as he walked onto the sphere to examine on his star participant.
Roberts responded in type, racing out to satisfy Shildt with a slight, however nonetheless shocking, shove. Instantly, the benches had cleared. Roberts and Shildt continued jawing by means of all of it.
Dodgers supervisor Dave Roberts yells at San Diego Padres supervisor Mike Shildt after benches clear within the ninth inning of a June 19 sport at Dodger Stadium.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Instances)
“After some time, sufficient’s sufficient,” Shildt mentioned afterward. “Intentional, unintentional, the actual fact of the matter is we took exception with it. I responded.”
“I felt that he was attempting to make it private with me,” Roberts countered in his postgame press convention. “Which then, I take it private.”
Machado delivered probably the most memorable quote of the evening, cautioning the Dodgers to “set a little bit candle up for Tati” and “pray” he hadn’t suffered a critical damage (X-rays on Tatis’ hand got here again unfavourable).
However within the aftermath, all the eye centered on Roberts and Shildt, who had been every suspended by the league for one sport.
“It’s in the end in regards to the protection of our staff,” Shildt mentioned the subsequent day when requested about Roberts. “And anyone that’s going to take the steps that I really feel are inappropriate in opposition to our staff, then I’ll take motion. I’m not a private man. I’m not a grudge man. However I’m a foxhole man.”
Roberts snapped again when requested about Shildt (whom he mentioned he has spoken with for the reason that incident) this week.
“It positively added to the depth of the sequence, while you’ve acquired two managers going at it,” Roberts mentioned. “And I by no means need to make it about me, I actually don’t. I simply took offense to his response in direction of me. I assumed it was directed at me. However for me, I simply need to exit and play good baseball. That’s form of the place my head’s at.”
Given the Dodgers’ struggles of late, merely stacking wins has by no means been an even bigger precedence. Over the subsequent week and a half, they might reclaim a division lead they’ve so clumsily squandered, or enter the ultimate month of the season with substantial floor to make up.
“We are able to’t make it greater than what it’s,” Mookie Betts mentioned. “It’s one other sequence in August. Clearly, everyone knows it’s massive and X, Y and Z, however we will’t make it that means. We’ve to only take a look at it as the identical sport as in the present day and play our sport and never attempt to get too excessive or too low.”
“I’m not a grudge man. However I’m a foxhole man,” mentioned San Diego Padres supervisor Mike Shildt, strolling with Dodgers outfielder Teoscar Hernandez and utilityman Kike Hernandez after a bench clearing within the ninth inning of a June 19 sport.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Instances)
Nonetheless, the Dodgers gained’t feign passivity this time. Not so long as the Padres proceed to lean into their trademark depth.
“They instructed me instantly, clearly, we don’t like these guys an entire lot,” newly-acquired Padres reliever Mason Miller mentioned on Foul Territory final week, of the message he obtained from his new teammates upon being traded to San Diego on the deadline. “I haven’t actually [experienced] a rivalry to that extent.”
Roberts wasn’t stunned to listen to it.
“We take into consideration whoever we’re enjoying,” he mentioned. “I do assume it’s a kind of issues the place, they’re very hyper-focused on us. However I assume it’s a praise. Nonetheless, we’ve acquired to match their depth. As a result of they need to beat us greater than something.”
