Boo hoo.

Actually I don’t know why I got so sarcastic about that. It does suck. It sucks a lot. It sucks like your Mom’s old Hoover that didn’t quite get up all the crud, so weeks later you’d still be able to find whole pieces of Cap’n Crunch stuck in the carpet. It sucks like that. There are a lot of reasons you can’t watch the games and there are even more people and groups you can blame for it, which actually makes it more fun! You can blame John Moores and Jeff Moorad and Jerry Sanders and Will Venable (let’s face it, he’s not helping any), and you get to blame Dish Network and AT&T and the rest of the money-grubbers who have yet to close their respective deals.

I have chosen in my infinite wisdom to mainly blame FOX Sports SD and John Moores.

Seems like a lot of fun! If you got to see it. (Christopher Hanewinckel-US PRESSWIRE)

I choose FOX Sports SD because what is the freaking hold up? Honestly. Maybe if you spent a little less time flaunting almost attractive FOX Sports Girls who just got off the overnight shift at Déjà vu, and started focusing on completing some TV deals so that the other 40% could see your parade of bedazzled faux-hotties, everyone would be a little happier. I don’t get the mentality. I really don’t. I’ve tried to avoid ever mentioning this in anything I’ve ever written, but it seems appropriate for this situation: I work in television. I know how things are supposed to operate and why shows get cancelled and renewed and people get fired and hired. Everything revolves around one major revenue source: Advertising. Commercials, sponsors, well-placed billboards even down to the suit jackets Dick Enberg wears. All of these things matter and all of these things bring in money for everyone involved. If no one is watching your show that means no one is watching the commercials and no one is hearing the cleverly placed Dr. Pepper reference Jim Parsons just made and no one is making any money. Show cancelled. The same goes for sports. All sports. Why do you think they ride that Coors Light train into every NFL game possible? Cause 25 million people just saw that train and perhaps 4 million of them would decide to buy Coors Light and that is a solid profit for the frost brewed Rockies. So, why on Earth is FOX Sports SD content with selling advertisers to half the city?! It makes no sense! Every week that goes by they are literally losing at least $500,000 in advertising revenue. Unless FOX Sports SD is the first broadcasting group in the history of broadcasting to be in this industry ‘for the love of it’, someone needs to be fired. You can have your stand off with the cable providers for only so long, until someone gives up and everyone loses. Hell, it sounds like I want them to succeed! And, I do! I think the FOX Sports broadcast is a good one, and they provide a solid product – to half the city!

Every week that they squabble over millions they lose hundreds of thousands. It’s a terrible way to run a business and probably why no one wants to work with them.

I blame John Moores because he doesn’t give a crap! I know people have argued that he can’t do much to help one way or the other, but that’s a bunch of bull. You don’t think the one singular guy in San Diego who made the most money off this deal could possibly have any sway on the situation? You’re wrong. He could get active. In fact he should! It might leave the people of this city with one good thing to say about the lame-duck owner. He could call on the Mayor, or City Council. He could get his rich buddies together and offer to advertise and support the TV deal if they promise to complete said deal within two weeks, or some other arbitrary date. They’d sign the dotted line faster than you could say “Life’s Better With Baseball!” But John Moores, who made more money off this deal than my entire family has made in the history of the world, has done nothing. He doesn’t really care and really he never has. He’s getting out of this business now much richer and free of the responsibility he has to supply a winner.

He could provide some persuasion, but he’s happier creating an exit.

In a recent post on the Union-Tribune website (Do they still have hard copy newspapers?) newly acquired writer and native New Englander, Matthew T. Hall, gave his list of people to blame for the TV debacle. The one group on Hall’s blame list that drew some ire from the readers was ‘The Fans’. People were mad, but Hall was right. We are part of the problem. As I’ve written several times on ChickenFriars and on The Kept Faith: our continued support destroys our chances of ever being relevant. We blindly follow the Padres; we take what they give us and root for the squad anyway. While I am excited with a lot of the new talent on the team, I also decided I wouldn’t pay for one game this year. I’m not going to funnel money into a machine that’s more broken down than my 2003 Ranger. If we actually showed some solidarity and spoke up against what this organization and its affiliates are forcing us to live with then perhaps we might just be heard. Hall called for a protest this Sunday at PETCO Park. A protest to show that the fans are sick and have had enough. Like Howard Beale raising his arms in the air and screaming for sanity, Hall would ask us to stick our heads out the window, aim them down the first base line and yell, “We’re mad as hell and we’re not gonna take it anymore!”

Sure, Hall’s move is a bit of a gimmick to give the writer a little notoriety in his new city that’s still mourning the loss of Tim Sullivan. However, his ambition and desire for a unified front is not a crazy idea, or something that can’t be realized before it’s too late and we’re back to the days of one game a week on KUSI. His call to the pen isn’t for the flame-throwing lefty to jog in and close it out. It’s for something just a tad simpler. He wants the ‘Ol crafty veteran with a little gas left in the tank to come in and keep us in the game.

Join him. Do it. Come out of the bullpen and show this organization that we still have pride. We still remember what 1984 and 1998 felt like. We still remember watching Tony hit another single through the hole or Goose mowing down the heart of the order. This is still your town and dammit it’s your stadium. Show yourselves and let them see your collective disapproval. Just don’t make the mistake of staying home, because one thing is for sure: This revolution will not be televised.

For more Padres stuff and other things you might not care about follow me on Twitter @dallas_mc

I feel like a team who wants a brand new stadium, only so they can get the ridiculous revenue from a ridiculous amount of press boxes, but that same team hasn’t actually won anything important in almost a decade is a bit, well…ridiculous. It’s like asking a friend to borrow $500 million dollars when that same friend has a long history of losing their job.

The Chargers and the Spanos family do not deserve a new stadium. They don’t. Not in the least. And, when the NFL threatens to stop holding the Super Bowl in San Diego until we build a new stadium with plenty of rich people boxes I sit back and laugh. Why? Cause who doesn’t love the Super Bowl in Jacksonville? Good call NFL. Roger Goodell is the master of making sense and concussions. Regardless, until the Chargers can make one post-9/11 Super Bowl appearance I don’t feel like they need a new dress. But, I guess you’re in luck cause the Chargers don’t care what I think nor do most San Diegans. The Spanos family has threatened to leave San Diego if a stadium agreement is not reached and thank sanity that our Mayor has called their bluff. Problem is our Mayor’s term is almost up and no doubt they’ll be a hoard of Chargers fans voting in a new Mayor based solely on his/her Chargers stance. Which, is possibly the most ridiculously reason to vote for anyone – actually, not it’s not. I’m sorry.

Larry Lucchino doing what he does best - talking. (Derick E. Hingle-US PRESSWIRE)

This leads me back to the first part of this thing I’m writing. Back in 1998 the Padres made an extremely smart move – they worked it – hard. They started two years previous, knowing exactly what they wanted to do. They knew that in two years they could put a measure on the ballot to get a brand-new, Baseball only, taxpayer funded stadium voted in. They sat down and thought ‘how would we get such a measure passed’? How about we make the people of San Diego care about the Padres like they used to care about them in the 80’s. How do we do that? Well, they went to the World Series in 1984, so how about we go back to the World Series? They put together a team that could make that happen and not only happen for one year, but it could happen every year until the stadium proposition showed up on the ballot. It was genius and it worked. We voted in a new stadium, which revamped an entire section of downtown and made John Moores a billionaire. San Diego was so happy, until the off-season of 1998 when a firesale as legendary as Bill Walton’s knees burned through the hearts of every single Padres fan. It was over. The promise of a brighter future rested in the arm of Jake Peavy and the steroids of Phil Nevin. Needless to say the next decade was a little uneasy. We paid for a new stadium and got an old team. We married the girl and she immediately got fat. Now we don’t care. We’re on to the new girl and she wears blue and gold. She’s popular and while our wife keeps eating and eating this new girl seems to work out more and more each year. That is until last year. This new girl who has been screwing up our marriage has started to get a little weird. She wants some real commitment from us or she is out of here. You can’t totally blame her, but it still pisses you off. I mean she’s taking off at the exact same time that your wife is going through a terrible crisis. Right now, as a San Diegan you are going through a lot. It’s your entire fault, but you’re still dealing with it and you want nothing more than someone to just figure it out.

Let’s pretend I’m your therapist and I convince you to leave you wife so that I can marry her. Well, that is almost the exact same thing that’s happening to the Padres right now and exactly the point where this analogy dovetails into not making any sense at all.

So, now we sit as jaded Padres fans. We’ve heard the promises, paid for the promises with democracy and commerce. We’ve seen those promises broken time and time again. John Moores made a ton of money from all this downtown development and didn’t spend any of it on the team he promised would contend. You could make the argument that he did raise payroll once we got to PETCO, but outside of a couple first round exits and Game 163’s, everyone knew we weren’t real contenders. We were just visitors overstaying our welcome at a house warming party we weren’t really even invited to. John Moores didn’t really care about the Padres, he cared about money and making more of it and so did his wife, which is why she got a lot of it while choosing to divorce him at the right time. Broken-hearted and a little more broke than before John Moores decided to sell the team and couldn’t even do that right. Jaded Padres fans became disenfranchised Padres fans and as of right now would rather spend the majority of their energy rooting for a football team that’s dying to leave, than root for a crap Baseball team that’s dying to exist.

Moores needs to go, Bud Selig doesn’t give a rat’s ass and the list of owners lined up to take over seem almost interested in owning a San Diego franchise, now that no other team is for sale. In the process of trying to find someone to revive a franchise that’s stuck in a memory, all the gross secrets of just how screwed up we are as a city, team and fans have risen to the surface. I mean hell; we just found out that Tony Gwynn owes a significant amount of money to the IRS! It’s all just a little too accessible and average.

Alas, this is just ridiculous ranting and if you didn’t get the fact that the whole wife/girlfriend analogy was meant to represent the Padres/Chargers then there’s really nothing else I can do for you. Football is more popular than Baseball, and as much as I hate that there is nothing I can do to change it other than invent the flux capacitor and travel back to 1955.

However, the one thing I can try to help change is your jaded attitude towards your wife. She’s had her ups and downs and sure she’s had a lot of emotional problems that you’ve had to pay for, but she really does love you and she will not leave you. She’s committed to you no matter how late you stay out with your girlfriend or say publicly you’ll never buy season tickets again. You’re girlfriend is fiery and temperamental and always claiming she’s taking off unless you impress her friends. You’re girlfriends a B. You’re wife is trying. Don’t cheat on your wife. Kickstarter.com/dallasisbuyingyourwifebywhichhemeansthepadres (this is not a real website, as Kickstarter would not let me try to buy a sports team.)

For more Padres stuff and other things you might not care about follow me on Twitter @dallas_mc

Do you have a billion dollars? You do? Then why the hell are you reading this? Cause it had the word ‘billion’ in the title?  If that’s the reason then you are obviously bored, but you obviously love the Padres and you should go buy them. Can you buy them? Please? Why not? Why does this paragraph have so many questions in it?

…

Sorry. I fell into a hypothetical hole where a billionaire read my column and I couldn’t get out.

While I was down there though I had a lot of time to think about the qualities I’d like in a new owner. They are as follows:

1) He/She has at least, in their own assets, a billion dollars.

2) He/She actually likes if not loves the game of Baseball.

3) He/She knows something about San Diego.

4) He/She is single.

Number one and four are the most important qualities and I think the reasoning for that should be quite obvious. Divorce has almost ruined Baseball in Southern California and it shouldn’t be that easy. If you’re a billionaire and you’re married, please stay away from Padres. I’m sorry for your future marital problems and I hope the dividing of your assets goes as smooth and pain free as possible.

I want an owner who cares about his team more than anything else and above all is willing to put his ridiculously large sum of money where his heart is.

I want a Mark Cuban. I want a Jerry Buss. I want an Ewing Kauffman. I want a Mike Ilitch. I want a George Steinbrenner. Yea, I said it. I’d take one George over eight John Moores or Tom Werners any day of the week. Give me all the temper tantrums and outrageous comments of Mark Cuban and I’ll beam with pride that that insane rich guy is my owner.

Those guys know what owning a team is all about. They know that it’s not just about being so rich you can afford possibly the most expensive Fantasy team of all time. It’s also about being a fan. Being a fan of the sport, the city and the team you control. The word ‘fire’ and the word ‘sale’ are not in their vocabulary, just the words ‘do’ and ‘anything’ and ‘to’ and ‘win’. In fact, since Ray Kroc I can’t think of one owner the Padres have had that actually cared about the city of San Diego and the Baseball team that played within it’s geological limits.

I just don’t freaking get it. (Author’s note: I really wanted to use a much stronger word than ‘freaking’, but we have rules here and they’re freaking awesome.) I don’t understand why it’s so hard to get some crazy billionaire to ride into one of the most beautiful and populated cities in America and light the town on fire. If a guy like Jerry Buss walked in to the Gaslamp and took the reigns of a badly run franchise that still manages to draw an average of 25,000 people a game, I’d let him do pretty much whatever he wanted. Move the fences in? Sure! In fact turn them into picket fences! Pink dress night? Sure! Re-name every player ‘Sylvester Horsepuncher’? Yes! Where do I get season tickets? I wouldn’t care what he did, because I know he would build a team of dress-wearing Sylvester’s that would win. And, I don’t even care if he won a World Series; just a few playoff appearances sprinkled around consistently respectable seasons of Baseball would be fine.

The complete crap show (Author’s note: I bet you can guess what this note was gonna say.) that was the Jeff Moorad takeover has left an unneeded stain on a franchise already covered in more stains than a…(Insert another Author’s note of your choice here)…and I, like many Padres fans are getting real sick of it. It’s not like San Diego is undesirable, in fact there’s a reason we draw the same if not more road team fans as Padres fans every home game. People move here from all over the globe! If we had owners who would just come out and say, “I’m going to do everything in my power to make the Padres a contender. Not just for a few seasons, but for decades to come.” I would be happy. It’s just that simple. Obviously they’d have to follow through on that promise, but if they contained all of my above qualities listed then they would.

The current list of possible suitors is no joke and actually kind of exciting. There’s the O’Malley group, which now features Phil Mickelson as their “face”. They have a long history in Baseball and the money to back it all up. Legendary Pictures maestro Thomas Tull wants to buy the Padres so bad he convinced Tony Gwynn to join his team. He’s a smart businessman with a lot of money and the forethought to get the most popular Padre of all time to stand by his side. Let’s just say if you’re going to buy an L.A. team you might want to get Magic Johnson in your crew, it’s not so different with Tony. I do like Thomas Tull and I really like the fact that Gwynn likes him. However, the guy I really dig is Steve Cohen. Alone he’s worth $8.3 Billion and his yearly salary is a measly $1 Billion. He’s already been divorced once, so that’s pretty much out of the way. He’s a genius businessman who in 2011 was ranked by Forbes as the 35^th richest man in America. It’s like reading poetry isn’t it? If I’m going for the possible crazy billionaire owner, Cohen is my guy.

I did it! I don't know what I did! (Tom Fluegge-US PRESSWIRE)

I want these things, but in the end it doesn’t matter who buys this team. It could be Tyler Perry for all I care. I just want Bud Selig and his crew of seemingly inept employees to actually take a stake in what happens here. Do some background checks, look at some bank statements, because right now it seems like it’s harder for me to rent an apartment than it is for someone to say they can afford a Baseball team. Selig drug his feet in Montreal, he almost destroyed one of the most historic Baseball franchises of all-time in Los Angeles, and he’s currently the person to blame for the Moores/Moorad blue light special. With the recent news that John Moores might not sell his controlling interest after all, it’s more important than ever for Selig to come in here and give the Padres what they deserve: An owner who’s crazy about Baseball, not just crazy.

Yes, I want a billionaire. I want a single or unbelievably happily married man, but above all I just want somebody who will make this city care again.

For more Padres stuff and other things you might not care about follow me on Twitter @dallas_mc