The San Diego Padres have been out of contention since—well, since 2011, so it makes sense that the team would have nothing more interesting going on in September than a Fortnite-adjacent kerfuffle involving a player and his manager.

The lowly San Diego Padres gave fans attending Saturday night’s game against the Rockies complimentary beach hats. Nice! The problem? Some of the packaging of the hats was discovered to contain an infestation of disgusting bugs:

Diamondbacks outfielder Jon Jay had a rough, frustrating time Friday night. Twice he reached up at the outfield wall to make a play on a shallow dinger, and both times Padres fans beat him to the ball. All Jay came down with, in the end, were a few droplets of spilled beer, and disappointment.

Parents love to embarrass their kids in public. I think it’s the parental way of avenging all those the times when the kids worried them sick by missing curfew or something. Anyhow, at the Padres game on Monday night, this kid’s dad and mom (stepmom? Older sister? Teacher???) were relentless.

Skip Schumaker spent the first eight of his 11 years in the majors playing for the St. Louis Cardinals, where he was teammates with, among others, career-Cardinal Adam Wainwright. Schumaker retired in 2016, after stints with the Dodgers and Reds, and is now the first base coach for the San Diego Padres.

Excellently named Padres outfielder Franchy Cordero can sure launch a goddamn tater. He plays in San Diego, which is as obscure a professional baseball outpost as you can find without going to the minors, but we should all be paying attention to young Franchy. According to Statcast, Cordero has already crushed three…

Every baseball rookie has his “Welcome to the bigs” moment. Padres pitcher Eric Lauer’s would be better characterized as a “You’re playing real baseball now, motherfucker” experience.

Farewell, 97.3 The Machine. We never knew ye.

Baseball featured one tussle in the afternoon (Padres-Rockies, after a few hit batsmen) and one in the evening (Yankees-Red Sox, after one hit batsman and one hard slide) and, as always, the resulting photographs from Getty and the Associated Press are much more engrossing than any video can be. Here’s a sampling of…

The Padres and Rockies are playing a game in Colorado today, and things really went to hell in the third inning after Padres starter Luis Perdomo threw a fastball behind Nolan Arenado, sparking a benches-clearing fracas.

You really will not believe this one. The Astros had a man on second with two outs in the bottom of the 10th inning last night, against the Padres, in a scoreless game. Batter Alex Bregman popped a rising 3-2 fastball from Padres pitcher Phil Maton straight up in the air. Easy out! Guaranteed out. Right, guys?

At the beginning of March, Entercom announced the launch of 97.3 The Machine, a new San Diego-based station with talk shows and sports programming. It’s not even the end of the month, and The Machine has already been involved in a feud and a fuckup that might jeopardize its relationship with the Padres.

Former Padres and Diamondbacks general manager Kevin Towers died Tuesday morning of thyroid cancer, which he was diagnosed with in late 2016. Towers was known as a popular and insightful executive, first entering the front office ranks as a scout before he became the Padres’ GM in 1995.

Broadcaster Dick Enberg died today at the age of 82 from a heart attack, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune and Associated Press.

The Reds, Padres and Mariners announced today that they would be expanding protective netting at their ballparks, while the Rockies said that they were in talks to set official plans to do so. The announcements came one day after a young girl was struck by a line drive at Yankee Stadium and hospitalized.

Rocky Gale is 29 years old. He has been in San Diego’s minor-league system since 2010, and he has spent almost all of that time in Triple-A. Other than a very brief showing as a September call-up in 2015—eleven games, only one of which he got to play more than three innings, with ten plate appearances and one hit—he…

Travis Wood’s night, for the most part, was bad. He was pulled after pitching to four batters but recording zero outs in the third inning, ultimately tagged with six earned runs off seven hits. Bad night for him! Just not an unusual one, at least not this season, as his 5.47 ERA and career-worst strikeout and walk…

Wil Myers knocked home a run with a single in the fourth inning. He’d get another run just by running around the bases.

For quite a while now, Carter Capps has mattered more to baseball as a symbol for questions about rules (and what they mean and how they’re enforced) than he has as an actual relief pitcher. This is, really, only fair: in the two-and-a-half years since he debuted a quirky but questionably legal delivery that helped…

Since MLB created new rules a few years ago to protect catchers and limit unnecessary hard contact in plays at the plate, we’ve seen fewer and fewer collisions. But we got one tonight, courtesy of Anthony Rizzo and Austin Hedges, and San Diego is steamed about the way it played out.