San Diego Padres: Fans Already Jumping Ship After Less Than Two Weeks

It's been eight games and the Padres are currently sitting at 3-5 through the first week and a half of the 2010 season. Apparently, that 3-5 record is sending a lot of Padre fans off the deep end, jumping off the ship that is the USS Padres Bandwagon.

If you're on Facebook, admittedly I am, you can see all the postgame articles that are posted on the Padres' Facebook page and the comments that follow. After six games I was seeing comments from so-called "fans" talking about how this was a "major league team masquerading as a Triple-A team."

They do realize there's 156 more games to play right?

Another fact that I've yet to see be brought up in those comments is the fact that the Padres are notoriously slow starters in the month of April. This is no shock to those of us that really follow this team year in and year out. The Padres have gotten off to some of their worst starts in the very first month of the season.

Living in San Diego for eight years and attending as many games as I did, I always overheard conversations about San Diego being a "mediocre sports town." That was hard to argue with seeing as not only the Padres, but the Chargers, and the San Diego State Aztecs really never made big moves in any sport.

While the Chargers have been one of the better teams in the NFL during the regular season and though they went into the playoffs roaring like a lion, they exited the playoffs just as quickly and as quietly as a lamb.

As for San Diego State, though they've made some noise on the basketball court as well as on the diamond while hard throwing right-hander Steve Strasburg was a member of the team, their football program hasn't done a thing since Marshall Faulk was coming out of the backfield.

So it's hard to argue with those kind of points. What I will argue with is the fact that San Diego also has some of the biggest bandwagon jumpers of any sports town, anywhere.

Every season it's the same old song and dance and most of the time it's from the same type of fan. They complain about why this team doesn't spend money, they complain about the players on the field, and they complain about the lack of a championship outside of a divisional championship.

Division titles, to many, are about as useful as a kid in junior high being handed a runner-up ribbon in the science fair. Sure it'll get hung up and it'll be stared at once in a while but, at the end of the day, it doesn't mean much when five other teams can say the same thing.

Still, after eight games, is it really worth jumping off the USS Padres Bandwagon and already saying they're not going to make the playoffs? I saw one fan post a comment that said "This team won't even make the playoffs and even if they do they won't make it out of the first round."

While I understand that Padre teams over the past decade, when they made it to the playoffs, have exited just as quickly as they entered, calling your shot after eight games is a tad premature.

I must admit that I was left shaking my head and saying to myself "of course he did," after learning that Chris Young didn't wait long before beginning his first stint on the disabled list. This after writing an article about a month ago, talking about how the Padres will sink or swim depending on Chris Young's health throughout the season.

During spring training Chris Young, as well as pitching coach Darren Basley, ranted and raved about how CY was finally healthy for the first time in four seasons and how he was throwing without pain. I guess that didn't last long.

Though the Padres have not started out of the gates like a lot of fans wanted them to and while that's understandable, freaking out about it and finding the best place to jump ship seems a bit foolish to me.

I know you fans want to be able to criticize your team and I'm sure you have the right to do that. But don't you think you should first look back at the history books and realize that his is not an anomaly? That this happens every year?

That way, by knowing the facts, you can breathe easy, keep yourself from having an aneurysm, and let the rest of the season play itself out.

There's a famous saying in the game of baseball. "Every team is going to win 54 games and lose 54 games. It's what you do with the other 54 that counts."

Just hang in there Padre fans. We're not even two weeks into the season. Keep your life jackets on and go back inside the ship. This is going to be a better year than a lot of you may think.

One month does not make a season.