I Flew 3,000 Miles to Watch the Mets Play the Padres and All I Got Was This Lousy Tasty Fish Taco

Eck. Is it football season yet?

As you know, Toasty J. and the Mrs. spent the weekend in lovely San Diego, seeing the sights and soaking up the 72-degree humidity-free weather. It's interesting there - I had always assumed that Southern California = heat. Not so. Your typical S.D. days starts out at like 60 degrees and chilly, blossoming into 72, clear and sunny. Pretty sweet, especially in view of what was going on back here.

Anyway, enough with the weather. Let's talk Petco Park!

We arrived shortly before game time (which game did I see? Who really cares at this point. The one that they lost, ok?), which gave us a little time to snoop around. Friends, this is an interesting park. First of all, it's visible from many, many blocks away in the so-called Gaslamp District, which is a pretty nice area with tons of restaurants, bars, etc. Unfortunately, there were a fair amount of deranged homeless people roaming around (although not on San Francisco levels).

As for the ballpark itself, a few observations:

1. Their hot dog has a cooler name than our hot dog.

2. As if the Friar mascot is not disturbing enough - a giant, grotesque monk/man-child running amok through the outfield - in between innings, they roll out "Frankenfriar" (pictured here), which is an even larger, mechanically-inflated version of the Friar, who basically just spasms and dances around. Hilarity ensues.

3. Their fans' signs are wordier than ours. I mean, who has time to read something like this?

4. The right-field bleachers (where we sat) are decent, but you feel really, really far away. (Here's our view). Got a fairly good look at the back of Endy's and Giles' jerseys all night, but that's about it. Also, it didn't help that I was there with several non-baseball fans, so it was a bit hard to really get into the game.

5. The fish tacos - yum. See picture above. Enough said.

6. There is a fairly awesome picnic field beyond the centerfield fence which shows the game on a giant screen. Probably a good deal for people with little kids (not unlike the A.D.D. brats sitting behind us who were kicking our seats the whole game).

7. Most popular jersey at Petco? Not Trevor Hoffman. Not Tony Gwynn. Not Steve Garvey. It's Khalil Greene. I wish I were making this up.

8. As for the baseball that was actually played on the field -- geez Louise, I'm not getting into that. Instead, please enjoy the above picture of the picnic field as we receded into the night -- several minutes before someone or other hit a walk-off home run against so-and-so.

It's best not to think about it.

Preseason football, anyone?

p.s. - Like any enormously popular sports blog, we here at Toasted Joe get occasionally get reader submissions. Here is the only latest one, courtesy of Chris. I'm speechless. Nice work.