San Diego Padres History: Petco Park Opens to Record College Baseball Crowd
By Tim Haberin
On this day in 2004, Petco Park opened its doors for its first baseball game, a collegiate clash between San Diego State and the University of Houston. An NCAA record crowd filled the San Diego Padres’ new home for the event.
The opening of a new major league ballpark is always a special event. The Atlanta Braves are moving into their new home at SunTrust Park this spring, eager to begin a new era in the history of their storied franchise. Petco Park, domain of the San Diego Padres, hosted its first game on this date in 2004, and it while it might not have featured professional clubs, it was certainly a memorable one.
San Diego State and the University of Houston christened the new stadium on the night of March 11, 2004, kicking off a four-day invitational tournament. They played in front of 40,106 fans (of a 42,000 capacity), setting a new record for NCAA baseball attendance. According to the Los Angeles Times, the previous high-water mark was set by the 27,673 spectators who watched LSU and Tulane face off in 2002 at the Superdome in New Orleans.
While attending the inaugural event at a new, state-of-the-art ballpark is a pretty great incentive in its own right, San Diego locals had another reason to show up in droves that evening: Tony Gwynn, “Mr. Padre” himself, was the manager of the SDSU Aztecs. The late Padres legend helmed his alma mater’s baseball team for 12 seasons after his retirement. He oversaw a 363-363 record, three Mountain West Conference championships and three NCAA Tournament appearances.
Gwynn was famously a two-sport star at San Diego State, earning all-conference honors in both baseball and basketball. He was drafted by the hometown Padres in the third round of the 1981 MLB draft (although Gwynn said he wasn’t too thrilled at the time to wear those beautiful mustard-and-brown uniforms).
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Arguably the best pure hitter of his generation, Gwynn put together a first-ballot Hall of Fame career. Over 20 seasons spent entirely in San Diego, he won eight batting titles, peaking at a staggering .394 average in 1994. Since Ted Williams hit .406 in 1941, no one else has come closer to batting .400 in a season.
Gwynn was enshrined in Cooperstown in 2007, garnering 97.6 percent of the vote. The baseball world mourned his passing seven years later in June of 2014.
Petco Park gave the Padres their own place to call home after decades spent sharing Qualcomm Stadium with the NFL’s San Diego Chargers. With its spacious dimensions, the venue has gained a reputation as one of the league’s most pitcher-friendly parks since its opening. (Though the walls were moved in a bit in 2013.)
The Friars enjoyed some success at the beginning of the Petco Park era, winning the NL West Division title in 2005 and 2006. They lost in the NLDS both years and have not made the postseason since. The stadium did get some time in the national spotlight last summer, however, when it staged the MLB All-Star Game.
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In 2010, another new major league stadium flirted with the collegiate baseball attendance record when the Minnesota Twins’ Target Field hosted 36,056 fans to watch the University of Minnesota take on Louisiana Tech.