San Diego Padres

In 1984, weeks after his team had reached its first World Series, owner Ray Kroc died, and his widow Joan tried to give the Padres away. San Diego had only had the team since 1969, an expansion year that also produced the Montreal Expos, the Kansas City Royals and the Seattle Pilots, and the name itself was borrowed rather than invented: it came from the Pacific Coast League club that had played under that title since 1936, in tribute to the Franciscan friars who founded Mission San Diego de Alcalá.

That 1984 pennant, and a second one in 1998, remain the only two the franchise has produced; both times San Diego reached the World Series and both times lost without winning a game, to the Detroit Tigers and then to a Yankees team that swept them 4–0. The 1998 run did leave a lasting mark on the city, though — voters approved the bond measure that eventually built Petco Park, which opened downtown in 2004. The club's colours went back and forth over the following decades before reverting, in 2020, to the original brown and gold, a reference to the same mission heritage the nickname points to.

Tony Gwynn is the name attached to the franchise more than any other, having stayed for all twenty years of his career and won eight batting titles without ever wearing another uniform; his number 19 hangs retired at Petco Park alongside Trevor Hoffman's 51. The rivalry that matters most to Padres fans runs up Interstate 5, against the Los Angeles Dodgers.