Opening Day: The Dodgers Are Back and the Padres Are Already Planning for Next Year

The Los Angeles Dodgers played baseball last night. They are going to keep playing baseball for the next seven months. At the end of those seven months they will probably win the World Series. We understand this. We have accepted it. We are not surprised by any of it. This is just what it’s like to root for the greatest organization in the history of professional sports.

Opening Day at Dodger Stadium is one of the great annual events in West LA, and not just because of the game. It’s the first warm Tuesday night where it feels okay to eat a Dodger Dog at 7pm and call it dinner. It’s 56,000 people who all decided independently that today was the day they needed to leave work at 3pm. It’s the smell of the parking lot, the view of the San Gabriel Mountains, and the collective understanding that for the next seven months, everything in this city is going to be fine because the Dodgers are playing.

“Other cities have teams they root for. Los Angeles has a team that is simply correct. There is a difference.”

The State of the Franchise

Let’s take stock of where we are. The Dodgers have the best player on earth in Shohei Ohtani, who hits baseballs so hard that opposing outfielders have started filing for hazard pay. They have Freddie Freeman, who won a World Series on one leg and would probably do it again on no legs. The pitching staff is assembled like someone gave a very smart person a credit card with no limit and said “go fix baseball.” The farm system, which other teams use to build their futures, is what the Dodgers use to make trades for additional Shohei Ohtanis.

Is it fair? No. Is it legal? Apparently. Do we feel bad about it? Genuinely, we do not.

A Word About the Padres

San Diego is a beautiful city. The weather is lovely. The fish tacos are, fine, pretty good. And the Padres are — this is said with complete affection — the Dodgers’ minor league affiliate that somehow got their own stadium.

Every year Padres fans do this thing where they look at their roster in March and go “okay, THIS is the year.” Manny Machado will give an interview about winning. Fernando Tatis Jr. will post something on Instagram that implies dominance. The San Diego media will write seventeen articles about how the Padres are finally ready to take over the NL West. And then the Dodgers will go 12-3 against them and everyone in San Diego will quietly go back to talking about the Chargers — oh wait.

We bear the Padres no ill will. Every great team needs a loyal supporting cast. The Padres show up, they play hard, they go home to San Diego, and they start preparing for next year. It’s a beautiful arrangement and the Dodgers could not do what they do without someone to practice on.

The Atmosphere

There is no better place to watch a baseball game in America than Dodger Stadium on a warm night. This is not a controversial opinion. It is a documented fact. The stadium sits in Chavez Ravine, the hills rise up behind the outfield, the mountains glow in the distance, and the sunset over the pavilion looks like someone hired a production designer to make Los Angeles look like Los Angeles. If you have never been, you are doing something wrong with your free time and we say that with love.

The crowd last night was everything you’d expect: 56,000 people in various states of Dodger blue, at least four guys with Ohtani jerseys who were absolutely not going to explain themselves, families who arrived at 3:45pm for a 7:10 first pitch, and the specific guy in every section who knows a thing about every player on the roster and will share it with you whether or not you asked. He means well. Let him talk. He has been waiting since October.

The Season Ahead

Here is our prediction for the 2026 season: the Dodgers are going to be very good. The Padres are going to have a stretch in June where they go 9-3 and every Padres account on social media will start posting the fire emoji. The Dodgers will then go 14-2 in July and restore the natural order of things. This will happen. It always happens. We are not worried.

In the meantime, Dodger Stadium is open 81 times this season. Get out there. Bring someone who’s never been. Watch their face when the sun goes down behind the mountains in the third inning. It’ll be the best thing you did all week, and the hot dog costs $8, and you’ll eat it without hesitation, and everything will be exactly fine.

Go Dodgers. Let’s go get another one.