It started out as a joke last year on #PadresTwitter to get us through the doldrums of another terrible season.  What started as a silly Twitter hashtag idea turned into the framework for a viable, crowd-pleasing theme night.  I am of course talking about none other than a #Skadres theme night, highlighting the first through third wave of ska music.  For many of us on #PadresTwitter, we came of age in the heart of the third wave of ska (aka The Summer of Ska), back in the days when No Doubt was just another Orange County ska band.  Anyways, the 2017 Padres marketing info came out and, SHOCKINGLY, the Padres are NOT having a #skadres night this season.  Of course, this shouldn’t be shocking to us as the Padres marketing department under this regime has never shown itself to be creative, imaginative, competent, eager to do things fans like or appreciate, listen to customer feedback, come up with new ideas, use other people’s good ideas, value their customers, use good sense, see criticism as constructive rather than attacking, listen to voices that don’t agree with their terrible plans, or in general, market the team effectively.  In this case, we literally handed them a ready to go package to use this year and delight the fanbase.  Instead, we got another fedora.  C’est la vie.  I sat down and thought about and realized, HEY, Wayne Partello doesn’t have any formal training in marketing or business or college, a track record of success as Chief Marketing Officer, or the seeming ability to market the team other than using industry catchphrases like touchpoints, engagements, and heat maps that he heard at his last marketing convention, so maybe we need to hold his hand a little more; flesh out the concept for him.  I submit to Wayne and the Padres: Padres Skadres Night!

Uniforms:

We’ve seen these theme games before.  The Padres do 90’s and 80’s throwbacks for Way Back Wednesdays.  But wait!  The Padres 1998 team was right at the onset of the Summer of Ska!  This would work perfectly with the Padres seeming desire to push the 1998 throwbacks over older, brown throwbacks that might remind fans that they took a dump on the grassroot efforts to bring back the brown.  It would also give the team a good chance to put the team in uniforms that harken back to one of the greatest teams in Padres history, as well as celebrate their two greatest legends, Tony Gwynn and Trevor Hoffman.  And look!  The Padres are already promoting that uniform set on their Twitter!

But it’s going to be a terrible season.  Let’s get crazy.  I submit for review, official Skadres Theme Game uniforms!

Video Board:

The video board is the biggest part of any theme game.  The Padres have done great things with past Way Back Wednesdays using current players faces and photoshopping them onto 80’s icons and WWF wrestlers.  They’ve also made it a sport to pretend that Jib Jab didn’t exist in the early parts of this century and run with some delightful music videos using players.  The pinnacle of this was probably the NES Tyson Ross they used.  Well, Skadres Night would play into this perfectly.  I did some MS Paint legwork for Wayne Partello:

Really, the options are endless for great video board fodder.

Audio:

Ideally, Bobby Cressey will be on organ for Skadres Night.  Jamming out to some horn sections via organ sounds like my kind of night.  And the movement is already growing to have him there:

As has been suggested ad nauseum by Gaslamp Ball’s Jodes Paranal, local legends Buck-O-Nine and their greatest hit “My Town” should be heavily featured.  In fact, just bring them into Petco and have them perform My Town repeatedly on the Sun Diego Deck.  They could also mix in a few renditions of “Who Are They?” to delight the crowd trying to figure out what a Paul Clemens is.

And there’s the question of walk-up music.  Limiting this to only late 90’s ska songs, there are plenty of great options.  Submitted for your approval:

Wil Myers: Reel Big Fish – Big Star

Manuel Margot: Mighty Mighty Bosstones – Someday I Suppose

Austin Hedges: Aquabats – Super Rad!

Hunter Renfroe: Hepcat – Can’t Wait

Luis Sardinas: Reel Big Fish – All I Want Is More

Brett Wallace: Mustard Plug – Mr. Smiley

Josh Naylor: Buck-O-Nine – Round Kid

Did I mention that they could blare the Bosstones’ “You Gotta Go” after every strikeout?  Oh, the other team has a player that left the Padres in free agency?  Play “Sell Out”.  There’s a world of possibilities here people.

Like I said, we’re basically handing Wayne Partello a manila folder with “Ready to go hit marketing idea” scrawled on the front of it in Sharpie.  Heck, Padres Twitter has already done the leg work of coming up with great one-liners to integrate into the bit:

Seriously.  We’ve done all the legwork.  Now it’s time for Wayne Partello and the Padres marketing team to stop thinking about how to sell blue jerseys and start thinking about how to kick off ska’s fourth wave with a #Skadres theme game.