2005 MLB Playoff's: Padres Ready for Big Test

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In a span of four seasons, from 1996-99, the Padres nearly went from first to worst to first to worst. Now here they are, first and worst at the same time.

OK, so we got that out of the way. Also behind us is perhaps the most pitiful drive if it can be called that to a division championship in baseball history. For more than just the past month, the Padres have been getting pummeled for their paradoxical, unprecedented combination of a losing record and first-place status.

Water over the dam. Water under the bridge. Water up their nose with a rubber hose. Whatever.

"The important thing is to get into the playoffs," said Padres utility player Robert Fick, "but you don't want to go into the playoffs with people thinking you're a loser."

Over most of the last half of the 2003 regular season, the Detroit Tigers heard daily references to the 1962 New York Mets, the poster boys of futility with a record 120 losses. The Tigers were able to avoid the ultimate ignominy, barely. The Padres haven't been able to outlast their own frequent comparisons to the Mets, but the '73 version %u2013 the Mets that previously had taken the worst record (82-79) into the playoffs and darn near wound up winning a World Series. That is the stigma the Padres lug into this first-round series against the St. Louis Cardinals, of course, an 82-80 ledger that enabled the Padres to champion a division full of teams so far under .500 that the NL West played most of September as if wearing scuba gear.

But in baseball, only eight teams earn the right to start all over in October with a clean slate, and no outfit can benefit more from the do-overs than the Padres. They are not totally, absolutely, thoroughly without a chance.

"No matter how noble and special people want to make the playoffs out to be," said Texas Rangers pitching coach Orel Hershiser, "it's a crapshoot."

Hershiser knows his, uh, stuff. Hard to believe the Padres actually might draw some of their greatest hope from the Los Angeles Dodgers, whose 1988 club was the classic case of an overmatched bunch going all the way in the postseason. Hershiser carried them on his skinny shoulders and turned them over to a one-legged Kirk Gibson.