Editorial:
Since the 2006 season Adrian Gonzalez has been the best baseball player on the San Di-ego Padres team. He has been a steady, productive player whom you could pencil in for 30 plus home runs a season, 100 runs batted in a season, and he was Gold Glove first baseman. He was the kind of player you could build a team around! Yet, the Padre management saw it differently, trading Gonzalez to the Boston Red Socks this past week.
Professional sports are like that now and days, it is a business and if players aren’t being traded, then they play out their contract and go on the market to play for the highest bidder. We get that, it is a business!
But Gonzalez is much more than just about business. Gonzalez transcended the local baseball scene. He is a homeboy who graduated from Eastlake High in Chula Vista. He lives in Chula Vista. Gonzalez is an inspiration for young Hispanic ball players. He is someone they could look up to. He is a role model. One never sees his name associated with any negative publicity.
Gonzalez gave back to the community through his and his wife’s foundation, The Adrian and Betsy Gonzalez Foundation, which is focused on empowering underprivileged youth in areas of athletics, education and health. Adrian along with this brother Edgar, who also plays professional baseball and their dad, built a sports academy in Chula Vista for aspiring young ballplayers in San Diego County and from Mexico.
Gonzalez represented Mexico, playing winter ball in the Mexican Pacific League for the Venados de Mazatlán. In the 2009 Caribbean Series, he led his team past the Dominican Republic’s Tigres del Licey with a record-setting 3 home runs. Gonzalez is a great ambassador for the game.
The Chula Vista Park View Little League 2009 World Champions were greatly inspired by local hero Adrian Gonzalez and his brother, Edgar. One of the players is growing up in the home where Adrian and Edgar practiced with their dad.
What makes Gonzalez’s leaving San Diego particularly hard to accept is that when the Padres organization asked the taxpayers to subsidize the building of Petco Park, one of the main reasons for a new park was the need for new revenue streams to keep players like Gonzalez on the team. This was the promise made to the baseball fans of San Diego. What we are left with now are broken promises.
The trading of Gonzalez is a hard pill to swallow. The Padres were only one game away from making the playoffs! They were so close that with the addition one more productive bat in the lineup or one more pitcher, this next year could have been their year!
Now that dream for the Padres is fading as, once again, they continue to trade away or allow their best players to leave the team for better opportunities.
We wish Adrian Gonzalez the best of luck in Boston where he may be a lot closer to fulfilling his dream of playing on a championship team. San Diego fans and the local Hispanic community will sorely miss him. Meanwhile, the Gonzalez brothers will remain local legends to inspire our youth, and Adrian in particular will be regarded fondly for decades to come.