Keep the Faith. Just keep the faith. Hey! You! Bored? Keep the faith! Well, what do you think we’ve been fucking doing all this time?

For as long as I can remember being a Padres fan meant you were asked to believe, blindly, that better days were ahead. That regardless of trades or money spent or play on the field things were going to be okay in the long run. “Keep the Faith” was “Trust the Process” before anyone knew what “Trust the Process” was.

“Keep the Faith”, much like “Trust the Process”, is also the perfect way to consistently scapegoat running a team that keeps up with trends, payrolls, and competitiveness. It essentially means, “If we do these things we’ll be really bad for awhile, we don’t know how long, but just long enough for you to think maybe we’ll never be good again, but during that time we’ll be able to get the pick of the litter in young talent, and then maybe possibly there’s a chance that that young talent develops into actual pro talent, and then maybe possibly who knows maybe all that young talent will develop at the same time, and surprise we’ll be good again! SOOOOO JUST KEEP THE FAITH!”

I remember back in the 1989 when I first started to understand Baseball. I was about nine years old then and for whatever reason that seemed like it was a big year for the sport. Thinking back now I can’t recall anything specific happening, but since it was when my brain came of age so to did the game of Baseball. And, really that’s what is fantastic about the sport in general: It ages with you, and at the same time is constant.

I’ve been “Keepin the Faith” ever since.

You see being a fan of a team, a true fan for as long as you can remember means that you live and die with every move they make. You hold your breath when the stakes are high, and you pound IPAs when a loss is inevitable. You celebrate, you cry, you laugh, you cry, you scream, you cry, but at the end of the day you stay with them.

Along with all those emotions and realities you also criticize.

You judge, you second guess, you question every little move. You’re allowed to be negative about a move just as much as you’re allowed to be positive and to say otherwise is not only ridiculous, it’s self-aggrandizing foolishness. To call others fandom into question because something is too negative is naivete. To post a piece about how horrible Padres Twitter is, then in the same breath mention how everyone shouldn’t be negative isn’t only hypocritical it’s useless.

To use Padres Twitter to try and tell Padres Twitter to be better people is like wearing a MAGA hat at a Trump rally and telling everyone they should read a book. It ain’t gonna happen.

If you don’t like social media, here’s a secret: It’s not ever going to change. It’s actually only going to get worse. There is no sense in telling people on social media to act sociable. You also need to do research about the entity you’re bashing and realize there’s a good distance between the kind of negativity Drunk Flan and his crew spout off, and the kind that is harshly criticizing team executives because you really don’t like the decision they just made. Sure, there’s gray areas between those two extremes, but for the most part that’s it.

You can’t tell people how to be fans because you believe what the team is doing is right. You can be absolutely in love with a team while at the same time be negative about some of the things they’re doing. It’s called ‘being in a relationship’.

And, you know what’s crazy? I can’t tell you how to be a fan! I can’t tell you to be negative. I can’t tell you to be positive. I can’t tell you shit. I can only hope that like me you continue to be a fan of the Padres. And, even then I can’t guarantee you will be. Because if like me you’ve been keeping the faith since the 80’s, the only process I’ll trust is the one that brings me championships, and when I see the Padres moving in that direction then and only then will I not be negative.

Until the season after when they sell off all the players to start over.

Keep the faith, and shut the hell up.