Padres NLDS Home Game 3 - Petco Park

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The sound a sold-out Petco Park makes in October is different and everyone who has heard it will tell you so without being asked. Not louder exactly - lower, more like the building itself is involved. This city waited a long time for home playoff baseball to be an ordinary expectation rather than a once-a-decade accident, and this is the night the series comes back from Milwaukee with everything still to decide. The Padres swept the Cubs to get here and then opened this round on the road against the top seed, which means the first pitch downtown lands on a crowd that has spent four days watching on other people's televisions and wants a turn. Gaslamp fills from about four o'clock. The Park at the Park fills with people who never got a ticket and come anyway, which is its own argument about what this team is to this town, and the view from that lawn over the right field wall is better than it has any business being. First pitch is six thirty on a Tuesday. Bring a layer; the marine air comes over the bleachers once the sun drops behind the Western Metal building.