The San Diego Padres destroy the San Francisco Giants at Petco Park in their home opener of the season.
On Thursday night, the Padres put up a dominant performance in front of a sell-out ballpark of 44,844 in attendance by defeating the Giants 12-1.
Joe Musgrove, born and raised in San Diego, says that this was a huge night for him, know that he was going to start the season home opener in front of thousands and thousands of San Diegans on Thursday.
“Getting to open up in front of your hometown, a full stadium, especially when baseball is as exciting as it is in San Diego, it’s everything I dreamed of,” Musgrove said about his home opening start.
Musgrove knew he was going to start the first home game since new manager Bob Melvin gave him the heads up about it during Spring Training. The San Diego native says he did some pressure coming into this game, but still thrived off of the unconditional support of the entire city.
“It’s a good feeling to have the support of an entire city, but we also feel a little bit more pressure when everyone’s reaching out and everyone’s pulling for you and everyone’s coming to watch you,” Musgrove said. “It was nice to have a little bit of excitement from the offense and some of the other guys on the team to take a little bit of that off.” he added.
Padres new manager Bob Melvin says that Thursday night could not have gone any better, describing it as a very-well scripted story considering the circumstances.
“For one day, that’s about as perfect a day as you can have, with a full house, opening day, Joe on the mound, Manny, Hos, C.J. home run. You can’t script it any better than that.” said Melvin.
