No bumper-to-bumper traffic inching along Imperial Avenue. No fathers, tugging at pokey sons wearing cockeyed hats. No entrance lines mimicking ants in formation. No sea of newly embraced Padres brown.
The Opening Day That Wasn’t on Thursday at Petco Park reflected our new locked-down, social-distancing, thought-jumbling reality.
Giant images of Fernando Tatis Jr. and Manny Machado smiled down at the 10th Avenue gate, but there was nobody to smile back. The 7-Eleven on J Street, normally swamped when San Diego baseball shakes off the mothballs, was empty other than a lone skateboarder. Down the block, a security guard at California Coast Credit Union sat in silence on a day the neighboring ATM would be pumping out cash until the buttons begged for mercy.