Despite a tough loss that knocked the San Diego Padres out of the postseason, faithful fans lined the gates of Petco Park to welcome their team home Sunday, including a nine-year-old girl who couldn't have predicted what happened next.
Ingrid Janssens-Lozano was one of hundreds of fans who ushered the Padres off a bus at Petco Park just after midnight Monday. Padres pitcher Joe Musgrove was greeting fans and signing autographs when he stopped to ask the girl a question.
"'Do you think you would be able to fit into these in the future?'" Ingrid recalls the hometown player asked her as he held up a pair of white, brown and yellow cleats that he presumably wore throughout the season and the playoffs.
"Then he asked if he could borrow one of these people's pens, and he did. And he signed these cleats and gave them to us!" she excitedly told Paul Nestor, who shared video of the moment with NBC 7, while holding a cleat that was bigger than her head.
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Don't expect to see this pair of memorabilia on the market any time soon. The young fan said she's going to keep the cleats as "one of her most valuable things."
The San Diego Padres flew home from their devastating 4-3 Sunday night to the Philadelphia Phillies and pulled in by bus to Petco Park just after midnight. Hundreds of fans were there to show their support, despite the loss that shut them out of World Series contention.
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"We just wanted to let them know that the entire time, no matter how hard it got, we kept the faith and just want to welcome them back home," Steve Crow said.
After dispatching the the 101-win Mets in three games in New York in the NL wild-card series, San Diego toppled the 111-win Dodgers in the NL Division Series in five games to reach the NLCS for the first time since 1998.
The Padres had home-field advantage against the Phillies, but could only manage a Game 2 victory at home losing three in a row in Philadelphia. The Padres were sent home in Game 5 of the National League Championship. A two-run homer in the 8th by Phillies' Bryce Harper gave the East Coast team a 4-3 win and a push into the World Series.
“We tried, we fought, we came up short,” Machado said. “We want to be on the opposite side of this. A good team beat us. They just won, fair and square.”
A win would have brought the Padres back to San Diego but they'd need to win the next three for a shot at their first World Series title.
