Surely numbering among the things that signify a Baseball Town is the following action sports photograph of indeterminate origin: Increasingly, the only prudent use of Twitter is as a means to easily embed photos. This is what I'm doing right now. As Danton Heinen Women Jersey you were. Dayn Perry (@daynperry) The image comes from , where not even teenage eagles dare, but where they got it from is lost to history, or at least lost to this author's unwillingne s to do anything more than a cursory search (Update: ). What we do know is that it's an aerie of right-wise folks with the constituents of good living near at hand -- i.e., wholesome, restorative alcohol; television in amazing technicolor; aftermarket racing stripes; the strong implication of a portable generator; a chaise lounge capable of doubling as a steel-jaw leghold trap; and a demigod's vista of This, Our Baseball.That heavyweight championship view is of the 1992 All-Star Game at San Diego's Jack Murphy Stadium. "The Murph" -- which was a multipurpose stadium and or the nickname of anyone who makes it to the next bar despite being impaled with a foosball goalie rod at the last bar -- has long been replaced by Petco Park as the home of the occasionally fightin' . What hasn't changed is San Diego's leisured appreciation of this game and standing as, yes, a baseball town.What solidified that status in smaller measure is the departure of the 's Chargers for Los Angeles, which left the city of San Diego with only one major pro sports team. Mostly, though, it's about the city's enthusiasm for baseball and of late the Padres' strong devotion to the on-field product. We speak chiefly of the Padres' recent signing of superduperstar shortstop to . It's a staggering thing not only because of the raw dollar figure but also because where it's coming from and whom it's going to. On the first point, this contract was dialed up by a team that, per Forbes Anders Bjork Women Jersey estimates, ranks just 17th in the in franchise value and dwells in just . Putting ink on it was a 22-year-old who has just two years of major-league service time. The previous record for biggest contract signed by a player with two years of MLB service time or le s was Jr.'s $100 million extension with the . Tatis's contract, you'll note, exceeds Acuna's by more than three times over.It says here it's a wise investment. Tatis' record of performance thus far is una sailable, and it's in keeping with his former status as the best prospect in baseball. Last season, he showed sustainable growth at the plate, and he made remarkable strides with his defense, chiefly by cutting down on errors. In terms of performance outlook, Tatis is A-Rod minus all the lamentable parts of the A-Rod experience. The last young player to marry five tools and then some with a marketable flair that rises above that of his peers put it all together on the field was Ken Griffey Jr.?This is indeed the kind of singular ballplayer who merits the Statue Contract: On the Zoom with Fernando Tatis Jr., to unveil the 14-year deal. Talks began Jan. 3 with SD + Tatis. The Padres consulted with Tatis on *his* vision for the franchise. Padres calling this a "statue contract." Hopeful they'll one day build a statue of Tatis at the ballpark. Arash Madani (@ArashMadani) Notable is that Tatis's big contract comes just two years after the Padres committed $300 million to , which came a year after the Padres committed $144 million to . So that's Austin Czarnik Men Jersey three infield positions with contracts totaling almost $800 million. It bears repeating: The author of all of this self-investment is small-market San Diego. It all marks another evolution of sorts undertaken by GM and president of baseball operations A.J. Preller. Back in the winter of 2014-15 leading into his first full season on the job, Preller seized headlines by trying to position the Padres for immediate contention. He executed trades for , , , Jr., and , and then he signed on the free-agent market. All of the money and roster churn yielded not much in the way of desired outcomes. The Padres finished 74-88, worse than they did in the prior season, and wound up firing manager Bud Black after just 65 games (they got worse after doing so). Outside of some temporary renewed enthusiasm among Padres fans, the only real benefit of the attempted quick fix was that in June of 2016 Preller was able to flip Shields to the for two prospects, including an infielder who'd yet to play a profe sional game named Fernando Tatis Jr.The Padres moved into reconstruction mode. Given the quite expensive failures of Preller's debut effort as chief decision-maker -- expensive in terms of player salary and prospects traded away (including, most notably, ) -- most owners probably would've been content to remain in some state of rebuild and rake in the guaranteed profits that are a hallmark of the MLB small-market busine s model. That's not what happened in San Diego, though.The Padres under the Ron Fowler-Peter Seidler ownership pairing invested almost $80 million in the international free agent market in 2016, and roughly half of that was in overage penalties for exceeding their allotted budget. That splurge plus the Tatis trade plus some canny drafts yielded the consensus top farm system in all of baseball. Speaking of Tatis and fellow highly regarded pup , the Padres, rather than seed bad faith and game their service time, placed those two on the Opening Day roster to start the 2019 season and left them there. The ideal path at that point is to complement that young core David Pastrnak Men Jersey with targeted veteran additions and to do so at Jaromir Jagr Kids Jersey whatever expense nece sary. The Padres have done that and then some. In addition to the pricey infield troika of Hosmer-Machado-Tatis, the club acquired names like , , and , whose prior employers were unwilling to spring for their arb-eligible salaries. Along the way, they signed mid-tier contributor . Then came the ongoing winter of '20-'21, when the Padres coupled Preller's boldne s of his first offseason with a roster core that in 2020 set the franchise record for win percentage. The Pads drastically upgraded the rotation with trades for , , and -- again leveraging their competitors' unwillingne s to field the best team po sible -- and inked , , and Ha-seong Kim as free agents. All of that was prelude to the Tatis pact. , the Padres in 2021 will boast a payroll of almost $162 million, which is by far the highest figure in franchise history and also the projected ninth-highest payroll in MLB for the upcoming season, which is far and away their highest placement ever. , the Padres have nine-figure salary commitments through 2023 and at least $75 million committed to player payroll through 2027. At this point let's remind the URL-clicker that San Diego is the 29th-largest media market in the U.S.What's doubly striking about this is that the Padres undertook all these roster fortifications despite still being underdogs in their own division and despite having cau