SAN DIEGO – A late night decision to postpone Padres Opening Day game time to the evening took some businesses by surprise.
“That’s great, you know why? Because it’s not going to be raining in the evening, so I’m all for it,” said Gerald Torres, founder and owner of City Tacos. Torres did add that he would need to make some scheduling calls following the update.
In nearly a “game time” decision, the organization announced first pitch is scheduled for 6:40 p.m. instead of the originally scheduled 1:10 p.m. start time.
“We had a year when we didn’t have baseball. That was bad. If we postpone it for a couple hours and we don’t get wet during the game — fantastic,” said Torres.
The forecast for Thursday was the driving factor for the decision with rain anticipated into the afternoon.
“We actually benefit from the rain. San Diego is such an outdoor city. When it rains people funnel in and then they don’t leave, so they stay a little bit longer,” said Alex Gregg, manager at The Smoking Gun.
Restaurants and bars downtown had been preparing for Padres Opening Day, rain or shine.
“Make sure we have enough cooks, dishwashers, servers and bartenders,” said Gregg. “Also, during the season we expand the hours a bit and open a bit earlier on the day of games.”
A lot of locations downtown won’t be taking reservations Thursday and will be serving customers on a first come, first serve basis.
It’s encouraged to pre-pay for parking or use alternate options to get downtown like the bus or trolley for Opening Day.