The San Diego Padres have spent most of their 55-year existence working to be harmless. That effort has been the franchise’s greatest achievement, reaching the dizzy heights of Benito Santiagomania. From their fashion (the much-maligned and undeniably distinctive color palette) to their cramped geography (surrounded by the Dodgers, Angels, Diamondbacks, the Mexican border and the Pacific Ocean) to their average finish (76-86, 19 games behind), the Padres have largely stayed out of everyone’s way.

But not anymore, and here’s some anecdotal evidence:

Yes, that’s Manny Machado running far from the baseline to use his head to provoke and even aggravate an errant throw from Los Angeles first baseman Freddie Freeman. This happened early in Tuesday’s six-run San Diego rally, which won Game 3 of this National League Division Series and instantly placed the Padres in the unusual role of rowdy neighbor and giant killer. If they beat the Dodgers on Wednesday to reach the series, Major League Baseball’s marketing department will close their laptops and head to the nearest open window. A league ready to sell Shohei Ohtani to an audience that already buys him will instead get to dress Machado, Fernando Tatis Jr., Jackson Merrill, Jurickson Profar and Kyle Higashioka.

But before anyone undertakes the big gravity burn, a bit strange: in a series that has gone from routine to exciting to hyperkinetic thanks to projectiles flying in the air And As we leave the stands, Game 4 promises us a new twist: both teams are no longer pitching. The Padres are going with their best, Dylan Cease, on just three days’ rest. This is almost never a good idea, even if, as in this case, the starter in question only lasted 3 1/3 innings in his previous turn. The Dodgers, for their part, are going without a starter altogether; the team that seems to start every recent season with a historic glut of starting pitching could end this season with a bullpen matchup. You only venture a prediction about tonight’s outcome if you press it, and only make one when you’re drunk.

However, we do know this. The Padres are finally ready and equipped to become baseball’s loudest neighbor, the people you never paid much attention to and now grab you by the eyelids and demand you pay attention. This can be difficult to follow when the opponent is a leviathan powered by a leviathan, but a 2-1 lead is hard to ignore.

The Padres still have to finalize the deal, of course, and a team with just two World Series appearances that included just nine games, eight of which went for the other guy, has no right to assume anything. That’s especially true for what appears from a distance to be an all-out fight tonight. But in light of their well-maintained historical anonymity, the Padres have deployed their attitude as well as talent and money to meet this challenge, wrapping it all up in a compelling “You’ve got to see this” wrap. Machado’s left turn from first to second is a trifle, but between that, Tatis’ deflections, Profar’s hidden ball trick and Merrill’s barely legal indifference, the Padres dare to be annoying. In doing so, they livened up October in a way they rarely have. Granted, this isn’t a deep ditch for them to overcome, having missed the playoffs in 47 of those 55 years. But the only thing they can gain now is what’s in front of them, so those 47 near misses don’t matter much.

Game 3 wasn’t just about Machado’s devilish sense of direction (the play was, to be fair, legal) or Tatis’ debate-crushing homer. Despite the 6-5 final score, it was a pitching triumph. Teoscar Hernandez’s third-inning grand slam pulled the Dodgers back in a game in which they had seemingly been ousted an inning earlier, but the Dodgers added only one baserunner in their next 21 at-bats, a two-out single by nearly pinned Freddie Freeman in the eighth inning resulted in a pinch-runner (Chris Taylor), a new pitcher (closer Robert Suarez) and finally an infield pop-up by Hernandez. Michael King escaped the scary third inning by retiring the last eight men he faced, and relievers Jeremiah Estrada, Jason Adam, Tanner Scott and Suarez were nearly perfect in support.

The story of the Padres doesn’t deserve to be told yet because no one gets poetic waxings without at least getting past the division bracket, but it should be noted here that these Padres weren’t made by being polite and wearing a brown suit — and yes, the initials are purposely the same as the usual diaper-inspired designation of their uniforms, but by having an owner in the late Peter Seidler, who decided to retire the Padres. He entrusted that work to a general manager from AJ Preller, who repeatedly made big moves for players who normally wouldn’t be interested in signing with the league’s monument to invisibility. Machado and Tatis have long-term deals worth more than $300 million, Xander Bogaerts signed for $280 million, Juan Soto could have gotten one but chose the Yankees as a stopgap until his own free agency, and Cease and Scott were drafted via bold layups to create a ​​to strengthen the pitching staff that was quite recently Yu Darvish, and then a dreary wait for Darvish’s turn again. The Padres were a low-to-mid-market spender until 2022, when Seidler decided he couldn’t take it and was willing to show up for a parade while he could.

Unfortunately for him, he didn’t make it, but that decision resonates throughout this season. He dared to go big with a team that previously avoided the concept like the plague. The Padres were part of baseball’s Class Of Misfit Toys, with Montreal (now Washington, after the Padres threatened to move there), Seattle (now Milwaukee), and Kansas City, and now they’re on the brink of – well , something. Whatever it is, it promises to be loud and have lots of pitch changes.