Baseball back at Petco Park Saturday with Padres FanFest 2026
Baseball was back at Petco Park, Saturday, but it was the fans running bases and catching fly balls during the Padres FanFest 2026.
Savannah Schoeneweis, 8, started softball when she was 4. She and her father drove from Alpine and made sure they came early to line up and be among the first group of fans through the gates.
They practiced catch while they waited.
“I’m working on playing as pitcher and catcher. I can pretty much do every position right now,” said Savannah a member of the Alpine Fast Pitch League.
“She’s still working on knowledge of the game and passion for the players. I’ve been a fan since I was her age,” said her father, Ryan Schoeneweis.
Once inside the gates, fans had the chance to run the bases on the field, pitch in the bull pen, and snap photos in the Padres dug out.
The annual Padres Fan Fest is free but required reservations online in order to enter the event with digital tickets and an assigned time. This year, to improve the experience and reduce wait times, there was also a new reservation system to get autographs from players and alumni members of the team. Those reservations sold out two weeks ago.
There were a total of 20,375 fans who showed up for this year’s FanFest, up from last year when there were 16,891 attendees.
On street level, in the Park Blvd Plaza area, fans could purchase one-of-a-kind Padres items and other team memorabilia at bargain prices. The merchandise was part of the Padres Foundation Garage Sale. All proceeds help fund community programs.
Matthew Naslund and his parents are season ticket holders. That allowed him to get into FanFest an hour earlier than the public start time. He headed straight for the garage sale.
“(I found) stuff that’s team issued that you’re not going to find in a store. Things given to the team or staff, and you feel like you’re part of that when you buy it,” Naslund told NBC 7.
The sale included a life-sized cut out of former Padre right fielder and Hall of Famer, Dave Winfield. The price was $200 for the piece of Padres history. Anthony Aguilar, 12, carried it around looking for his mother hoping she would buy it for him.
““She said ‘no’. But that’s alright,” Anthony said. “Maybe one day I’ll buy it when I make it to the MLB. That’s kind of my dream.”
