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After the 1971 Major League Baseball season, it appeared that the San Diego Padres would move to Washington. It seemed so certain that Topps Baseball Cards, in the spring of 1972, came out with its set that had Washington/Nat’l Lea. written on the cards of several players who had seen action with the Padres in 1971.
The Padres, of course, stayed in San Diego – and these days it is East Coast players and coaches, including those with Virginia ties, who have headed to Southern California.
The Padres had two players on the team in 2025 with connections to the Shenandoah Valley – and both of their fathers played in The Show.
Will Wagner. Photo: Liberty Athletics
Infielder Will Wagner, who played for his Hall of Fame father Billy Wagner at The Miller School, appeared in 15 games for the Padres this past season and hit .133 in 15 at-bats. A former standout at Liberty University, he was drafted out of college by the Houston Astros in 2021 and made his MLB debut with the Toronto Blue Jays in 2024. He was traded by the Blue Jays to San Diego in late July. Wagner played in the Rockingham County Baseball League for Montezuma in 2020.
“Just growing up in big league clubhouses, I kind of know what to expect,” the younger Wagner told ESPN.com in 2024 when he made his MLB debut. “It was a nerve-wracking day, for sure, but once you get that first at-bat out of the way it’s all good.”
Billy Wagner went into the Baseball Hall of Fame this past summer. One of his assistant coaches the past few years at the Miller School is Terrell Thompson, a former standout at Waynesboro High who played pro ball in Indy leagues.
Another San Diego player in 2025 was designated hitter/outfielder Gavin Sheets, the son of Staunton native and former MLB slugger Larry Sheets. Gavin Sheets was drafted out of Wake Forest by the Chicago White Sox in 2017, broke into the majors with the club four years later and signed with the Padres as a free agent prior to the 2025 season. The lefty hit .252 with 19 homers in 145 games for San Diego this past season.
“I think he gets more nervous watching me than he did when he was playing,” Gavin Sheets told mlb.com earlier this year about his father, a Staunton High graduate. “But he’ll never call me and tell me what I did wrong or what I need to do. He just lets me come to him with stuff.”
The younger Sheets played for his father at the Gilman School in Baltimore before heading to Wake Forest. Larry Sheets was the Orioles MVP in 1987 when he hit 31 homers – he also played for the Detroit Tigers and Seattle Mariners.
The Padres now have more Virginia connections. Craig Stammen, named the new manager in November, played for the Potomac Nationals in Woodbridge in 2006-2008 while in the minor league system of Washington.
His bench coach in San Diego will be Randy Knorr, who managed Potomac from 2006-2008. Knorr is a former coach with the Washington Nationals, while Stammen pitched for the club from 2009-2015 before going to the Padres.
“The best part about this Padres organization,” Stammen told reporters in November, “is the people that we have and how great they are at all their jobs. And I’m going to rely on all those people. This isn’t a one-man Craig Stammen show. … Rely on a lot of people to have my back and create processes that lead us to the championship.”
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World Series Padres
The Padres lost in five games to the Detroit Tigers in the 1984 World Series.
The roster of San Diego that season included outfielder Bobby Brown, who went to Northampton High on the Eastern Shore; pitcher Greg Booker, a native of Lynchburg who passed in 2019; and catcher Bruce Bochy, who lived in Falls Church for some of his teenage years.
Booker, who went to high school in North Carolina, was later a pitching coach at the Triple A level with Syracuse in the Washington system.
Brown was teammates in 1983 with the Padres with fellow outfielder Gene Richards, who played for the Harrisonburg Turks of the Valley Baseball League. Brown was with the San Francisco Giants in 1985 when Al Bumbry, a native of Fredericksburg, ended his career with the Padres. Bumbry was the center fielder when the Orioles won the World Series in 1983.
The Tigers’ roster in 1984 included All-Star second baseman Lou Whitaker, who grew up in Martinsville; outfielder Johnny Grubb, who was from Richmond and Meadowbrook High; and infielder Tom Brookens, a native of Pennsylvania who played for Shenandoah in the Valley League. Grubb played for the Padres as a rookie in 1972 and was an All-Star two years later with the club.
Padres pitchers from Virginia
The Padres had two right-handed pitchers in the 1970s from Northern Virginia: Jay Franklin, the second overall pick by San Diego in 1971 out of James Madison High in Vienna; and Clay Kirby, a star at what was then Washington & Lee High in Arlington.
Franklin pitched in just three MLB games, all just a few weeks after he was drafted by San Diego. Kirby pitched in the Majors from 1969 to 1976 for the Padres, Cincinnati Reds and Montreal Expos, going 75-104 in 261 games, with 239 starts. He died in 1991 and is buried at National Memorial Park in Falls Church.
Notes
The Padres almost moved to Washington in the 1980s, according to a story this summer in weta.org. “The team lacked the fans to offset what they lacked financially, and things only got worse for (owner) C. Arnholt Smith in May of 1983, when it was revealed that the IRS was after him for more than $20 million in unpaid taxes,” according to the story. “Later that month, on May 27, a group of three D.C. businessmen, headed by Joseph Danzansky, the owner of Giant Food, Inc., offered Smith and the Padres management $12 million in exchange for ownership of the team.” The sale never happened.
San Diego drafted slugger Kellen Kulbacki in the first round as the 40th overall pick in 2007 out of JMU. He was one of the top players in the country that year; he reached the Double-A level in the Padres’ system before retiring.
Only three players have been drafted out of the University of Virginia by the Padres, per com: Jon Benick (2001), Bill Hall (1972), and Robert Poutier (2009). Benick and Hall reached the Double-A level, and Poutier made it to Single-A.