There is just one sure-fire way to figure out if the Padres are blinking on the turn signal to truly turn baseball’s stubbornly elusive corner.
Forget the swirl of sabermetrics. Farm system rankings? Nah.
Are the Padres legit? Are the guys who returned to sporting brown real? There’s no way to know — not really — until you look the Dodgers directly in the eye, pupil to pupil.
When the teams split the first two games of the series with the Dodgers’ 5-2 comeback Tuesday at Petco Park, the staring contest gained steam.
The bullies to the north reminded again that they own the block, the sidewalks, the storm drains and everything else that makes up National League West real estate.