The Padres played the Mexico City Series against the Arizona Diamondbacks at Estadio Alfredo Harp Helú in Mexico City, and the ballpark felt for a night like an extension of Petco Park.
David Silva, who traveled south from San Diego with his son Aaron for the two-game set, watched that happen up close. The Silvas have been Padres season-ticket holders in the 300 level at Petco Park for four years; Aaron said, "it’s amazing." David said, "What has absolutely blown me away is the amount of Padres fans that are here," adding, "It’s insane. It’s like a home game." He finished, "And in that sense, it feels a lot like Petco."
Fans packed Estadio Alfredo Harp Helú, cheering and chanting during the series, and the sound carried into the surrounding neighborhood. For the Silvas — who traveled to Seoul in 2024 to watch the Padres open the season against the Dodgers and who dream of someday following the club to Tokyo — the Mexico City trip was another confirmation that the club’s following now travels with it.
Not all the traveling Padres fans came from California. Charlene Maciejko and her son Jake flew from Alberta, Canada, to be there. The Maciejko family became Padres fans because of Jake, who adopted the club during a few family vacations to Legoland. Jake said, "The late-night games are the best ones," and he told reporters, "The atmosphere (at Petco) is different than anywhere else." Back home outside Edmonton, the Maciejkos were the only Padres fans they knew; Charlene said she experienced a little culture shock after flying eight hours to Mexico City. Standing in the stands, she told a companion, "It’s like Petco."
The two-game set was the Padres’ third international series in four years, part of a recent pattern that began with a trip to Mexico City in 2023 to face the Giants and continued a year later with the Seoul opener. The club’s international travel — from March 1970 spring training trips to Mexico City, to 2023, to Seoul in 2024, and now another Mexico City visit in 2025 — frames a quieter but unmistakable change in how Padres fandom looks and sounds beyond San Diego.
That change sits at the heart of the series’ tension. David Silva put it bluntly: "When I was growing up, you never would have seen that." For decades Padres support outside Southern California was scattered and occasional; now whole sections of an international ballpark sang in unison. The uniformity of that noise undercuts the old narrative that the franchise’s appeal was strictly local, but it also raises a practical question for the club and its supporters: can this enthusiasm be sustained whenever and wherever the team plays abroad?
The simplest answer, as the weekend showed, is that the fans will come. The Silvas and the Maciejkos represent two kinds of modern followers — long-standing season-ticket holders who follow the team across borders, and new converts who trace their fandom back to family trips and late-night TV. Both found the same thing at Estadio Alfredo Harp Helú: a crowd that cheered, chanted and made an away park feel unmistakably like home.
If the Padres continue scheduling games overseas, those traveling friends and families will be the ones turning foreign ballparks into familiar places; the question for the organization is whether it will keep building the bridges that make a Petco-like atmosphere possible anywhere the team goes. For David Silva, already planning future trips with Aaron, the answer is simple — and personal: these trips are what fandom looks like now, and he and his son plan to be there when the club next goes back on the road.
