Manny a perfect partner for Tatis show

There was a time before the Orioles traded Manny Machado to the Dodgers in his last season before free agency when Buck Showalter was the only big league manager Machado had ever had. So Showalter saw the whole show with a kid, the talent and flair, and controversies about everything from baserunning to benches-clearing brawls to comments about hustling, or lack thereof. Manny being Manny, in other words.

Showalter saw Machado’s ability to play shortstop or third, and his ability to hit as many as 37 home runs in a season. He always figured that Machado was going to get paid and would go to whichever team wanted to pay him the most.

It turned out to be the Padres, who paid him $300 million for 10 years. Not the money Bryce Harper got when he signed with the Phillies. Close enough. And here was the one big thought Buck had when he saw it was the Padres:

“OK, they’re officially ready to be good.”

Machado hit another grand slam on Wednesday night, after hitting one against the Dodgers last week. The one Wednesday was a walk-off against the Rangers in the 10th. Manny did this, of course, two nights after the gifted young man playing to his left in the Padres' infield -- Fernando Tatis Jr., maybe you’ve heard the name -- hit the "Grand Slam Heard ‘Round the World" against the Texas Rangers, because he hit it on a 3-0 pitch in a blowout game and apparently broke one of baseball’s “unwritten rules” by doing that.

(My friend David Israel, once a columnist in Washington, Chicago and Los Angeles, said that that the reason some of these rules are unwritten is because if you actually wrote them down, people would see how dumb some of them are.)

Tatis had 12 homers through Wednesday’s games to go with 29 RBIs and a .317 batting average. It means he had twice as many homers as Manny, just now beginning to hit his way out of a slow start. But the guys on the left side of the Padres' infield are something to see, the way they will be something to see for years in San Diego. Tatis is 21. Machado is still just 28.

He hit 32 home runs for the Padres last season, and as usual, he did things around third base you have to see to believe -- like the other day when the Padres were in a shift, and Manny was to the right of second base and made a back-to-home-plate catch in the right-field corner like he was the first third baseman doing a Willie Mays impression in the outfield.

Listen: Manny’s not going to be the best player on his own team going forward, even with what the Padres paid him. Tatis is going to be the best player on the team for a long time. And the Padres had shown a willingness to spend their way back to relevance when they signed Eric Hosmer as a free agent a few years ago. But the Padres weren’t just signing one of the youngest star players to ever go on the market when they signed Machado. They weren’t just buying Machado’s talent. They were selling hope in San Diego for the first time in a long time.

Now they have the most exciting left side of any infield in the sport, and one that has a chance to be one of the most exciting of all time. And maybe, just maybe, it won’t hurt Manny that he doesn’t need to be The Man in San Diego.

By the way? There is something else Showalter noticed about the Padres after Manny’s first season: They brought in somebody else who’d been with him in Baltimore, Bobby Dickerson, who’d coached third for Machado and doubled as his infield coach. Dickerson is now Jayce Tingler’s bench coach in San Diego.

“But Bobby’s still the best infield coach in the business,” Showalter said. “When I saw that, I knew they were really getting serious.”

Whatever the Padres are going to be, whatever kind of run they’re just beginning to make at the Dodgers, it starts with the third baseman and the shortstop. They are going to be as fun to watch, offense and defense, as any 1-2 punch in baseball going forward. Tatis has arrived in such a big, loud, showy way -- with the most homers in the sport right now -- effortlessly making people lose their minds because he swung at that 3-0 pitch and hit another ball 400 feet.

But Machado had his grand slam against the Dodgers and then another against the Rangers, and he made that catch against the Rangers that you still have to see to believe.

“I was shifted over in right-center and Manny in shallow right,” Wil Myers said. “He got a bead on that ball, and it was pretty impressive. That was his ball the whole way.”

His ball the whole way. In the right-field corner. Got it. You think the Padres aren’t fun to watch?

Manny was still just hitting .222 after Wednesday’s game. But the Padres had won three in a row after losing five in a row. The Padres are good. They're going to get a lot better. They’re finally going in the right direction again. It starts on the left side of the infield.