Petco Park Scene & Heard: Gallagher Square watch party is too cool for school

Brexton Hall turned to his father on Sunday after the Padres closed out the regular season at Petco Park and said, “Dad, I don’t want the season to end.”

It’s not over. It’s the first round of the playoffs and the Padres are playing the Chicago Cubs.

What the third-grader was referencing, though, was no more trips this year to the downtown ballpark. The NL Wild Card Series is being played in Chicago. Wednesday’s Watch Party offered another visit to Petco. Brexton, his brother Bill, a first-grader, and their father, who also is named Bill, joined a couple of thousand others at Gallagher Square to cheer on the Padres from afar.

“Last-minute, I took them out of school,” Bill Hall said. “First, (the boys) were like, ‘What are you doing here?’ They didn’t know. It was a total surprise. I wasn’t even going to go until, like, 9 o’clock this morning.”

Hall was at work downtown when his business partner said, “Go get your boys and take them to the game.”

So Hall rolled up to Rolling Hills Elementary School and in Rancho Peñasquitos and sprung his kids. They did not object.

The Halls all brought their gloves and had a catch between innings on the Gallagher concourse as the Padres battled to even the three-game series and force a winner-take-all game on Thursday.

With the Padres leading 1-0 in the third inning, Bill predicted there would be a tomorrow.

“They’re going to force a Game 3,” he said. “We’re already up by one. (Starting pitcher) Dylan Cease is looking pretty good. We’ve got a solid bullpen and we’re going to make sure they keep putting up zeroes.”

That begged the big question: If the Padres won, could the boys get another Hall pass and be back at Gallagher Square for Game 3?

“The boys are probably going to say, ‘We’ve got to go back,’” Bill Hall said. “And I’m going to have to talk to their mom. It wasn’t a hard thing today, because I convinced this might have been the last game.”

An argument could be made this time that if they don’t return it would be bad luck for the Padres.

“Right, I might jinx it,” Hall said. “We’re going to make a good attempt to be back.”

They could always invite everyone from Rolling Hills Elementary and make it a field trip.

Faces in the crowd

Sitting among all the Padres brown and gold in Gallagher Square were two people dressed in blue.

Husband and wife Joe Bonk and Lisa Quello are Cubs fans from Chicago who happen to be vacationing this week in San Diego.

They could have stayed home and seen the series in person at Wrigley Field.

“I know the irony of that,” Quello said.

“We love San Diego and we love the Cubs,” said Bonk, combining two things rarely heard in the same sentence.

When they made vacation plans in August, they thought the series might be in San Diego.

“We knew it was probably going to be these two teams together for the Wild Card,” Quello said.

So, what you’re saying is you had more faith in the Padres hosting than the Cubs?

“We did,” Bonk admitted.

On Tuesday, they visited Coronado (watching Game 1 from a sports bar there), the San Diego Zoo and the USS Midway Museum.

“This may be retirement for us,” Quello said.

We get it. They were warmly welcomed by Padres fans.

“Everybody has been so nice,” Quello said.

Maybe because the Cubs gave them few chances to cheer on this day.

Asked in the early innings of Game 2 if she expected there to be a Game 3, Quello said, “I hope not.”

Sorry to disappoint, but accommodating tourists only goes so far.

Easy chair

Jeff Tamyo of San Diego had the best seat in the house, reclining on the turf in a bean bag chair he got off Amazon and personalized with Padres signage.

Tamyo was all smiles. And why not? The Padres were winning on a beautiful blue-sky day.

Manny Machado’s two-run homer in the fifth inning boosted the advantage to 3-0. It was left to the Padres bullpen to put it away.

“I may be working from here tomorrow,” Tamyo said.

I may join him.

The only question: Could Amazon Prime deliver another bean bag chair by noon?

Last word

“Uno, dos, adios!” a fan shouted in the ninth inning as the Padres completed the 3-0 victory with a double play.

Another watch party will be hosted at Gallagher Square for Game 3. Fans can go to mlb.com/padres/fans/watch-party for $5 tickets. Gates open at 11 a.m.