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Manny Machado is playing like an MVP.

Specifically, he's playing like the only MVP in Padres history.

His batting average is Tony Gwynn-esque, and he's also leading the National League in wins above replacement, on-base percentage and hits.

He's a clubhouse leader, the kind of teammate who isn't afraid to hold his colleagues accountable.

He plays hurt. He plays hard. He does the little things.

He's silk at the hot corner, graceful and smooth. And the Padres are hanging close in the National League West, nipping at the Dodgers' heels.

Machado is a centerpiece of the Padres' championship hopes and the team's best all-around third baseman since Ken Caminiti.

Watching Machado play at such a high level draws your mind back to Ken -- two complete players capable of carrying a ballclub on their shoulders.

@Ben13Porter \n\nThis will always have my vote","username":"SenorGrover","name":"Grover","date":"Sat May 14 01:04:22 +0000 2022","photos":[],"quoted_tweet":{},"retweet_count":2,"like_count":79,"expanded_url":{"url":" Caminiti makes a strong throw to get the out","description":"4/22/96: Ken Caminiti makes a great snag and a strong throw from the seat of his pants to get the out Check out for more!About MLB.com: ...","domain":"youtu.be"},"video_url":null}">This will always have my vote

Their styles are different. Machado is a better athlete and a more fluid, effortless player. With Ken, things looked hard. He hurt, and you hurt from watching him. And he was liable to do things you didn't expect were humanly possible, especially on defense. Ken wasn't necessarily fast, but his first steps and instinctive movements were pure and cat-quick, and his arm was a cannon.

Where Ken had his motorcycles and cars, Manny is all about .

Machado, with his performance this season, has entered rarefied air for Padres players. Ken remains the only player in team history to win a league MVP award, taking the honor unanimously for his 40-home run, 130-RBI season in 1996 when he helped San Diego reach the playoffs for the first time in 12 years.

That MVP season laid the groundwork for 1998, when the Padres clinched a pennant and a new downtown ballpark was approved.

Ken's four seasons in San Diego went by in a blink, and yet, they were and are so special. In the coming seasons, Machado will probably eclipse Ken as the best third baseman in team history. But not yet. He has to earn some hardware first. Like an MVP award. Or a ring.

I've had a few awesome interviews and media opportunities lately and wanted to share them with you.

The New York Daily News that details Ken Caminiti's steroids regimen after he injured his rotator cuff in 1996 -- and the friend who helped keep him on the field.

I had a great chat with Steven Goldman for the . We spoke about some of the most nuanced aspects of Ken's story.

I also spoke with Jeff Joiner for the Angels site , discussing Ken's life and the parallels between Ken and Tyler Skaggs' tragic stories.

I scheduled a at my local bookstore, too. If you're in the area, feel free to stop by!

5 p.m., Sunday, June 5

Bronx River Books

Scarsdale, NY 10583

As the Astros featured fewer and fewer players who fans could identify, the team in 1990 turned to their fresh faces—Ken Caminiti, Craig Biggio and Gerald Young—to draw interest.

The trio participated in one of the most sexually suggestive photo sessions in the history of the game, posing for two images in the locker room: one in their game uniforms, and one with them partially stripped down and glistening with a post-workout sheen.

Young is on the left, shirtless, the light bouncing off his ebony skin, with a bat over his shoulders. Ken is in the center, wearing a loose V-neck with his arms crossed and his fists under his biceps, which photographer Michael Hart said was Ken’s idea.

“I gotta pump it up,�� Caminiti said during the photo shoot before making a joke to Gerald about his thin, lithe arms.

“Don’t touch my guns, dude,�� Young told him.

Biggio, to the right, is grasping a long, slender bat in his hands. Balls rest at the players�� feet, and smoke billows in the background, and beads of sweat drip off them, and you wish for a second you were one of those droplets in this locker room fantasy.

The title of the poster appears at the bottom: “Feel the Heat.��

“Nobody in Houston had ever done that,�� Hart said. “It was a little revolutionary at the time. It was, I guess, somewhat risqué in this oil field down here.��

The campaign—dubbed “Young Guns”—came about from a marketing brainstorming session. The Astros didn’t have a lot to market around. Veterans like Nolan Ryan had left the team in bunches, and the lineup featured a lot of unknown and unproven players.

“They're cool, they're hot, they're fun, they're young. And that was the tact we took for the marketing campaign,�� said Pam Gardner, who served as the Astros�� marketing director and later, president of business operations. “So that's how that came to be, just sitting around a table with a bunch of folks, dreaming other ways to entice people to come to games.��

Eye appeal could only go so far. Houston wound up second to last in attendance in 1990 and in fourth place with a 75-87 record. But the photo shoot resonates. Posters and advertisements continue to pop up for sale and online.

At the time, Ken, 26, didn’t worry too much about that “young�� label. Or being a sex symbol. He just wanted to play and to contribute to his team’s success.

"We're just young baseball-wise," Ken told the Galveston Daily News. "I think me and Craig are a part of this team. We just have to come to the ballpark and uphold our image."

One of the joys of my book was going down memory lane on the mid-1990s Padres, and I was excited to talk about that time frame with Javier Reyes on the Locked on Padres podcast.

We talked about the process of writing a book and tracking down baseball greats of yesteryear.

And Ken. Especially that sublime 1996 season when he was locked in and playing the best baseball of his career.

Listen to the podcast .

This text appears in my upcoming book

The ball screamed down the line like a tired toddler: waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

When playing third base, Ken Caminiti would normally dive with his arm fully extended like Superman in flight. But on April 22, 1996, his shoulder was injured, so when the ball was hit his way, he had to improvise.

He dove to his right with his glove curved toward the ground. Even mid-dive with his bad shoulder, he somehow had the glove in just the right spot to snare the ball, then tucked his arm toward his body in an upside-down U. But now what?

Given his clunky dive, Ken collapsed over himself as his momentum carried him toward foul territory, his legs coming up above his chest. He had to get the throw off. But standing up would take too long, so he rolled into a sitting position with his butt smack-dab in the center of the foul line. He lunged and, with his body drifting into foul territory, fired a strike across the diamond some 130-plus feet away, beating the Marlins runner, Greg Colbrunn, by three steps.

It was the best play of a career filled with them. And maybe the most improbable. This was a few weeks after he damaged his shoulder, and two days after he reinjured it. Two days!

He made the play without even knowing how his shoulder would hold up. With the injury so fresh, he was still adjusting to playing with it and finding angles at which he could safely dive.

The physicality . . . the knowledge of one’s own body . . . the ability to adjust due to an injury . . . the improvisation . . . This play was infield artistry.

After making his career-defining play, Caminiti—unable to properly lift his left arm—grasped his hat with his right paw and slipped it back on his head, put his head down, and jogged off the field. Inning over. “Ooh, that was pretty good,�� he said after seeing video of his play following the game.

“I knew I did something good but I didn’t know how good,�� he said later. It was good, all right.

Pretty soon, the Padres had children doing their best Ken Caminiti impressions by sitting at third base and making their hardest throw from their butt as Ken stood watch, giving them high fives.

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It's Ken Caminiti’s birthday �� he was born on April 21, 1963, 59 years ago today.

Here's the birth announcement from the Hanford Sentinel.

While Ken was born in Hanford, in south-central California, his family moved to San Jose when he was a baby, and that's where he spent his childhood.

Notably, Ken didn't have a lot of luck on his birthday during his career. He went 4-for-32 at the plate, good for a .125 batting average, on April 21. But he was often a slow starter, or he would be battling through some early-season injuries, whenever his birthday came around.

His best April 21 performance probably came in 1989, his first full MLB season, when his RBI single helped the Astros to a 7-0 win against the Reds. It also extended Ken’s hitting streak to 10 games �� the longest hitting streak of his early MLB career.

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Ken Caminiti’s pro baseball career officially began on this date 37 years ago -- April 12, 1985 -- on a rain-slicked Florida field on a night when the errors nearly outnumbered the fans.

It was an inauspicious debut for Ken and the Florida State League’s Osceola Astros, Houston’s brand new Single-A affiliate.

Team officials had hoped to sell 2,500 tickets for the home opener. A pregame show featured “clowns in a baseball slapstick.�� But then the skies opened and the rains poured down, and the game itself resembled a clown act�� with a 63-minute rain delay and steady drizzle making way for a sloppy game.

Osceola took the lead in the seventh, scratching across three runs as a result of two singles, three walks, two errors, and a wild pitch. In the top of the eighth, the Daytona Beach Islanders loaded the bases against Osceola’s Chuck Mathews. Reliever Doug Shaab entered the game. Ty Nichols was batting for Daytona Beach, with the game’s outcome in the balance. He hit a ground ball to third. Ken wasn’t going to let a little rain stop him from making the play. He fielded the ball cleanly and fired home, getting the runner at the plate. Daytona ended up scoring two runs in the inning, but it wasn’t enough, and Osceola scraped by, 9��8.

Ken, batting seventh, went 2-for-3 with two runs, one double, and one run batted in.

The announced attendance for Ken Caminiti’s first minor league game: 393. In actuality, a couple of dozen people stuck through the rain to watch the game. You could count the individual umbrellas.

A 21-year-old phenom with a struggling franchise. The hope for a long and fruitful career. Star power.

With shortstop/third baseman Bobby Witt Jr., baseball's top-ranked prospect, hitting a game-winning double in his memorable Royals debut on Thursday, it's worth remembering his father's own fast-track to the big leagues and contributions to the game.

Junior made it to the show 37 days earlier than his dad did -- both were 21 when they made their debuts.

Bobby Witt Sr., a hard-throwing University of Oklahoma product, was one of the youngest players on the 1984 Team USA baseball squad that toured the country and won a silver medal at the Olympics. His teammates included a bevy of eventual MLB standouts, including Mark McGwire, Will Clark, Barry Larkin, and Ken Caminiti.

Witt, like Caminiti, was invited to join the team due to his strong collegiate season in 1984, while thousands of would-be participants tried out for the team in nationwide camps.

"I got a phone call and they said I was one of the 30 that was invited to go to Louisville, so I took advantage of that," Witt told me in a 2017 interview for my upcoming book on Caminiti. The team trained in Louisville, Kentucky for about a week before embarking on a month-long tour ahead of the games, playing against local all-star teams, minor league squads, and national teams from other countries. 

Some of the games were held in big league ballparks before MLB games, giving the players a taste of what was to come as they prepared to begin their pro careers.

"I remember we went to Fenway, and we played the Boston Park League All-Star Team, and Will Clark just put on an absolute show. He hit three home runs in three at-bats. One was over the Monster, one was in center, and one was in right field. The Angels were playing the Red Sox. Reggie Jackson yelled something at him after he hit the third one,�� Witt said.

Another highlight for Witt was seeing Dwight Gooden pitch during his masterful rookie season for the Mets.

"He was 19. So we had guys on our team that were older than Dwight," Witt said.

Witt was selected by the Rangers with the third pick in the 1985 draft, after Clark and ahead of Larkin, and he was in the majors a season later. His debut was a lot more forgettable than his son's. He failed to hold a 5-1 lead and only lasted into the fourth inning, surrendering a home run to Cecil Fielder.

"I'm just going to have to establish myself and show them I can do it," he said following the game.

Senior did establish himself. Eventually. But he struggled with his control, leading the league in walks three times and wild pitches twice by the time he was 25. Bobby was with the Rangers until 1992, when he was shipped to Oakland in the Jose Canseco-Ruben Sierra mega-trade. From there, he did lots of traveling. Signed with the Marlins, traded back to Texas, sent to St. Louis, signed with Tampa Bay, then Cleveland, then Arizona in 2001, where he wrapped up with a world championship. He won 142 games during his career, including 17 in 1990.

The most fascinating moment of his playing days -- the one I hold most dear, anyway, as a Rangers fan -- came on June 30, 1997, the first year of interleague play. Texas was facing the Dodgers in Los Angeles, meaning pitchers had to bat due to National League rules, and Witt batted against Ismael Valdez.

The season prior, with Florida, Witt batted a paltry .063. But he swung through Valdez's offering and lifted it, and the ball improbably carried over the fence for the first home run by an American League pitcher in a quarter century.

"I really couldn't believe it. It was the last thing on my mind. It just kept going," he said at the time.

Bobby Witt Jr. wasn't alive when his father hit that home run. He was born in 2000.

After the father's playing days were over, he maintained a connection to the game as a scout and enjoyed passing his love of baseball onto his son.

"I got a younger son who's a sophomore in high school, and he plays, so I've been able to watch him and hopefully get him on the right path so he can go out there and at least have a shot to try to do something," the proud father told me in 2017.

Five years later, Bobby Jr. seems to be on the right path.

Opening Day.

A day when everything is fresh and new, when every team's record is perfect, when hope springs eternal.

Opening Day feels extra special this year, given the that delayed the season.

Ken Caminiti wasn't always a strong starter early in the season �� it took him time to heat up. But one Opening Day performance of his, 1994, stands out above the others.

The Astros were a brand new team that season: a new GM (Bob Watson), new manager (Terry Collins), new uniforms and a new logo.

And Ken was a brand new man after going to rehab the previous offseason.

Ken and the new-look Astros �� in the newly created National League Central Division with the Cardinals, Cubs, Pirates, and Reds �� opened the 1994 season on April 4 at home against the Expos.

Ken started the game 0-for-5. In the top of the twelfth inning, new Houston reliever Mitch Williams, reinforcing his nickname of “Wild Thing,�� got two quick outs before imploding, allowing five straight batters to reach base �� including two bases-loaded walks �� to give Montreal a two-run lead and the hometown crowd someone to boo.

New Astros? The letdown felt the same.

But Houston rallied in the bottom half, getting two runners on base for Jeff Bagwell, who singled home a run. Luis Gonzalez whiffed, caught looking for the second out, which brought Ken up to bat against pitcher Denis Boucher.

Ken dug in, kicking craters into the batter’s box dirt and taking his practice swings. Ready. Boucher threw the first pitch up in the zone, and Ken pounced, driving it to left-center. Off the wall!

Finley and Bagwell raced home for the improbable win, and Ken started walking off the field, victorious, when he was mobbed by his teammates. The fans stood and cheered, and the new Ken emerged from the scrum with a smile. Baseball can be fun sometimes. Especially when you win. Especially on Opening Day.

Padres superstars .

A quarter century before Fernando Tatis, Jr.'s wrist injury — attributed to an offseason motorcycle crash �� sidelined him for the start of the 2022 season, Ken Caminiti also got attention for his love of motorcycles.

Ken always had a need for speed. He was introduced to John Covington of Surgical-Steeds in Scottsdale, Arizona, during 1996 spring training by teammate Rob Deer.

Ken was hooked �� he wanted a customized Steed Clydesdale of his own.

He settled on a color scheme of pink, black and silver that matched his prize-winning '55 Chevy show car. Teammate Bob Tewksbury chipped in with a design for the gas tank, featuring a switch-hitter’s silhouette on each side, and a baseball featuring Ken’s signature over the rear wheel.

“I delivered that one to San Diego for him and that's when I realized what kind of impact he had,�� Covington said. “When he was out riding that bike in San Diego, every street corner, somebody was yelling, ‘Hey Ken! Hey Ken!�� I'm like, wow.��

Early the following season, the Padres decided to launch a new initiative, a fundraiser in honor of Cindy Matters, a Padres fan who died of cancer. Matters�� favorite player was Brad Ausmus, and Ausmus and other players recorded a video for her in 1996, and she threw out a first pitch before one of the team’s games. Now the Padres wanted to do something more. Team officials decided on a pediatric cancer program as a way of honoring Matters�� life. Michele Anderson, Padres director of community relations, discussed the initiative with players.

When she approached Ken, he had his game face on.

“He had an intensity about him, but sometimes I couldn’t always tell if he’s hearing me,�� Anderson said.

Ken didn’t say much to Anderson, and she wondered if maybe this program wasn’t right for him. The next day, he saw Anderson and called her over.

“I’ve really been thinking about this, and I decided I want to donate my bike. I think that would get some excitement,�� he told Anderson. He had heard Anderson the day before, “he was simply trying to formulate the best way that he could respond to it, and he was really excited about it and energized,�� she said. “It touched him, and he just needed a little time to figure out the best way to help.��

Ken had Covington build a second motorcycle specifically for the auction.

He was photographed and videotaped riding his bike, including for a photo that appeared on his 1998 Fleer Ultra card. The card shows Ken sitting on his motorcycle while wearing his Padres uniform, a backward hat, and sunglasses �� coolness personified.