Padres Pitch Tickets to Military Families

San Diego Padres managing partner Tom Werner has offered the Navy and the Marine Corps 10,000 tickets each to upcoming baseball games, to be distributed to the families of sailors and Marines who have been deployed.

But there may be some ambiguity as to who is technically considered “deployed,” and, at least within the Marine Corps, the tickets may go to the families of Marines who were recently sent for routine exercises in the Pacific.

The Marine Corps, after all, has yet to acknowledge that any troops from Camp Pendleton have been sent to the Mideast, or are even staging elsewhere for possible deployment there.

Master Sgt. George Spear, a Camp Pendleton spokesman, said Friday that the tickets will be allocated to families of Marines now stationed at Okinawa, Japan, and to those dependents of a 2,100-strong 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit, recently sent into the Pacific for routine training.

“We have an MEU (Marine expeditionary unit) deployed right now, floating around out there, and another unit in Okinawa, and an air wing,” he said of troops in the Pacific. “Their dependents will be using those tickets.”

“We’ve got quite a few people deployed, and that has nothing to do with any possible scenario in the Mideast.”

The Navy said its tickets will be distributed through offices at North Island Naval Air Station.

Although the Navy didn’t elaborate, sources said the tickets will go to, among others, dependents of sailors aboard five San Diego-based ships now deployed in the Persian Gulf area: the frigates Barbey and Reasoner, the guided missile cruisers England and Jouett, and the guided missile frigate Reid.