The Veteran Who Changed How MLB Honors the Military

San Diego is home to one of the largest military installations in the world. For years, the city's Major League Baseball team, the Padres, had a discount ticket program for service members—but it was reactive, outdated, and hadn't kept pace with inflation in two decades. The connection between the franchise and its most loyal potential fan base was, at best, an afterthought.

That changed when Padres owner Larry Lucchino took stock of the community around him and decided the organization needed someone who understood it from the inside. He found that person in John Ensch, a retired military officer with 40 years of service who had already been attending team events as a guest. When Lynch retired in November 1995, he called the front office and told them, in his words, he was a free agent.

Ensch joined the Padres as what he describes as a department of one—the team's entire military marketing operation. He renegotiated the ticket discount structure, brought players and managers out to aircraft carriers, and arranged experiences like flights with the Blue Angels that forged real relationships between the roster and the men and women in uniform. It was, by any measure, something professional sports had not seen before.

His most lasting contribution may be the camouflage jersey. Ensch noticed that fans wore players' jerseys as a tribute, and that every branch of the military had its own version of camouflage. The idea came together simply: if service members wore team jerseys to honor the players, the team could wear military-style jerseys to honor them in return. The Padres adopted the design, and it spread. Camouflage jerseys are now a fixture across professional sports—a tradition that traces back to one veteran who saw a gap and decided to close it.