PEORIA, Ariz. — In the depths of Nationals Park, on a sticky mid-July evening an hour before the 2018 MLB All-Star Game, Manny Machado and a few beat reporters were squeezed into a storage closet. The Orioles star was the talk of the event, but not for anything he’d done on the field. Baltimore was in selloff mode and Machado was the prize piece.

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National reporters and TV cameras mobbed his locker at every turn during the festivities, peppering Machado with question after question he couldn’t answer. He had recently been taken out of the final Orioles game before the break and told he was being traded. More than 48 hours had passed and he still didn’t have a clue where he and his family were going next.

Machado wanted this small group — many of whom had covered him since he was a scrawny teenager fresh out of Brito High School in Miami — assembled to say goodbye away from the media masses. Publicly, Machado shrugged off the impending trade news. Privately, it was eating him alive.

“You guys would tell me,” Machado said, voice cracking, “if you knew where I was going, right?”

Here is what you need to know about Manny Machado, who on the final day of February officially signed an 11-year contract to become a San Diego Padre for the rest of his career. He doesn’t like uncertainty. He still talks about that All-Star break in D.C. with disdain, the days of being in limbo before his eventual trade to the Dodgers ranking up there with blowing out each of his knees as low points in an already-impressive career. Machado, who became the first baseball player to sign two contracts north of $300 million, has a no-trade clause and no opt-outs in the new $350 million deal. He is 30 years old and isn’t going anywhere. That, to him, is liberating.

“I’m done,” Machado said last week. He smiles as if he likes the way that particular word sounds. “Done, done. I was hoping to not go through (free agency) again.”

When Machado announced this spring he was going to opt out of his previous contract — a 10-year, $300 million pact signed prior to 2019 — in the wake of baseball’s record free-agent offseason spending, he hoped the Padres would offer enough to forgo it. The week before the two sides reached a deal, he was optimistic. By mid-week, only the small details remained. Padres owner Peter Seidler, who called keeping Machado beyond 2023 his top priority, had followed through.

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On Feb. 25, a small group including Machado, his wife Yainee and agent Dan Lozano went to dinner to quietly celebrate the news, which leaked out the following morning. After the official news conference, they toasted at Arrowhead Grill. One more celebration awaits back home in Miami with family to celebrate one of baseball’s biggest contracts and the kind of security and peace that comes with it.

“(The opt-out) would have been a huge distraction, us sort of wondering all year where he was going to go,” said Yainee, who married Machado in 2014 and has become a leader among the Padres players’ wives, organizing get-togethers and orchestrating playoff apparel. “I’m so glad we don’t have to do that.”

Instead, for the next 11 years the Machados will drive just minutes over the bridge from their Coronado Island home to Petco Park. Machado will play on a star-studded Padres team that includes Juan Soto, Fernando Tatis Jr. and Xander Bogaerts in the lineup and Yu Darvish, Joe Musgrove, Blake Snell and Josh Hader on the pitching side. There is no question though: this is Machado’s team. You can’t walk down a street in San Diego without seeing Padres gear somewhere, with Machado, who was the runner-up in last year’s NL MVP race, constantly emblazoned on the back of T-shirts and jerseys. There’s a mural of him in San Diego. If the Padres do succeed in winning the organization’s first World Series, there will probably be a statue someday, too.

There is no question the city of San Diego loves Machado. The feeling is mutual.

The Machados immediately fell in love with the area, even if it didn’t get off to the most auspicious start. The first house Yainee and Manny lived in on Coronado was a rental. When they were unloading their cars, their gruff neighbor came over to inform the couple — who were a good deal younger than most of the residents — that they better not have any big, loud parties, this neighborhood wasn’t about that. Manny laughed and assured him it wasn’t their style, then he and Yainee looked at each other panicked: This was going to be their neighbor all year?

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Quickly, though, the gruff exterior faded and the Machados would go over and have beers on their neighbor’s deck. They joined Coronado’s famed Island Beer Club, where the six-time All-Star isn’t known as Manny Machado but by his membership number. The club is simple, a keg in a two-car garage that the members jokingly call choir practice or book club.

The Machados, who recently built a new home on Coronado, call the island a family. They bring food to the local police department and rarely get bothered. Manny is more likely to pick the brains of the former police and military personnel who live in the area than to get stopped and asked for an autograph. He is an action-movie aficionado, anything with cops and crime. If he didn’t play baseball, Machado would have done something like that, he says, maybe a detective or an FBI agent. He loves the Jack Ryan series and is constantly asking the Padres security guys for stories about their past lives.

“We built a lot of relationships here that we didn’t want to tear up,” Machado said. “And I’m glad, so glad, to call this our home.”

When Machado’s brother-in-law Yonder Alonso played for San Diego from 2012-15, Machado used to give him a hard time when Alonso wanted to leave Miami to go back out west in the offseason. “He’d be like, ‘You guys don’t know what it is about San Diego, it’s so awesome, such a beautiful city.’ And now seven years later here we are and he’s like, ‘I don’t want to hear a word’ because I’m telling him the same thing,” Machado said, laughing. “I’m like ‘Hey, I don’t want to go back home right now, it’s just so beautiful and the people are awesome.’ Ultimately, this city is special. It’s where we want to be, to just be us and live our lives.”

In 2019, the first year of Machado’s first mega-contract with the Padres, he posted one of the worst statistical seasons of his career, slugging .462 with a .796 OPS and a 2.2 WAR. It was a wake-up call. He told general manager A.J. Preller it wouldn’t happen again.

That spring, when the world shut down for COVID-19, Yainee convinced Manny to do CrossFit with her. He hated it. The burpees over the bar, the rowing. It kept him in shape though, and Machado went on to post a 2.6 WAR with a .531 slugging and .950 OPS in a 60-game 2020 season. It was the first time San Diego made the playoffs since 2006. There weren’t fans in the stands that year, but Machado started to get a taste of what winning with the Padres could be like.

Sometimes good things are worth waiting for.

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That same spring, Yainee started a dream of her own: growing her own food. Coronado was the perfect climate to do it and she and Manny found themselves spending more and more time there. The first year was rough. There was a lot to learn, like which flowers to plant next to the crops so the insects wouldn’t eat them. Gardening is a maddening labor of love. Like baseball, you keep showing up every day and hope there’s something worthwhile at the end. Last year, Yainee had an impressive array of spices and fruits. But the real prize was three huge, juicy watermelons.

Sometimes good things are worth waiting for.

Machado added 10 pounds of muscle prior to 2021 and has pivoted back to more of a lifting program with Miami-based trainer Nick Soto for the past few years. He will do power cleans and deadlifts, sleds and snatches and plenty of single-leg stuff. He’s gotten faster on the basepaths, more agile with Soto’s programming, which mimics conditioning from a lot of sprinters.

He is coming off a career year in which he had a 7.4 FanGraphs WAR, but is unsatisfied. Machado wants to win the MVP, not place second. He wants to be in Cooperstown. He wants to be like Adrián Beltré, Nelson Cruz and Albert Pujols — his personal Mount Rushmore of players — and play at a high level into his late 30s and early 40s.

“Those guys all did it,” he says. “I’m not stopping until my body can’t.”

Ask Machado what the motivation is for a player who is financially set for life, with no more contract negotiations or All-Star Games littered with uncertainty and his mouth drops.

“What’s the motivation? What’s the motivation to go out there and be who I am every single day?” Machado said. “The fans deserve it. I love what Croney (Jake Cronenworth) said, there’s always fans out there that get that one ticket to see you perform at the highest level and we owe it to them to do that. And even more now. I wouldn’t call it pressure, but there’s expectations. Peter (and Preller) made this commitment to me and I owe it to them to be the best player I could possibly be for these 11 years. And hopefully put on that hat going into the Hall of Fame and bring a championship to the city of San Diego. There’s a lot of things that come with this, you know it’s not over. It’s not over. I want to win multiple championships.”

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The Padres have been to the World Series just twice in the team’s history — losing in five games in 1984 and in four straight in 1998.

Sometimes good things are worth waiting for.

Asked what he would tell his younger self, Machado says “to work even harder.” He thought he was doing enough until the year Cruz came to Baltimore in 2014 and challenged Machado and Jonathan Schoop, both in their early 20s at the time.

“He said, ‘We’re working out at 2:30 p.m. (every day) so you better be ready before that,’” Machado remembers. “And man, we wanted to quit a couple of times. I’m not gonna lie, I thought we weren’t going to make it. But you learn from that.”

Cruz smiles at those memories. He saw Machado’s talent and helped the young infielder realize everything else he could bring to the field.

“I’m like a proud dad,” Cruz said, “seeing his kid grow up and be a man.”

Machado still speaks his mind. He doesn’t care if people think it’s brash he’s talking about the Hall of Fame (with a 52 WAR on Baseball Reference already, it’s not a reach) or that he answered honestly this spring when asked about his contract status. Other players may defer more. The way Machado sees it, he’s worked hard to be both style and substance.

Within the Padres clubhouse, he is a leader. Machado is surprisingly coachable and has become an eager student of analytics, someone unafraid to speak up in hitters’ meetings or to tweak the positioning of his hands based on numbers. He credits Padres offensive coordinator Ryan Flaherty, a former teammate in Baltimore, for helping him understand that information. Machado spends more time hitting with the machines than ever before. The way he sees it, there is still “a lot of room for improvement” in his 30s because of analytics and the way he takes care of his body.

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“Talent is one thing, but keeping that talent for as long as he’s been able to do it? There’s obviously a really good work ethic and focus and understanding,” said Snell, who has played with Machado the past three seasons. “Maybe (other people) won’t see that as much as we see that. We’re in here every day so we understand the work he puts in. Other people might want to create their own narrative about him, but it’s one that doesn’t really hold too strong because he keeps putting up numbers, keeps producing, and keeps being Manny Machado.”

The Machados quietly hired some people to help them start a foundation and become more integrated in the community before the COVID-19 pandemic put those plans on hold. Last year, Yainee and Manny hosted 250 kids from underserved communities in San Diego and Tijuana at Padres games throughout the season through Manny’s Hot Corner, an initiative that will continue in 2023. So will plans for the foundation, tentatively called The Sky’s the Limit, an ode to what has become a personal slogan for the Machados in baseball and life.

The Machados’ foundation will center around the game. There are plans to help upgrade baseball facilities around San Diego for starters.

“We can do a lot,” Machado said of the foundation, which will be focused on San Diego and Miami, which is where both Yainee and Manny grew up. “A lot of people love the sport there (in San Diego). And if we can impact maybe one or two players, hey I got 11 years here, maybe they’d be playing with me one day.”

He laughs.

“Then I’m Nelly (Cruz), playing with a guy I mentored.”

Cruz is a mentor, friend and Machado’s manager in the World Baseball Classic, but Beltré is Machado’s idol.

“He’s my No. 1. He was still playing third base (at the end of his career), and they were saying, ‘Oh he could move to first’ and he was like, ‘No I’m playing third, I’m going to go back to being a Gold Glover and winning it,’” Machado said of Beltré, who won a 2016 Gold Glove at third base at 37 years old. Machado sees no reason he can’t follow a similar path.

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“I’m going to be the best baseball player moving around for years to come,” he said. “I’m in my prime now. I think I’m just getting better.”

Machado watched in the visiting dugout in Arlington when Beltré collected his 3,000th hit off the Orioles’ Wade Miley on July 30, 2017. Play stopped as Beltré’s family and teammates celebrated him. Machado was in awe. Someday maybe, he thought. It’s not as lofty as it sounds. In June, Machado collected his 1,500th career hit, becoming just the 17th player in history to do so before his 30th birthday.

Players to reach 1,500 hits & 250 HRs before turning 30:
Manny Machado
Miguel Cabrera
Albert Pujols
Andruw Jones
Alex Rodriguez
Ken Griffey Jr.
Eddie Murray
Ron Santo
Orlando Cepeda
Frank Robinson
Hank Aaron
Eddie Mathews
Mickey Mantle
Willie Mays
Mel Ott
Jimmie Foxx
Lou Gehrig

— Bernie Wilson (@berniewilson) June 16, 2022

Twelve of those players are Hall of Famers. Pujols and Cabrera will be when they are eligible. Jones and Rodriguez are still on the ballot. Machado read an article the other day that said 20 home runs and 128 hits a year over his 11-year contract will get him to two milestones: 3,000 hits and 500 home runs.

Those are big numbers, but Machado is more immediately focused on 54: the years of a Padres title drought that Machado and Co. have a chance to end. San Diego has a waiting list for season tickets. Fans swarm the Peoria complex daily. Excitement is at an all-time high. So is the payroll. These Padres, with the third-highest payroll in baseball, are built to win now. Still, All-Star teams don’t always mesh. Machado uses the word family a lot in a half-hour conversation, to describe his neighbors, his teammates and Seidler, with whom he enjoys an unusually close owner-player relationship. Seidler will ask Machado’s input on clubhouse things and players. Sometimes, they’ll just talk food and wine.

“Peter’s been awesome,” Machado said. “When we signed here (in 2019), it was all about family. We wanted it to be a family team. We wanted to be able to change this organization and make it better. And we’ve been doing that slowly but surely. Credit (Seidler) he’s a big family man. He wants his organization to be great, he loves baseball, he loves the San Diego Padres. He loves the city. Mostly he just loves baseball. He loves being out here and watching the game and being a part of this. He really treats it like his baby and not just a business.”

There were other interested teams if Machado had opted out and gone to free agency after the 2023 season. The New York Mets and San Francisco Giants for starters. But the way he sees it, he’s built something here. This Padres team, the core group that grew close last year, has a chemistry he says is off the charts. The return of Tatis from suspension, who Machado says he has nothing but love for, could be a significant boost.

Only three players in Cooperstown have a Padres hat on their plaques: Dave Winfield, Tony Gwynn and Trevor Hoffman. Machado could be the fourth. But that’s the end of his career. He’s more concerned now with the next 11 years, with the middle chapters of a playing career that will spawn multiple decades.

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“It’s definitely very freeing,” Yainee said. “Usually in baseball you never know, you don’t really have an end date or you play year-by-year. For us, there’s a beginning and an end and you can create your next life after that. It’s amazing for him and our family to continue to play in the same place. Most people don’t get to do that, to stay somewhere and make an impact.

“I would have never thought we would have been in San Diego and be in this position we’re in right now. But it’s a blessing and we are so lucky and so happy to be here.”

(Top photo: Mark J. Rebilas / USA Today)