The Sisterhood of the Traveling Jersey is a Gaslamp Ball community project that will chronicle the 2012 Padres season through the lives of their greatest fans and an old jersey.

Over the weekend I purchased a $25 dollar Spring Training Jersey at Padres Fan Fest. I don't know anything about the jersey. All that I can tell you is that it appears to be a remnant from a Padres club in the 90's if the colors are any indication. I'm pretty sure it was a game used jersey, if you catch a whiff my drift.

UPDATE: The jersey once belonged to First Basemen Dave Staton who played in 46 games for the Padres in 1993-1994.

Note: We did consider buying a pair of matching baseball pants for $10 but the only pair that would even remotely fit had a stain near the fly. Gross.

Here's how our community project will work:

You, our dear reader, will sign up by commenting on this post that you would like to take part. By doing so you are agreeing to receive the jersey, wear it as much as possible during your allotted week, mail it to the next community member and then write a FanPost detailing both the jersey's journey and your own personal journey through pictures and the written word.

It will be a connecting force drawing us together as a community in the same way that a pair or pants kept 4 adolescent ladies in touch during a tumultuous summer of self discovery.

In your FanPost you'll tell us of love and heartbreak as a fan and as a overly emotional person. You'll tell us of how, while wearing the jersey, you stayed up late watching an extra inning Padres game and then stayed up even later for a make out sesh with the neighbor boy. Perhaps you and the jersey will travel to Spring Training or on a road trip with the Padres. Maybe you'll even take the jersey on vacation with you to Machu Picchu. Who's to say where you'll take this jersey and in turn where the jersey will take the rest of us?

If you'd like, you can even add to the jersey by sewing a small patch or by sticking a Padres pin as reminder of its stops along the way. You might even get it signed by a Padres player. Just keep it tasteful so that it can continue to be worn. With any luck it will return to San Diego next fall looking a little bit crazy.

Sign up below!

We're in the middle of February and it's probably time for us to check on our February resolutions. Remember, our focus this month is to ground ourselves in the Padres rich and impressive history. I bet some of us have some catching up to do...

Read (or re-read) a book about Padres history

I have not moved on this. I've glanced through my copy of Bill Swank's Baseball in San Diego book, but not to any great extent. I need to borrow the Bob Chandler book from jbox and I will probably download the Bill Center book now that Jess is done reading Catching Fire on the Kindle and we can't borrow Mockingjay until March.

Review some important Padres moments of the past

We've been pretty good about this both directly and indirectly. If you're just returning to us from the off-season, you could check out old Padres uniforms and see what resonated with Little Leaguers, Review how Petco Park came to be, try to pick out players from a vintage1984 Padres calendar, or even brush up on the original (and true) Dodgers conspiracy against the Padres.

Visit Friar Fest and touch a bunch of old junk

Some of you touched more junk than I did just because I was herding my 4 year old around the ballpark. Nevertheless, I did touch what may or may not be the Sisterhood of the Traveling Jersey Jersey. I also touched some farm equipment.

Learn more about baseball history in general

You will hate me, but I started reading Jim Bouton's Ball Four, which I hadn't read before, and heck if I can't get into it. Maybe it's like watching The Matrix after every other action movie has cribbed directly from it and referenced it, but the whole "baseball players acting drunk and crazy" thing feels better experienced through Eastbound and Down and more relevantly experienced through Bullpen Gospels. I will push on though for your sake and for the sake of my happiness.

Also, much more enjoyably, I re-read Jimmy Austin's chapter in Glory of Their Times. Tell me this doesn't suck you in:

So good.

Pick a favorite "Old timey time" Padres player

I haven't done this yet either. I'm trying to think of a fun way to do this, but nothing has come to me just yet. I may go to a baseball card shop and see if somebody's old time time card doesn't catch my eye.

So that's where I'm at. Better than I thought at first, but still short of my goals. I will get there though. I will be happy.