San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
SUN SETS ON MEMORIES
Stadium almost all gone, bringing many good recollections, but also way too many of the painful variety
Sorry. I’m not sorry to see it go.
It sounds strange, even coming from someone as strange as me, but it’s hard to shake the feeling of good riddance.
As a native San Diegan, I often have made myself sick over the city’s callousness toward its historical places, how quickly and cavalierly it forgets what made it what it was — and what it has become isn’t necessarily for the better.
But each time I’ve driven past the demolishing of San Diego/san Diego Jack Murphy/qualcomm/ SDCCU Stadium (I’ve never referred to it as The Murph), there has been a sense that it’s improving.
And one of disappointment — in the way City Hall’s Ham & Eggers neglected it over the decades, allowing it to decay, and of course
what happened too often inside of it.
Few sportswriters spent more time in the stadium than me. I loved going there, but all too frequently loved leaving it, as if I’d just gotten over a miserable cold.
There is no denying the important role the place had on this city. If not for its construction — during a time when voters were easier to educate, there were doers in the city, and politicians had backbones — the NFL Team That Used To Be Here would have left town in the 1960s, the MLB Padres wouldn’t exist, and Viejas Arena probably wouldn’t be, what with the football team playing in Aztec Bowl.
But even when fans made it a difficult place for the enemy to play, the inexplicable often happened, and rarely for the good.
It was America’s sporting House of Despair. San Diego’s personal torture chamber, an ER for self-inf licted wounds.
Bitter pills were the concessionaires’ best sellers.
Not to say wonderful/entertaining things didn’t happen there. They did. But what did they amount to? Not one championship in the half-century-plus of its existence. Hard to find many major sports cities with a stadium held up to the end by blocks of failure.
All the wonderful good seems outweighed by the incredibly bad. The forgettable became the unforgettable.
San Diego’s only claim to a major sport championship was the 1963 AFL title — and that came in Balboa Stadium, which the 1980s Ham & Eggers hated dealing with and stupidly tore down.
And the original Mission Valley venue was such a grand house, built by voter mandate, when it opened itself to The NFL Team That Used To Be Here, Aztecs football, minor league and then MLB Padres. A few of us snuck into it on Aug. 19, 1967, the day before the first kickoff, and of course we hadn’t seen anything like it.
I would be there working for many of the best and worst moments.
I was there for one of the more infamous NFL events in history — the Holy Roller Game, when Oakland’s Kenny Stabler intentionally forward-fumbled defeat into victory over San Diego. My assignment was the Raiders’ locker room. Stabler told me: “Of course it was intentional. It was the only chance we had to win.”
San Diego had the best NFL team in 1979, having decisively beaten that year’s Super Bowl finalists Steelers and Rams during the regular season. The Oilers came in for a divisional playoff game without quarterback Dan Pastorini, Hall of Fame tailback Earl Campbell and No. 1 receiver Kenny Burrough, and won. Dan Fouts threw five picks — four to CFL refugee Vernon Perry. The team never will have a worse defeat.
We did have the best NFL team in 1980. It lost to the Raiders in the AFC championship game — the freak play being a tipped pass to Oakland tight end Raymond Chester that became a touchdown.
We had by far the most talented NFL roster in 2006, and it got beat here by the Patriots.
There were many, many Judases losses, and several playoff losses — one that comes to mind being to the inferior Jets in 2004 playoffs.
The 1984 Padres actually won a World Series game here vs. Detroit, but didn’t win again. The Yankees’ 1998 four-game Series sweep of the Pads ended here.
Padres manager Preston Gomez pulled Clay “The Kid” Kirby in 1970, when Kid had a no-hitter going in the eighth inning, leading to chants of: “Gomez must go!” No no-nos in club history.
The Aztecs lost the 1986 Holiday Bowl to Iowa, possibly because Denny Stolz didn’t hire a special teams coach.
The loudest I ever heard the stadium was when the unbeaten Aztecs played nationally ranked Arizona in 1975. They lost 31-24, and would go on to lose their final two after that.
A football team I covered every day, the 1977 Aztecs — the best team in school history — played highly ranked Florida State and boat-raced the Seminoles into Mission Bay (up 38-3 at one point). Afterward, FSU coach Bobby Bowden told me: “I’ve never seen a downtown crowd behave like that.”
In 1968, Southern Mississippi brought in a defense ranked third in the country to play Don Coryell’s Aztecs, quarterbacked by Dennis Shaw. State eked out a 68-7 victory, with Tommy Nettles, the best athlete not in the Breitbard Hall of Fame, catching 11 passes for a nationalrecord 362 yards.
SDSU had so many bad losses. The worst may have been the 1979 game vs. BYU for the Holiday Bowl. It was nationally televised. It was 28-0, Cougars, shortly after the anthem. Final: 63-14. Afterward, university President Thomas B. Day called it an “embarrassment.” It would lead to several dry years for Aztecs football.
Holiday Bowl III, BYU-SMU, with the Cougars finishing an incredible comeback on Jim Mcmahon’s Hail Mary, is the best football game I’ve seen in person.
But, on the other side, there were so many good things and great players on that field.
The NFL Team That Used To Be Here’s greatest moments have been well-documented by our Kirk Kenney, who put in exhaustive work on this project.
Their playoff victories over Miami in 1995 and Indianapolis in 2009 probably were their most important, well-played wins.
Air Coryell never flew better than it did in 1982, when, after beating the 49ers the week before, they ran up 50 on Cincinnati, with the remarkable Wes Chandler catching 10 Fouts passes for 260 yards on Monday night. I’ve never seen a more dynamic offense.
Another was Ladanian Tomlinson breaking the touchdown record in 2006 vs. Denver.
Three Super Bowls. We were great hosts.
I can’t name every great athlete and what they accomplished. Anything Marshall Faulk and Willie Buchanon did. Lance Alworth. Chuck Muncie. Junior Seau. Tony Gwynn. Trevor Hoffman. Ken Caminiti. Juli Veee. Hugo Sanchez. Marcus Allen’s magnificent performance for Lincoln in the CIF finals, Dokie Williams’ for El Camino.
So much bad stuff, but so much good. So many memories.
I have to stop. I’ll leave the heavy lifting to Kirk, who can handle it.
Perhaps the greatest moment in stadium history was Steve Garvey’s home run in the 1984 playoffs vs. the Cubs. It produced one of my all-time favorite quotes, the perfect Steve Garvey, who, when congratulated afterward by Don Drysdale, said: “It was my pleasure, Don.”
I watched it from a hotel room in Oshkosh, Wis., waiting to cover San Diego-green Bay. The Padres won the pennant the following day, and I saw it on TV from the Lambeau Field press box, the stadium loaded with Cubs fans.
That was long before the NFL Team That Used To Be Here left town because the once-proud stadium had become an unplayable lie.
It now lies in a better place.