San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
Dipping toe in San Diego Sports Curse
Sez Me … Oh, my sainted aunt! The San Diego Sports Curse may be alive! Damn the chains, grab the kids and run for the Lagunas!
No time to remain calm. Get out the rosary beads. Say a novena. Ask the Swinging Friar to swing a thurible of incense around Petco. Splash holy water on your season tickets. Wrap a string of garlic around your neck. Plead with St. Michael to deliver the Padres from evil.
If this were a normal Padres season coming up, there would be little reason for concern. But they’re loaded — with talent and money. They have become one of the favorites to win the World Series.
But this is San Diego, the City of Championless. And I worry. We do not handle expected success well.
Heck, we invented Chargering, now a legitimate American football term for screwing up. And, if Fredo Spanos thought he could get rid of it by moving the franchise out of town, he (nothing new) failed.
Already we’ve received some worrisome news that may keep the pox on our houses.
Padres starter Joe Musgrove, whose likeness is on more walls than Farrah Fawcett’s, has dropped a kettlebell on his left (landing) foot, breaking his big toe. The captain of the toes? In spring training, no less?
Fernando Tatis Jr., who has moved from short to right, opened his spring dropping two fly balls.
What? They just got no-hit by the Cubs, who used about 30 pitchers. The 41st spring game no-no since 1906.
Omens? We don’t need no stinking omens. We’ve had an orchard of omen trees that have borne fruit.
A broken big toe is a bad thing. Dizzy Dean took a line drive by Earl Averill off his left (landing foot) big toe in the 1937 All-star Game. Diz came back too soon, and never was the same.
And I don’t want to see Tatis become the most physically gifted DH in history. Does he really want to be an outfielder? I can go to Tecolote Little League and watch children catch fly balls. The ball goes in the air to both shortstops and right fielders.
Fernando did make a nice, sliding catch Saturday after nearly overrunning the ball. The Curse shuddered.
If there is such a thing as the San Diego Sports Curse — and we have more horrifying evidence of its existence than Neil Armstrong’s so-called giant leap for mankind — 2023 is going to be the year we find out if it’s real, and if Peter Seidler is an exorcist everyone thinks he is.
If his Tiffany Padres and their Fab Four don’t win a World Series this year or anytime soon, we must assume Peter’s fiscal powers are not enough to expel the demons that have haunted our games, that his gold rush to a championship layup was blocked by the Bill Russell of curses.
I’ve never been big on curses. But I must say there were some weird things going on when I was growing up in Little Italy — such as the scary old woman who cured ailments (especially worms) by burning oiled cotton balls until they turned into the shapes of animals — so what do I really know?
Despite San Diego State’s basketball excellence, the Aztecs have won our only major NCAA title — in men’s volleyball, a sport in which they no longer partake.
We have produced dozens of remarkable athletes, many of them legendary, in baseball, football, basketball, golf, tennis, Olympic sports, even hockey. So The Curse is team-oriented.
Our only professional championship of note is the one won in 1963 by The AFL Team That Used To Be Here, and that club, although superb, wasn’t in the NFL, and never got the credit it deserved.
Minority owner George Pernicano held on to that AFL Championship trophy, and when I was on the beat in the early 1980s, the team asked to use it for a promotion. So much did they value the trophy, it became a doorstop in the PR office. True.
Was The Curse involved with the Padres and Judases losing championships to some of the greatest teams of the past 60 years (the Padres to the 1984 Tigers and 1998 Yankees, and the
Judases to the 1995 49ers)?
If we don’t get rings soon, I’ll have one thing to say: Curses!
A Good Thing: Despite being $20 mil over the cap, the Judases are not going to release Keenan Allen. Ed Mcguire, a brilliant capologist, will find a way to avoid intentionally making his team worse. …
Aaron Rodgers will make $58.2 million if he quarterbacks this fall. Guess. He’s quarterbacking this fall. …
March now ranks No. 2 behind April on the list of NFL liars months. Jets GM Joe Douglas, as he entertains Derek Carr, says Zach Wilson has a “high ceiling.” As does the crawl space in the mayor of Munchkinland’s house. …
Star Alabama linebacker Will Anderson plodded through his Combine 40 in 4.69 seconds. The scary thing? Combine 40s are lies, so he’s slower than that. …
Mike Mccarthy’s inane, contradictory ramblings at the Combine show he couldn’t run shotgun on a Dallas stagecoach. …
Carson Wentz Thataway. Again. …
How bad can lists get? Saw one on the top 20 running backs of all time. O.J. Simpson was 7th, Jim Brown 12th, and Gale Sayers 17th. Three best runners. Ever. …
San Diego’s Tony Clark, boss of the baseball players’ association, says there’s no chance there will be a salary cap. Coming from the head of the most powerful union on earth, I safely can say, the cap chip has sailed — off the table long ago. …
Randy Jones didn’t need a pitch clock. He was was a pitch clock. He could throw three times in 20 seconds. …
The downside of the Stinking Shift’s demise is that Manny Machado, who should have won a Gold Glove for his 2022 right field play, no longer has a chance. …
The pitch clock isn’t taking away a second of real baseball time. It will chew the fat. But shorter games won’t help ballpark vendors. …
When I first heard the Pads had Rougned Odor in the clubhouse, I figured they received a shipment of new air freshener. …
The NBA is thinking about implementing a “target score” on overtime games. Because poor
Kawhi had to play 46 minutes? Another former Aztec, Michael Cage, played 50 minutes in a double-ot win at Air Force’s 7,000-feet-plus. Wilt one season averaged more than 48 minutes a game. …
Memo to male SDSU basketball players: Regular college games run 35 minutes — and then five minutes more. …
Tennessee congressman Paul “Roy Bean” Sherrell wants to bring back “hanging by a tree,” and he wasn’t talking ornaments. Next: Guillotine. …
Questions to Ham & Eggers and SANDAGERS: When you reach your goal of eliminating automobiles, how are you going to get around? And, how can goods be delivered on bicycles? Answers: You’re not, and Schwinn 18-wheelers. …
COVID has ended? It just ended UCSD’S men’s basketball season. …
Ten NFL officials are retiring. So 111 to go. …
Why does it seem the only happy people are in casino commercials? …
A morsel of culinary advice: If you go to an Italian restaurant and the pasta sauce resembles Heinz ketchup, order fries.
sezme.godfather@gmail.com Twitter: @sdutcanepa