SAN DIEGO – Of all the major cities in American sport, this is arguably the prettiest.
With year-round sunshine and sandy beaches, San Diego has raised some of the all-time athletes, adding 4 Heisman Trophy winners and baseball’s wonderful Ted Williams.
But it is also the saddest. It is the only metropolitan dominance of 26 in Major League Baseball that has never noticed a team win a World Series, Super Bowl, or NBA Finals. Even more concerning for local fans, it is the only city that has been abandoned through two NBA groups. and an NFL team, leaving you with a single franchise in one of the top 4 professional sports in the US – a Padres baseball team that could soon have a World Series career.
Don’t wait for some locals until this happens. They’re still looking to embrace the concept that this year of every year may still be the Padres’ big year, a truncated season when fans can’t make it to games due to COVID-like restrictions. 19 pandemicArray
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“One of the things you’re wondering is that once we overcome this COVID crisis and start allowing other people to get back to the difficult stage, we’re going to go back to a mediocre team that might not be in the race. through September 1?” asked Jim Lackritz, sports instructor in the state of San Diego.
Certainly, the Fathers have been loved here as a bright soft in a different way in the year 2020 dark. His playoff series opposite St. Louis this week is his first place in the playoffs since 2006, a drought that leads to apprehension and pessimism. A fan even has a Twitter account called “The SD Sports Curse”.
“The Padres haven’t been in the playoffs for 14 years,” the fan wrote on September 24. “Of course, this is the season that can continue. “
If it’s not a curse, it’s at least a chronic stalking plague, betting with San Diego’s poor sports enthusiasts on a kind of big deal. In exchange for living in a paradise with beautiful beaches and bays, they were not allowed to savour good sporting fortune without some ruthless twist of the knife.
There are too many examples:
In March, the San Diego State men’s basketball team may have had its most productive team of all time. The Aztecs were about to win first place in the NCAA Tournament after starting the season with 26 consecutive victories. cancelled due to COVID-19.
“What could it have been?” asked the team’s official Twitter account on March 19. “We’ll never know. “
Had they reached the end of the tournament, they would have won only the national primary school championship in San Diego history. It was dissolved to lower prices in 2000.
The Padres have played in two World Series, in 1984 and 1998, on both occasions they were defeated by local heroes who played for the other team.
In 1984, former San Diego Kearny High School shortstop Alan Trammell helped the Detroit Tigers defeat the Padres in games as World Series MVP.
In 1998, former San Diego Point Loma high school star David Wells pitched for the New York Yankees opposed to the Padres in the first game. He won, paving the way for a Yankee World Series sweep.
“There’s nowhere but San Diego, ” said Wells upon returning home this fall.
However, in the primary sports championships the opposite has happened: no position is worse.
Former father Bruce Bochy has not won a world championship in 12 years as a Padres manager or five years as a Padres player, but won three after leaving manager of the San Francisco Giants.
San Diego also hosts several Hall of Fame players, many of whom won world titles after his departure: former San Diego Chargers quarterback Drew Brees, former Parent gardener Dave Winfield, former Padres torpedo Ozzie Smith and former San Diego Clippers player Bill Walton. No one in San Diego this season would be surprised to see beloved former Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers win the Super Bowl as the Indianapolis Colts’ new quarterback.
“We can go on and on,” said Caryl Iseman, a longtime San Diepass resident who has had subscriptions to watch the San Diepass Padres, the NFL Chargers and the NBA Rockets. “There are a lot of Padres we can call that have worked really well elsewhere. It’s very provocative for us as fans.
The Chargers played here from 1961 to 2016 and won the American Football League championship in 1963, but since the Super Bowl era began in 1967, the Chargers have given the impression in just one of the big games, in January 1995, when they were The NFL franchise left San Diego in 2017, after the electorate rejected a proposal that would have kept him here with taxes on hotel rooms to help fund a new stadium and conference center in the center.
Instead, the Chargers moved to Los Angeles with the aim of sharing a new stadium with the Rams.
It’s the third time San Diego has lost a primary sports franchise to greener pastures in some other city. In 1984, the NBA San Diego Clippers moved to Los Angeles after moving from Buffalo to San Diego in 1978. he moved to Houston in 1971 after joining the NBA as an expansion team in 1967.
Team owner Bob Breitbard said he then had to sell the equipment due to emerging costs, uprooting a franchise that included several long-term Hall of Fame members in San Diego, adding Calvin Murphy and Elvin Hayes.
“I’m crying,” Iseman said upon learning of the Rockets’ defeat. As for the Chargers, he said, “I stopped cheering them on the day they moved from San Diego. “
In the position of the deceased Chargers, the San Diego State football team tried to fill the void with a marketing crusade highlighting that it is the biggest football show in the city.
“Here to stay,” the Aztecs in their advertising campaign. “A city. A team. “
The Aztecs then recently announced a resolution contradicting this message. The Aztecs said they were also temporarily moving their home games to the Los Angeles market, while the site of their former stadium was redesigned to make way for the opening of a new stadium in San Diego in 2022.
Rubbing salt into a new injury, the Aztecs will play this season and next at Dignity Health Sports Park in Carson, about 115 miles away, in the same Los Angeles County stadium the Chargers played after leaving San Diego. .
The SDSU indicated that this is the most productive option to present television shows, in any case, no enthusiasts are allowed in the stadiums.
But at least San Diego still has its beloved Padres, a team that has increased local enthusiasts this year on television, led by third baseman Manny Machado and shortsand Fernando Tatis Jr. Stage. Without him, the team owner at the time, John Moores, said he could provide a competitive payroll and that the team could be sold and moved.
Voters complied in 1998, resulting in a public investment for Petco Park, which collected about $ 460 million in total. The ballpark received rave reviews and revitalized downtown after it opened in 2004.
But the team has had only one winning season in the more than 12 years, so far, when enthusiasts can enter the baseball stadium.
“I’m so pleased about the city of San Diego,” Tatis Jr. said after seating a place in the playoffs this month. “I know it’s been so many years since they made it to the playoffs and brought playoff baseball to San Diego.
Due to pandemic playoff adjustments, the team will not play in San Diego if it advances beyond this round. The next 3 playoff rounds for the Padres would be in Arlington, Texas, adding the World Series.
“With optimism as a guiding principle, the Padres’ dramatic rise to the primary league playoffs, condensed as it is, will have to be celebrated,” said Denny Fallon, a long-time local sports fan. Fallon praised “the courage, inner strength and patience required of all sports enthusiasts in San Diego. “
Iseman usually looked at the team from his plate seats at San Diepass, but plans to move to Arlington if the Padres win and enthusiasts are allowed there. He also thinks this is just the beginning of the Parents’ success.
“There is a smart core here,” he said of the future of the Padres. “It’s unfortunate. I don’t think we’ll ever see American football (NFL) in San Diego again. I don’t know if we would ever see basketball (NBA) back in San Diego. Unfortunately, we don’t have the political will. I think the Padres are our gem. of the crown.
Follow journalist Brent Schrotenboer @Schrotenboer. Email: bschrotenb@usatoday. com