The first quarter of this calendar year has had no sun, moon or stars, shadowing me into the darkest four months of San Diego sports in my life. And I was born in Mercy Hospital before there was prescription medicine.

I’m a dinosaur. I’m fossilized. I’m not ashamed of it.

That’s what the cool hipster soccer dudes on radio call me, a dinosaur, and in that the park closest to where I live is Jurassic, it’s OK.

All I know is that, since New Year’s Day, we’ve lost the Chargers and our NFL brand, Steve Fisher has retired, the Padres appear well on the road to their promise of being years away, the minor league Gulls (bless their hearts) lead TV sportscasts, and soccer is threatening our very way of life, by becoming our very way of life.


Not since the 1950s have we seen anything like this, and in many ways, this lifeless pit we’re in now is worse. Because there were no sporting promises 60 years ago and not much to look back on.

Downtown in the ’50s was an ocean of post-World War II Navy white caps, of Funland arcades and locker clubs and dime burgers and tattoo parlors and movie palaces and bums camping in all-night theaters and downtrodden hotels and bus transfers at Horton Plaza and Marston’s, Walker Scott, Lions, Roberts, Kress, Whitney’s, Boldricks, Universal Boots (the stores where city folk shopped), and Woolworth’s fountain and Hollywood Burlesque and Italian kids selling Evening Tribune green sheets dished out by legendary Leo Trinca and skid row south of Broadway, a seedy area where no one wanted to be that has become where everyone wants to be.

San Diego High’s football team was the main attraction. Pernicano’s pizza joint after games. San Diego State offered very little. The Padres were minor league, playing in a wonderful bandbox at the foot of Broadway called Lane Field.

We were minor league. We weren’t one horse. We were one pony. A Navy town. My Little Italy was a fishing village, with fathers on the water for weeks and strong wives and mothers either working their homes or the canneries. And we loved it. It was what we were.


But then the pre-Judas Chargers arrived. Like that, we were major league. The Padres took us to the bigs eight years later. We had two horses — almost.

And now we’re this close to being back where we were. Except those were happy days. These are not. These are miserable.

If you don’t believe the Judases have taken along some of the life out of us with them to L.A., well, you didn’t care in the first place. If they are “dead to you,” as they are to many people — and I can’t blame you a bit, although you might feel the same about City Hall, which gassed up their moving vans — well, that also tells you something.

We’re running on fumes.


It has affected this city so much that, like a jilted lover on the rebound, it has jumped into engagement with its first suitor, the FS Investors’ SoccerCity land grab that proposes a 30,000-seat Mission Valley stadium that surely will drive San Diego State football and the Holiday Bowl out of business.

Soccer is not our answer. Not our savior. We should not settle, but, alas, I fear we may, which would doom any chances we have to be big-time anytime soon.

Frank Deford, one of our greatest sportswriters, had this answer when asked what chance soccer had to become a spectator sport in the U.S.: “Zero. It has zero chance. Every chance it had, it failed. I don’t conceive of any circumstances that it would have Americans take interest.”

I appreciate the passion of soccer fans, who are unlike any other. It is a great game. It is not our game. We are star-driven. There are no American soccer stars, and Major League Soccer, which the FS people are wooing, is (despite its name) not major league.


Meanwhile, Fisher, our most beloved coach since Don Coryell, has retired, and apostle Brian Dutcher has taken over the San Diego State basketball program he helped Fisher resurrect. Dutch is a great guy, and I believe he can carry on. But, once again, he never has been a head coach (except in waiting). Can he prolong the magic?

Rocky Long has done a superb job with Aztecs football. But there is mystery now. The Qualcomm Dump will close after the 2018 season. Where will his team play after that? Hopefully, not in a 30,000-seat tool shed.

I like what the Padres have done, throwing many millions into the international market and revamping their minor league system to the point where it’s actually instructing young players. Youth must be served, but dinner isn’t going to be on this table for a while. And yet, they’re not without fun.

The Gulls? They’re the Gulls. An attractive minor league hockey franchise that services the parent Ducks. Once again, we look from the back seat to L.A. and its environs.


I will continue to follow the Judases and the NFL. I will write about them because I do believe many people remain interested in them. If you no longer are, don’t complain. Don’t read. Easy.

We have lost the NFL, the tuna industry and our mighty aviation heritage.

So here we are, sitting in the dark, losers of American football, ready to become foreign football’s U.S. capital?

As Samuel Goldwyn, who knew what entertainment was, said: “Include me out.”


sezme.godfather@gmail.com