First visit: October 1996. I was in LA for the NAB Convention. On Saturday afternoon there were no sessions I needed to attend so I drove my rental convertible down to San Diego.
I headed up the big hill on Balboa Avenue and there was the ballpark. It was known as Jack Murphy Stadium at the time. The only Major League ballpark named after a sportswriter. The NFL San Diego Chargers also call Jack Murphy home, as did San Diego State football. The seat alignment was set up for football, but the infield was still in place. I watched San Diego State and Arizona State warm up. Sat in several seats, including a seat in the temporary boxes that slid into place and I was basically sitting on top of home plate.
Game: June 14, 2001. Five years later and I was back in LA, this time for the R&R Convention. I skipped a Thursday afternoon charity golf tournament and drove down the Pacific Coast Highway to San Diego. There are yellow warning signs with a pictograph of a woman and several little kids coming off the beach and leaning into he wind. As in “Don’t run over undocumented immigrants sneaking into the country.”
By now the ballpark was renamed Qualcomm Stadium. At the ticket window I got a field box seat for $22. Nice seats are fairly easy picking on an afternoon game getaway day.
This was just the second year of Interleague play, and the Padres were hosting the A’s. Palm trees lined the outfield wall. People talk about the great San Diego weather and this day was postcard-worthy. Absolutely beautiful. I sat in the twelfth row above the 3rd base dugout. Future Red Sox players Johnny Damon (LF, A’s) and Mark Kotsay (1B, Padres) were in the game. Phil Nevin of the Padres hit two home runs, including a grand slam in the 8th. Future all-time saves leader Trevor Hoffman got the save, and San Diego won, 6-4.
As I got on the PCH northbound there was a big tollbooth-like structure where you had to drive through at 5 MPH and CIS officers looked in the car to see if it held something suspicious like twelve Mexicans or big containers of crystal meth. But it was just me and I sailed through. On the way back to LA I stopped to check out Laguna and Newport Beach. Both are worth the stop.
These days neither the Padres nor the Chargers play here. The Padres have an excellent new ballpark called Petco Park which I describe separately. And the San Diego Chargers, who were the LA Chargers in their first year of existence in 1960, moved back to LA in 2017.
Leave a Reply