It is probably not true, as it no doubt may appear in time, that your correspondent is at heart a cheap screw when it comes to the article of supporting professional sports in his home town of these last seven years. The fact that I have only gone to Padres’ games when comped to the owner’s box should not be read as any expression of amour-propre, but rather the gracious acquiessence of the charitable instant. Kindly accepting someone else’s kindness, like.
And yet – admission against interest – it was only on Friday afternoon, having been offered four tickets to watch the Chargers play Dallas at the Q by a co-worker, whose husband had been offered the season tickets by his employer, that I first considered watching a local football game. Live, I mean.
For someone who spent three decades in the military, I am curiously averse to standing in line. Qualcomm stadium might well have been designed by the devil himself to harvest the souls of impetuous blasphemers, so craftily have the approaches been designed to engender choler amongst impatient, car-bound multitudes. Cursing, aye, rent clothing and gnashing of teeth. All these in abundance, and that was just to get off the highway. Never mind moving through the gate.
Which we had special parking passes too, and life got that much the better. At least until we found our seats. Four of us there were, and three people sitting in our places. Staring up at us with bovine stupefaction.
It was finally demonstrated to everyone’s mutual satisfaction what everyone had known to begin with, and our poachers sought their entertainment elsewhere. I sat in what I thought was my seat for five minutes until a gentleman with wrap-around sunglasses, a Bolts jersey, prison tats and his ball cap pulled down around his ears informed me that I was in his seat, bro. Season tickets right here for five years, bro. We were in the plaza overhang near the end zone, the noise was deafening, the view mediocre, and – having asked my new found friend to compare tickets and finding myself in the wrong – I had to wonder silently to myself who would, over a period of five years, buy season tickets for such a miserable spot. As soon as we shifted left, our man departed, never to return. No doubt seeking his entertainments elsewhere. In his place a hyperactive five-year old – Dallas fan! – alternately slammed a pair of stadium seats up and down over and over again while thumping his helmet clad head against the back of the chairs for a good 30 minutes.
We came a quarter late, and watched through two quarters plus half time, bugging out before the mad rush came in the fourth. I could not help but notice that the crowds at Qalcomm – a cramped and claustrophobic place – seemed a fair bit drunker and the atmosphere more physically edgy than your run of the mill Padres crowd at Petco.
Maybe it’s the tailgaters and the testosterone, but I have determined that when it comes to professional sports? In San Diego?
I’m a baseball fan.
Owner’s box, please.
Update: Oh, yeah. We won.
Q is a miserable football stadium. If you’re on the 50, you’re about a half mile from the sideline. If you’re low, you won’t see anything because all the players standing near the sideline will block your view.
Best seats are in the end zones, but only if the action is on your half of the field.
The best thing about Qualcomm is the quarterly BMW autocrosses in the parking lot. Oh, and I’ve always wanted to try riding a skateboard down the spiral ramps.
Only you, Lex, could make such a lousy experience into such an entertaining read.
I refuse to call it anything but “The Murph”. Call me sentimental if you will. The addition of the 10K+ seats back in the late 90s didn’t do a darned thing to improve the place, either.
We were Chargers fans, Row 7, 30 yard line, on the Bolt side. 5 years of seaon tickets.
Smack on the shoulder, “what are you looking at?”
Just the game honey.
“There’s a timeout, the only thing down front are the cheerleaders.”
I know.
Then the Superbowl hit, market prices on your seats only. Then the call “you’ve been such a supporter of the Chargers, why haven’t you.
renewed your season tickets?”
Free… market
Sir,
Reminded me of this sketch by George Carlin, in case you’ve never seen it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WallEDRs0M
It’s his comparison of Baseball vs. Football – and if I recall correctly, it’s clean.
“We won”…you play for the Chargers also?
Ouch. That was a painful read no matter how entertaining. I would have had an apoplexy. I don’t do live professional sports viewing for precisely the examples given. 42″ flatpanel HD is so much better and I can pause the DVR to go to the head and not miss a play or an inning.
Cap’n,
The last professional football game I attended was a Buffalo Bills game
at War Memorial Stadium
Jack Kemp played quarterback, Cookie Gilcrist played fullback
I think the opponents were the New York Jets
Similar situation happened to us while attending CGSC at Ft Leavenworth. School started during the summer, so my son and I went to a few Royals games. Really had a great time, decent seats, friendly crowd…
Football season rolls around, so wife, son and I go see the Chiefs play the Dolphins. SRO. We’re way up in the nosebleeds. First quarter, Chiefs score, everybody stands up and the guy behind my wife spills his beer on her. Not too bad, just a little. He apologizes. Ah well, it happens. Second Quarter, Chiefs score, Stand up, Beer Spills. He apologizes while smirking. Third Quarter, Chiefs score….Now he’s laughing. I realize that either we leave now, or I’m probably going to be arrested for murder. So we do. We’re walking up to our car and I notice there’s somebody leaning against it. Thinking he’s trying to break in to it, I yell from a couple of cars away. He blearily turns around, peeing in almost a perfect 180 degree circle.
Lex, you nailed it. Baseball is better.
You have major league baseball in San Diego? I could have sworn a AAA team took over that franchise…
Hey Flatlander, show me a team that has ever lost 3/5ths of its pitching staff to injuries at the same time and had a respectable season.
Throw in two catchers and its gold-glove shortstop and starting 2nd baseman all on the DL and it just gets worse… *sad sigh*
HFS has it right, on both counts. I’m attached to the Murph for sentimental reasons, but it was a sterile, claustrophobic, overgrown, terrible place to watch baseball.
Long, long ago, in the dawn of the Charger era, a certain young Marine was trucked from MCRD to the old stadium along with hundreds of other recruits in cattle cars. There we were joined with hundreds of SITs (squids in training.)
In those days it was obvious that football had not yet become a national obsession, and the Chargers were having a terrible time selling tickets (which just might have had something to do with the fact that they played a horrible brand of football.)
But, one must admit, that the memories of those games are fondly recalled. They represented a cherished few hours away from the constant attentions of some very intense Drill Instructors and a chance to remember that there really was a more normal world just outside the gates.
For that reason I’ll always have a reason to cheer for the Chargers.
Marine6, I don’t know if the Chargers do still do it, but every Sunday the Padres fill an entire upper deck outfield section with Marine recruits. They did the same on the other side of the field for the Navy recruits until they got moved to Great Lakes. When the respective service branches’ songs were played between innings, it was a competition to see who could cheer louder.
Always amusing to see the vendors swarm the recruits with tempting junk food they haven’t seen for a few weeks.
I bet the gunny’s hate the loss of control and the 24 hours it probably takes to reset them back into bootcamp mode.
Last time I was at a recruit game the scoreboard said Hoffman paid for the seats.
I here ya, Fuzz, a tough year for the Padre fans. When the best pitcher in the league can’t win half the time, you got lots of problems.
You could always move to Chicago. Our cubs runneth over!
Heh. Cubs fan. I shoulda known.
Next time the Cubs win their division two years in a row, followed by a one-game division playoff the next year, look me up.
Gee FBL, you make the Padres sound good for west coast lite…
I remember the first time the Pads made the playoffs (I was at sea…). We creamed them Cubbies…And then got whacked by the Detroit Tigers.
Ask your pal Ted Leitner why SD don’t like Chicago. They made fun of our (well..your’s now) fish tacos!
b2
I’m a Cubs and a Pirates fan-I thrive on disappointment.
Football spectating is OK if yer in the band. You get in free, you’re among friends, and there’s room for a little flask in that shako. The halftime show is fun, too, if you’re good at it.
P.s. I dunno about pro football. I do remember one time in the old Orange Bowl when we were in the end zone, and a very large Oakland raider crashed into our high school band, knocked a coupla of us down, and demonstrated just how thin the brass is on sousaphones. They really crumpled. The pro jocks seemed to think it was funny. Band nerds don’t get no respect.