A Conquering Hero Returns, and City Will Share the Spoils

Roll out the red carpet, or part the Red Sea, or whatever it is you do to greet seafaring heroes. It’s time for a rousing rendition of “Stars & Stripes Forever” . . . or at least for a day.

It will be goose-bump, spine-tingle time when Dennis Conner stands in front of a crowd of heaven knows how many thousands this afternoon at the B Street Pier and raises the America’s Cup for all to see.

Never in history has a San Diego sports figure been in position to enjoy such a moment and prompt such elation from the multitudes.

You might make an argument for the 1984 Padres, but it won’t float. Not against the crew from Stars & Stripes. The Padres had a rather joyous experience in the National League Championship Series, but they were the Kookaburras of the World Series.

What’s more, all of our so-called world championships are merely champions of our world. I don’t recall that the Aussies, Kiwis, French, Italian or British have ever been invited to form syndicates and challenge our finest in baseball, football or basketball.

Conner’s victory was worldwide in scope. Not every country was represented, just any country that wanted to be . . . and had the money and the men to mount a challenge.

Stars & Stripes went to Australia representing a syndicate and a yacht club, hoping to retrieve a cup most of the nation did not even realize it wanted back. In one of those miracles no one possibly could have foreseen, Conner and crew rallied the nation first to the cause and then to the conquest.

It was a sea-to-shining-sea achievement, rather than a triumph to be exulted by one city or one state.

Today, then, is as much San Diego’s moment as Conner’s moment.

It won’t get any better than this. It will never be any fresher than this. It can never again be the very first time a skipper brings the cup home.

As colleague Mike Downey wrote after watching both Stars & Stripes and Kookaburra III return to a frenzied Fremantle Harbor Wednesday: “It isn’t fair to say so, but you had to be there.”

It wasn’t fair, I suppose, because everyone should have an opportunity to be a part of such unabashed emotions . . . tears and cheers generously mixing with salt water and champagne.

What has struck me most has been the sense of sportsmanship displayed by both winners and losers. Conner, for example, shook his head when photographers urged him to raise the cup skyward at Friday night’s presentation ceremony at the Royal Perth Yacht Club. He did not want to embarrass the defeated Aussies, who had been such good hosts.

These are the kind of feelings that will come down Harbor Drive today with Dennis Conner, the Stars & Stripes crew and the America’s Cup.

Collectively, these are my candidates for Sportsmen of the Year, not for victory but rather for the true essence of what such an award should mean.

The San Diego celebration will be different than the one Down Under. There will be no losers to console, no need to keep exuberance inside out of respect for the vanquished. It will not, of course, be a spontaneous outpouring.

It has to be planned. It has to be choreographed. There is such clamor now for this man and this crew that the next few days will be as precisely executed as an upwind leg.

This, after all, is merely the beginning of a parade lap for the America’s Cup and its captors. San Diego gets the first chance to strike up the band. It gets to be the first to embrace its native son and the native cup.

The White House will have to wait . . . and so will Wall Street and its ticker-tape blizzard.

San Diego’s celebration will be more of a greeting, a welcome, a job-well-done. And also a moment to savor.

There will be sunshine and maybe a fleecy cloud or two, a perfect day to go sailing. Quite a few lucky ones will probably do just that.

However, most of the onlookers will be Johnny-and-Janey-Come-Latelies to this sport of yachting. They are not like fans of the Boston Red Sox or Chicago Cubs, who have suffered--and continue to suffer--after so many years of frustration. These folks have been avid yacht-racing fans for all of days and weeks.

They live in places like North Park and El Cajon and Escondido and Bonita and Vista. They tend their gardens and play a little golf or tennis and once in a while get down to the seashore, where they might marvel at the serenity of the white sails gliding across the blue water.

It’s too bad, in fact, that Conner and Co. could not arrive at the B Street Pier by sea. That would have been so much more appropriate. Put one of those US 55 mainsails and a billowing red, white and blue spinnaker on Stars & Stripes ’86 and let her have a moment of glory too.

Alas, there is not enough time. This is just a whistle-stop with time for a merry tune or two. After all, the President cannot be kept waiting forever.