What Hometown Hero Needs Is a Sails Man

I think it is time for San Diego to come to the rescue of an impoverished resident.

Grab your rags and stuff your bags.

We need bedsheets, shirts and blouses (please remove buttons), underwear (please remove elastic and plastic), skirts (summer only), handkerchiefs (should anyone still use them) and panty hose (please no runs).

Not to be fussy, but jeans, socks, jackets, towels and hats won’t do.

If you can see through your old curtains, send them. Mini-blinds won’t work.

You see, it is our responsibility to help Team Dennis Conner build up its sail inventory. Apparently, the cupboard is bare. Dennis Conner has become the Old Mother Hubbard of the America’s Cup Class World Championships.

To paraphrase an old country ditty, poor Dennis has no satin sheets to fly on . . . though I’m sure he has satin pillows to cry on.

Team Dennis Conner has withdrawn from today’s World Championship semifinals. The good old U.S. of A. has no entry left here in the waters off America’s Finest City. It had one from right here in San Diego, and it begged poverty.

As Conner’s statement Friday said: “One of our main concerns was to support the Worlds. However, we think it is prudent due to our limited resources and the added stress and strain caused by match racing to not race in the final competition.”

He was more specific at the press conference after Wednesday’s final fleet race.

“I don’t want to do anything silly . . . to jeopardize what the few assets I have left in sails,” he said. “To go out there and practice with my crew, I’ve got to have sails and I don’t have too many left.”

Conner divulged that his team had started with nine sails and now was down a bit from there. Because Stars & Stripes has blown five spinnakers, it would appear that only four sails remain.

At that point, a writer asked a very hypothetical (and therefore very stupid) question about whether Conner would continue if someone generously replenished his sail inventory.

“You want to bring me a couple million dollars?” Conner laughed wryly.

That, of course, is what Team Dennis Conner needs . . . money. Money buys all that Dennis Conner needs. He always has said he is just a poor sailor. The poor sailor now is sail poor.

The man must feel like a babe bundled up and left on a doorstep.

The shame of it. Stars & Stripes was doing so well. With barely a month of preparation with its new (and only) boat, Team Dennis Conner came in sixth, fourth, fourth and second in the World Championship fleet racing . . . and led by three-fourths of a mile in a race canceled by the time limit.

Team Dennis Conner, in these World Championships, was like a Indy racer with enough gas to go 400 miles. It was like a stable with a great horse, but not enough money to buy him oats.

Conner’s biggest chore in the weeks to come is to find corporate backing for his underfinanced syndicate. He might not be soup-kitchen poor, but Team Dennis Conner does not have the internal resources of America-3 or Il Moro di Venezia or New Zealand or Nippon Challenge. Conner must raise money, not withdraw it.

It should be an embarrassment to all of us that Stars & Stripes will not be on the water today.

Where were we all when Dennis Conner was putting his program together? Did we assume Mr. Logo would have more corporate backers than he needed spinnakers?

Alas, we were wrong.

It’s too late now to make this wrong right for the World Championships. We could all rush down to the Stars & Stripes compound and take the shirts off our backs and there would not be enough time to sew them all together for today’s competition.

No, Team Dennis Conner is out.

But there is time for America’s Finest City to get America’s Finest Sailor (ask him) back “in sails” in time for the real America’s Cup competition in January.

Conner could also use another boat or two, so check those sheds and garages for any discarded rubber duckies . . . but they must be made out of carbon fiber. You know, they just don’t make boats like they used to.

So let’s forget the boats and the booms and the winches and the halyards and the keels and concentrate on that sail cupboard. Let’s get our old linen, dirty or otherwise, to Team Dennis Conner.

Come next January, when Stars & Stripes pops our spinnaker, maybe you will be able to look very closely and see your initials off that handkerchief or her lipstick off that collar or, OK, maybe the Hanes off your old you-know-whats.

All of San Diego can have a very personal interest in America’s Cup ’92.

And, oh, Dennis, you too can help. We could probably get a jib out of two or three of your old shirts. I know, you’re svelte now. I said old shirts.