Eyes of Nation Upon Murph As It Turns 25 : Civic Pride: Baseball’s All-Star game will put a spotlight on the stadium, which has seen just about everything from the sublime to the ridiculous since its 1967 opening.

Around the time that John F. Kennedy became President, the patch of land known today as San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium lay quietly beside a river. Cows grazed peacefully, while farmers grew squash, zucchini, tomatoes and green beans. Wilderness had not yet buckled to pavement.

Twenty-five years since its 1967 opening, the stadium named for a sportswriter has caused a patch of once-pristine pasture to undergo one noisy upheaval after another--some sublime, some ridiculous, some commented on from the White House.

Tuesday night, the eyes of a nation will rest on the stadium, which, partly to commemorate its silver anniversary, will play host to the baseball All-Star game. President Bush and Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari plan to attend to promote free trade.

The stadium that introduced sushi and fish tacos as ballpark entrees--drawing the wrath of Chicago columnist Mike Royko, for one--is all gussied up, with new seats, new paint and red, white and blue bunting.

The stadium that cost $27 million to build--almost $100 million less than a similar structure built in Philadelphia in the same year--will welcome more than 60,000 paid visitors and millions more on television around the world.

To the rest of the nation, the stadium will be little more than the latest place to stage baseball’s mid-season classic. But many here say the game, and the silver anniversary, serve as symbols of the city’s identity, before and after farmland gave way to concrete.

“The stadium made people in San Diego feel as though they had finally arrived, that this was, indeed, a major-league city,” said George Mitrovich, a native San Diegan, a former member of the Stadium Authority Board and president of The City Club.

“If there were ever serious doubts about that, San Diego--finally--had a tangible piece of evidence to offer the dissenters and doubters,” Mitrovich said.

Certainly, Mission Valley was never again the same. Whereas before, the birth of a new calf was the river bottom’s most exciting event, the dawn of the stadium brought forth an exhilarating new era.

Few of the stadium’s tenants have known success--the Padres own the only championship, that being the National League pennant in 1984--but San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium has rarely lacked in eccentricity or eclectic, electric moments.

Not far from where Steve Garvey crushed a home run in 1984 that marked one of the most improbable comebacks in baseball history, British rocker Mick Jagger had, three years earlier, screamed “Can’t Get No Satisfaction” to the largest crowd ever gathered in Mission Valley.

The same setting once served as a temporary barnyard for The Famous Chicken, who, riding a horse that refused to leave, so angered then-Padres executive Jack McKeon that he sought to ban both fowl and filly from the field forever.

The Chicken (a.k.a. Ted Giannoulas) had, by that time, become the de facto Padres mascot and a recognized figure. He used the horse as the prop in an Indiana Jones routine. The horse took a constitutional in the visitors’ bullpen, then parked itself in the outfield.

It refused to leave and no giddy-ups from a chicken would do the trick. The delay in a late inning so vexed the opposing pitcher that he blamed the loss of a no-hitter on equine intervention.

Two incidents that will live in stadium infamy involved a woman named Roseanne and a man named Chub. The former, a comedian (surname Barr) attempted to sing the national anthem, a rendition later equated with sacrilege and treason by critic George Bush.

That was on a regrettable July night in 1990. Padres President Chub Feeney was fired in 1988 after responding to a pair of irate fans by flashing his middle finger. It was clearly an obscene gesture, meant to convey only hostility.

The last thing it could have meant was, “We’re No. 1.”

More than a dozen people interviewed selected Garvey’s homer, which came in the bottom of the ninth inning in the fourth game of a best-of-five playoff against the Chicago Cubs, as the stadium’s No. 1 moment--by far.

Garvey’s two-run blast over the right-centerfield fence gave the Padres a 7-5 victory and tied the series against the Cubs, who had won the first two games decisively. The next day, the Padres came from behind to win, earning a spot in the World Series against the Detroit Tigers.

It was the first time in baseball history that a team down 2-0 in the playoffs had won a best-of-five series.

Roger Angell, the fiction editor and baseball writer for the New Yorker, later wrote that he had never experienced crowds as loud as the two that celebrated San Diego victories on Saturday and Sunday in the fourth and fifth games.

Padres right fielder Tony Gwynn, one of two on the current team to have played with the ’84 pennant winners, remembers Garvey’s homer as his own fondest moment in baseball. Gwynn calls it “the christening” of the sport in San Diego.

“There had been lots of events that had happened in the stadium--like the Chargers making the playoffs a few times--but Game 4 was like the coming together of a whole city in one moment,” Gwynn said last week. “It was just a great ballgame.

“You have to give the Cubs all the credit in the world for giving us a great battle that night, but when Garv hit that home run, I was on first base, and when he hit that ball, there was a silence here that you just can’t describe.

“And when the ball went over the fence, 58,000 people all at the same time felt a feeling that you can’t describe. The noise that came out of the stadium is something I’ll never forget for as long as I live. I think back, and I still get chills. It was such a powerful moment.”

A consensus of other powerful moments includes:

* The 1988 Super Bowl--the only time the city has played host to pro football’s mega-event--in which the Washington Redskins scored 35 points in one quarter (a National Football League first) to beat the Denver Broncos.

* Roseanne Barr’s Star-Mangled Banner.

Barr’s screeching soprano, accompanied by what was perceived as an obscene gesture (grabbing her crotch and spitting), was termed “disgraceful” by President Bush.

* The night in April, 1974, that new owner Ray Kroc seized the public-address microphone and apologized for the Padres.

“I have never seen such stupid ball playing in my life,” Kroc told the stunned crowd, so incensing some Padres players that they considered boycotting the next game.

* A sizzling series of Chargers playoff games, most of which were losses. In 1981, Jim Plunkett and the Oakland Raiders came from behind to rob Dan Fouts, Kellen Winslow and Charlie Joiner of the Chargers’ best chance for a Super Bowl in winning the AFC Championship, 34-27.

* A genre of Holiday Bowl nail-biters.

The best was the 1980 comeback of Brigham Young University, which, with 3 minutes 57 seconds remaining, scored 21 points to defeat Southern Methodist University, 46-45. The game-winning extra point came after BYU quarterback Jim McMahon threw a 41-yard touchdown pass with three seconds left.

* The Rolling Stones’ unforgettable one-night stand (which drew 75,000 and netted the city $250,000).

* A sentimental reunion show by Simon and Garfunkel in 1983.

* A 1989 concert by The Who, who generated a $300,000 payday, the city’s all-time best. The show helped make up for the group’s 1983 appearance, after which the field was ravaged by rowdy fans.

A day later, then-Chargers Coach Don Coryell called it “the worst playing surface I’ve ever seen. Absolutely terrible.”

* Last year’s showing by San Diego State University running back Marshall Faulk, who set a single-game rushing record (with 386 yards) and became the first freshman to lead the NCAA in rushing and scoring.

* Last year’s decision by the Padres, Chargers and SDSU to outlaw smoking in the stadium’s seating areas, making it one of a few in the country to carry such a ban.

Assemblyman Mike Gotch (D-San Diego), who led the anti-smoking crusade, now wants to target the Marlboro man, whose imperious stare from the center field stands has been a fixture for years. The Marlboro man is the centerpiece of a billboard whose contract expires in 1993.

Come next year, the Marlboro man will be a free agent . . . who may be gone like a whiff of smoke.

* The 1978 All-Star game (the city’s first), in which Garvey, then of the Los Angeles Dodgers, slugged a triple that ignited the National League’s tie-breaking, four-run rally in the eighth inning.

Bob Breitbard, founder of the San Diego Hall of Champions and one of the city’s sports pioneers, said the only event capable of competing with Garvey’s homer in ’84 was the opening of the stadium, which he said voters today would probably reject.

“Seventy-one percent voted to finance the construction bonds, which will be retired in the year 2003,” Breitbard said. “In this day and age, I don’t see it happening. Look at what’s happened in the (San Francisco) Bay Area.”

There, the San Francisco Giants, longing to leave grim and windy Candlestick Park, have failed in winning voter approval for new stadiums in San Francisco, and most recently, two proposed sites in Santa Clara County near San Jose.

Breitbard sees the opening of the stadium as the turning point in not only the city’s sports history but also in the fortunes of the city itself. Breitbard said the stadium has accounted for “untold millions” to the city’s economy.

Super Bowl XXII generated $200 million, and, as a result, officials have aggressively sought a second such game every year since. Another big moneymaker--rock music--is now highly coveted by a once-reluctant city administration.

Mitrovich, then a member of the Stadium Authority Board (which reports to the San Diego City Council), remembers a local government quite at odds with the idea of Britain’s Rolling Stones invading Mission Valley for an all-day concert in October, 1981.

The Stones were approved by a single vote. Mitrovich calls it “among the best decisions the city ever made.”

“The Stones had asked the council to waive its ‘guarantee policy,’ which mandated that the city receive a guaranteed sum from the show. But what we ended up making exceeded everyone’s wildest dreams,” Mitrovich said. “And besides, it was a great show.”

The Stones’ concert was covered by rock critics from all over the world. It marked the group’s first appearance in Southern California in years and netted the city $250,000, which, at the time, stood as its largest payday.

Stadium manager Bill Wilson, who took the job three years later, said that, in the intervening years, the city aggressively sought other groups--Bruce Springsteen, Michael Jackson, Sting and The Who--winning only the last group (twice).

Thus, it’s purely a profit motive, he said, that allowed the city to book heavy-metal bands Guns N’ Roses and Metallica for a stadium show Aug. 14. Wilson said the city hopes to exceed its one-day net payoff of $300,000, which The Who accounted for in 1989.

In a time of recession, such funds are indispensable and almost impossible to refuse, Wilson said. The money does not go to the city’s general fund, as many mistakenly believe, but rather helps to finance stadium improvements, such as those in place for the All-Star game.

They include a new parking-lot entry sign, new “locaters” to tell you where your car is parked, new turf, new infield dirt, new (brighter) lights, an $8,000 flagpole (for the Canadian flag!) and air conditioning in the visitors’ locker room, which was also remodeled.

“The building is in as good a shape as it’s been for the last five or six years,” Wilson said. “One concern we have is that, as concrete ages, it gets brittle and pulls away from its steel reinforcement. But we’ve withstood the earthquakes just beautifully.

“We checked it out thoroughly after the most recent shakes, and it looked just fine. The concrete and plumbing are the same as when it opened 25 years ago, and the cast-iron sewer pipe is starting to go. So, in the next couple of years, we’ll turn our attention to both.”

Environmentalists and historians, such as scholar Raymond Brandes at the University of San Diego, don’t blame the stadium, per se, but say the urban development of Mission Valley is one of the city’s saddest chapters.

The beginning of the end came in 1959, with the opening of Mission Valley Center, and culminated eight years later with the debut of the stadium, which, if anything, accelerated the disappearance of remaining open space.

The encroachment, Brandes said, forever robbed San Diego of one of the loveliest green belts in the nation, which soon gave way to strip malls, gas stations and discotheques.

The individual most credited in recent years with spearheading the stadium movement was the late Jack Murphy, the sports editor of the San Diego Union. Murphy’s name was added to the stadium’s in 1981.

The venue’s unusual designation, San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium, represented a compromise among warring forces--those who wanted the name, Jack Murphy Stadium, and those who wished to retain the original San Diego Stadium.

In 1984, a proposition to have Murphy’s name removed was defeated by a margin of 54.7% to 45.3%, after a delegation headed by Garvey, then Padres owner Joan Kroc and then Police Chief Bill Kolender lobbied successfully to keep the name.

Mitrovich, a nine-year member of the Stadium Authority Board, said that, “in real truth, Mr. Murphy’s role in bringing about the stadium was inflated considerably. . . .”

“He felt strongly about the need for it and had influence on public opinion. But how much, no one can say for sure. There was nothing really wrong in naming it for him . . . . He was as good a person as anyone to name it after. And, he was a very likable man.”

Even Breitbard, long a member of the city’s sports establishment, said Murphy’s larger role was in influencing the move of the Los Angeles Chargers, a charter member of the American Football League, to San Diego after their maiden season in 1960.

Seven years later, the Chargers became the stadium’s first tenant and host of its first event, a preseason game against the Detroit Lions, in the late summer of a year when Lyndon Johnson was President and thousands of Americans were dying in Vietnam.

Mitrovich said that, after Murphy succumbed to lung cancer in 1980, the movement to rename the stadium had faltered until then-Mayor Pete Wilson joined with sportscaster Howard Cosell in chastising the anti-Murphy forces during halftime of ABC’s “Monday Night Football.”

“After that, the city’s biggest fear was being embarrassed--especially after having it pointed up on national television. And now, sportscasters rarely even refer to it by its actual name,” Mitrovich said. “They say, ‘Welcome to Jack Murphy Stadium.’ ”

Mitrovich is not alone in saying that a chief regret surrounding the stadium was the city’s decision to expand it, from about 52,000 seats to slightly more than 60,000, before the start of the 1984 baseball season.

The Padres opposed expansion, as did the architect who designed the stadium, Gary Allen, who won numerous awards for what many considered a high-tech, space-age construction. The Chargers, the only tenant pushing for additional seating, have sold out few games since.

As a result, few Chargers’ home games are televised locally, which means lower-income fans rarely see them play, unless, of course, they play on the road, when their games are telecast back to San Diego.

Critics of expansion say it blocked out a view of mountains and meadows, some of which remain in the distance to the east. Such a glimpse offered at least a reminder, they say, of the days before concrete and steel, Garvey and Barr, and the Marlboro man.

That cowboy-hatted figure, like the view behind him, may not be long for a patch of land that left behind cows and pasture and a minor-league past 25 years ago and which has never been quite the same since.