Football Light Is Not So Tasty

What’s the world coming to when you can’t go out to the ballpark on a balmy Thursday evening in August and see a baseball game?

I pull into the stadium parking lot late Thursday afternoon thinking of Gary Sheffield’s line drives and Fred McGriff’s towering shots and Tony Gwynn’s flair for flares and, lo and behold, the darn Chargers have booked the place for a scrimmage.

Don’t these guys know their time and place?

Couldn’t they have scheduled this exercise for Saturday at 10 a.m. at someplace like Borrego Springs High School?

Why waste a perfectly good evening and a perfectly good stadium for another of these glorified practices?

It didn’t surprise me that fans were there. Season ticket-holders paid regular-season prices, so they may as well have been there. And 20,000 tickets were given away, presumably many of them having been distributed at encampments in Balboa Park. There are, of course, a few misguided souls who still think this is football they play in August.

The Chargers really did their best to make the evening seem important.

--A Navy parachute team dropped in, but they do this so regularly they’re starting to remind me of mooching neighbors who show up when they expect dinner’s about ready.

--They had a “flyover” with two Coast Guard helicopters. Mind you, a flyover with helicopters is about as electric as a drag race between moving vans.

--And 265 Marines carried the field-blanketing American flag, which had heretofore been reserved for special occasions. Hey, those were 265 tickets that didn’t have to be given away at bus stops.

However, what followed was exhibition football between the 4-12 Chargers and the 3-13 Anaheim Rams, two teams who hoped to use this final rehearsal as a springboard to improved seasons in 1992. All the Rams have to do to improve is win once a month. The Chargers would need to double up one month, like maybe November, which has five Sundays and both Indianapolis and Tampa Bay on the schedule.

Nine shopping days remain until the Chargers entertain Kansas City to open their 1992 campaign, and perhaps Thursday night would provide a clue as to whether the product might be worth buying.

Enlivened and invigorated, perhaps, by pregame fireworks, the Chargers came out and discarded their usual opening gambit. Rather than go with the usual run by Marion Butts, they opened with a daring pass play. Bob Gagliano, entrusted with confidence befitting an opening-day starter, fired to Anthony Miller. Boom, a gain of three yards.

Zowie! This was like the old days with Dan Fouts and John Jefferson, right? OK, not exactly.

Then, having used the pass to set up the run, they handed to Butts for a gain of 10.

In truth, Gagliano ran the offense quite well on this opening drive. He threw short to Ronnie Harmon, who turned it in a gain of 21 as Ronnie Harmon is prone to doing. However, passes of 28 and 14 yards to Miller were products of Gagliano’s arm.

Rod Bernstine took the ball in from the one for the touchdown, leaping over the top as Rod Bernstine is prone to doing.

Gagliano, in his three possessions at quarterback, put 10 points on the board. His other series went nowhere through no fault of his own, since penalties put him in a hole on his own six. He otherwise did a professional job of moving his football team.

The man is ready. He can do more than toss little lobs to Ronnie Harmon in the flat.

In the interest of protecting their starter, I assumed, the Chargers brought in another guy later in the second quarter. His propensity for overthrowing receivers made him somewhat reminiscent of Billy Joe Tolliver. If he was a little trimmer, he might have been Billy Joe Tolliver.

So much for reflecting on backup performers.

It was also nice to see John Carney finally kick a field goal, even though it was a baby of 27 yards. Since he had won the job based on having done nothing, I was actually wondering if he had been given one of the free tickets.

However, it was sad to notice Billy Ray Smith for the first time . . . and have him caught delivering an illegal block on a punt return. I watched him return to the sideline and pace by himself and get a drink of water, again by himself, and then sit forlornly down. I wondered how long before this man would be in need of a free ticket.

Now, if it was the Chargers’ intent to make this evening more special than the game itself merited, they succeeded at halftime. The Marines stormed the place with rousing music and a re-enactment of the capture of Iwo Jima. This worked. I was glad I there.

That was enough.

No more of this scrimmage football. No schoolyard second half for me. Don’t bother me with a final score until it counts.

Let’s get back to baseball.