The Times He Won’t Ever Forget

Well, folks, this is it.

This little spot in this big newspaper goes the way of the Edsel, Air California, Jimmy Hoffa, the dinosaur and dairy farms in Mission Valley.

Poof.

Here today, gone tomorrow.

I worry about things like this. No, not the disappearance of my private and yet public niche, I don’t worry about that. I accept that as something that happens in life, though the feeling is a bit empty. If what I have done was a mere stitch in the tapestry of a few other lives, that was good.

I sit here in the early hours of a June-like Thursday morning at the home I whimsically call Sleepy Hollow. I look down at a peaceful pond and I listen to the awakening of the birds.

I have done this many times, dabbling with a legal pad as I try to put words with thoughts.

It’s a wonderful time of day and a wonderful place to be.

But there are times when reality intrudes . . . and I worry.

I worry about industry and jobs leaving San Diego for places such as Arizona or Florida or Oregon or Mexico or, worse yet, disappearing altogether. I have worried about things like this long before the San Diego County Edition of the Los Angeles Times was one of those entities disappearing altogether.

Those are the big things in the real world. I haven’t touched on them because mine is a comparably meaningless world of fun and games, though men and women have come to make ridiculous sums of money playing them.

In my corner of the world, these 14 years, eight months and 12 days as sports editor of this edition of this newspaper have been wonderful.

Forget wins and losses, for I fear we witnessed considerably more of the latter than the former over these years.

I look back at the splendor we have gotten from athletes such as Tony Gwynn and Ozzie Smith, Dan Fouts and Charlie Joiner, Marshall Faulk and Todd Santos, Michael Cage and Michael Whitmarsh, Juli Veee and Brian Quinn. And so many others.

Championships came our way under the direction of Ron Newman and Dick Williams and Don Coryell, three peas you would hardly expect to find on the same planet, much less the same pod.

We had our buffoons and buffoonery too, our Donald T. Sterlings and our Chub Feeneys and our stupid controversy over a man dressed up like a chicken. But even those were fun, or at least funny.

Those people have all been a part of my life, some unwittingly and some nit-wittingly. Right, Donald?

Other people who have never made their way into this part of my life have been much more important in the real side of my life.

Friends.

I’ve been blessed with a bunch of them hereabouts. Fortunately, they are too many to mention but they all know who they are.

I worry about them too. Business is not good for many of them. You never know who is going to be out of town or out of work next. Life’s like that these days.

My job, though, has been to chronicle and comment on sports hereabouts. There are concerns there, major concerns.

I will start with the Sockers, because they are already gone. All they did was win more championships than all the other teams in town, and yet they are gone. Their league, like the economy, could not support itself. It did what the economy cannot do. It folded itself.

Will these entertaining guys be back and in what form?

And the Padres.

I worry that the Kroc family does not own them any more. I am worried that their ownership cannot support itself . I am worried that some mega-rich citizen of some baseball-hungry community will buy this franchise and take it away.

That happened with the Clippers during my time and it happened with the Rockets before my time, professional basketball being here one moment and gone the next.

I worry that professional basketball will never be back, if, in fact, we ever had a truly professional team.

And I worry that the National Hockey League will never arrive.

We have this thing about talking about building arenas and not getting it done. No one as yet has walked through a turnstile at a state-of-the-art downtown arena nor at a classy on-campus arena at San Diego State. Neither has broken ground and no one even knows what ground will be broken downtown.

I worry about San Diego State basketball retreating to its campus bandbox.

I worry that San Diego State football will never get over the hump . . . or, for that matter, beat Fresno State.

I worry that Tony Gwynn will never be 29 again.

And I must now confess that I worry selfishly. I worry about where San Diego is going and where San Diego sports are going because I am not going anywhere. This edition may be leaving San Diego, but this sports editor, by choice, isn’t.

I came to San Diego 14 years, eight months and 12 days ago a Los Angeles Times guy.

As a San Diego guy, I stay.