Talk of Chargers Moving Drives San Diego Crazy
The Chargers are moving to Los Angeles.
Just kidding, but it’s just so much fun scaring the yokels in San Diego.
That’s why I went to Qualcomm Stadium on Sunday wearing my L.A. baseball cap -- you certainly wouldn’t want to be seen in L.A. these days wearing a Dodger cap -- but down south the fretful rubes spot something L.A.-related and they flip out and start sputtering about their quality of life and their two kids who breathe clean air.
A few years ago, much like Jane Goodall living among the chimpanzees in Tanzania, I chose to live among these rubes in the San Diego area to see how small-town folk exist with so little to entertain themselves.
I remember when they built a Wal-Mart, and how excited and bubbly people got. For a moment I understood the kinship Goodall felt with the apes.
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WHILE I lived there, the Slugs went to the Super Bowl, and you could drive up and down the dirt roads in San Diego and garage door after garage door was decorated with some kind of lightning bolt motif.
The yokels were so stoked after the team lost the Super Bowl that they agreed to remodel the football stadium. Every media outlet in town, including the local shopper, the San Diego Union-Tribune, threw its support behind it, so the city agreed to buy any unsold tickets with tax money for the next decade.
Since the Chargers didn’t have to field a quality team to sell tickets any longer, they didn’t.
In the seven years since the guarantee went into effect, the team has lost at least 10 games in a season five times. The Slugs are 33-75 since 1997, and imagine having to pay for every Clipper ticket that went unsold for 10 consecutive years.
Last week The Times broke the story that the Spanos Goofs, who own the Slugs, had filed a lawsuit against the city two days before Thanksgiving. Reporters for the San Diego U-T were upset at the Slugs, claiming the team leaked the story to The Times because The Times has a more favorable relationship with the Slugs.
I’m not sure anyone has quite the same relationship with the Goofs that I have, but I wouldn’t necessarily describe it as favorable.
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WHEN I arrived for the game Sunday, the elevator operator said he couldn’t put us on, because he was waiting for the Goofs to arrive and they don’t like to ride with the common folk. I just took for granted the Goofs would be taking the dumbwaiter.
I later bumped into the younger Goof; you know, the one banned from a pro-am golf tournament years ago on suspicions he was a cheater, and I asked him when he was going to move his team to L.A.
Right away he lied to me: “It’s always a pleasure to see you,” he said.
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SINCE THE Spanos Goofs have such a difficult time making sense when they talk, they hired spokesman Mark Fabiani, a trained spin expert who has worked with agent Michael Ovitz and former President Clinton. Some people believe in doing their time in purgatory on Earth, I guess.
It has been fun to watch Fabiani play the rubes. Right now he’s got the small-town folks so upset and confused, they’re not sure if they should be angry at the city’s mayor, the former city councilman who keeps suing the city to block baseball and football stadium development, the crummy football team starting the 41-year-old Mission Bay Shrimp at quarterback, or the greedy Goofs.
“I’m just fed up,” said Vic Hanhan, owner of the La Fiesta Deli just down the street from the stadium. “If you need another loser besides the Dodgers, you can have the Chargers.”
Stadium Manager Bill Wilson said there were more fights than usual at Sunday’s game between the Chiefs and Slugs. “Frustration,” he said.
“Fabiani,” I said.
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NO ONE knows whether the Chargers are coming or going. It will be May at the earliest before anything meaningful can happen with the Chargers and their demand for a new playpen in San Diego.
But it works best for the Slugs if the yokels think everyone in L.A. is working hard to bring the Chargers to town right now. I went along with the gag, of course, because what’s the fun of living in a big city if you can’t make fun of the bumpkins who live and die every week based on what their 2-10 football team does on the field.
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COACH BILL Callahan said, “We’ve got to be the dumbest team in America.” That’s just like the Raiders, thinking they’re best in everything.
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THE UCLA basketball team climbed to No. 43 in the AP poll after securing four votes for beating Vermont by a point. Fight on!
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STOPPED BY the Clipper locker room to visit with a silent Corey Maggette. Hey, I never stopped talking with Kevin Brown.
“You regain your voice?” I asked, and in his own way Maggette said the cold shoulder he gave me last week was just a misunderstanding. I’ve gone through the same thing with the wife before -- although I’d like to make it clear Maggette and I did not kiss and make up.
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TODAY’S LAST word comes in e-mail from Mirja Bishop:
“Can you find nothing better to write about than your dislike of anything or anyone at UCLA? USC is often considered the University of Second Class, and all one has to do is read one of your columns to realize how true that is. I suspect the entrance requirements for your hallowed halls of Figueroa Tech are still a ‘C’ or less GPA and big bucks from daddy. I resent having to pay to read the kind of trash you write and will seriously consider canceling my subscription.”
Don’t blame me because you couldn’t get into USC.
T.J. Simers can be reached at t.j.simers@latimes.com.