As pitchers and catchers start reporting across Arizona and Florida, we continue our tour of all of the baseball stadiums I’ve been to over the years. This week, we travel to southern California for the baseball homes of the San Diego Padres. Between the two stadiums that have been located in the paradise that is San Diego, I’ve seen four games. So, without further ado, let’s take a deeper look at my history with Qualcomm Stadium and PETCO Park.
Stadium Name: Jack Murphy Stadium/Qualcomm Stadium
Years in Service: 1969 – 2003
Visits: 1
San Diego Stadium opened on August 20, 1967, as the home of the AFL’s Chargers and opened for baseball the following spring for the final season of the minor league San Diego Padres. The following season, San Diego’s expansion team, also named the Padres, moved in and stayed as the main tenants until the end of the 2003 season. The stadium was renamed in 1980 for local sportswriter Jack Murphy, who had championed support for the building of the stadium, after he passed away. That name stuck until 1997, when the naming rights were sold to technology company Qualcomm.
In 2003, I was in San Diego for what, to date, was my 3rd and final Comic Con. On the afternoon of July 17, I skipped out on the con and took the trolley out to Mission Valley to take in the day’s contest between the Padres and the Diamondbacks. I don’t remember much about the game, which the Diamondbacks won handedly 9-1, other than Curt Schilling taking the bump for the Dbacks. The park, one of the last remaining cookie cutter stadiums that popped up in the late 60s and early 70s and designed to house both baseball and football teams while doing service to neither, did not really register one way or the other and holds no particular space in my memory. I do seem to remember a giant outdoor escalator, but that might have been Candlestick.
Stadium Name: PETCO Park
Years in Service: 2004 – Present
Visits: 3
After 35 seasons at the Murph, the Padres moved downtown in 2004 with the opening of PETCO Park. The new stadium was initially supposed to open for the 2002 season, but legal battles and political tomfoolery delayed the project for two years. The first event held at PETCO Park was an NCAA invitational tournament hosted by San Diego State University, whose head coach was former Padres great Tony Gwynn. The Padres themselves christened the stadium on April 8 with a 10-inning victory over the Giants.
With the Cubs, coming off their surprising run towards the NL title in 2003, scheduled for a weekend series at the newly opened PETCO Park in the middle of May in 2004, a trip out to the coast was in order. The Cubs swept the three-game series against the Padres, and a tremendous weekend was had. The new park was a vast improvement over the old Jack Murphy. I had a return trip planned in the spring of 2020, but COVID had other plans.
Things look pretty decent here. Auburn’s loss to Yale knocked me for a bit of a loop, but, aside from that, things are fairly clean, with three of the four teams heading into this weekend still alive.
Things are slightly worse on this side of the bracket, with just two of the four teams I picked playing this weekend. While Nebraska did me dirty, I correctly picked that Wisconsin had peaked after beating Purdue in the Big Ten Tournament two weeks ago.
My selections here are mostly chalk, with a couple early upsets but with the top four seeds heading to the Sweet Sixteen. Iowa State is my pick to advance to the Final Four.
Following a tournament filled with upsets, more history was made last weekend when the last two number one seeds fell, leaving the Elite Eight without a single number one seed for the first time ever. My Final Four predictions are all completely toast, so there’s nothing left for me this weekend. If anything, wrapping up the tournament will be a detriment to my fan experience, since it means Gene Honda will be in Houston Monday rather than at Guaranteed Rate Field for the home opener.
This region is a wreck, with only one team remaining in the Sweet Sixteen, and that team I had losing in this round, so this one was a dud.
Things look much better on this side of the bracket, as the only Sweet Sixteen team I had that didn’t make it is IU and, honestly, I’m ok with that.
Alabama enters the tournament under a cloud of scandal, as their star player was recently involved in the murder of a young woman. Because of that, I have second seed Arizona going to the Final Four.
Gonzaga is the overall #1 and my pick to come out of this region and moving on to the Final Four. I did throw the occasional upset in the earlier rounds, so we’ll see how those pay off.
A bit of an upset here, as I have #3 Tennessee advancing. 
