Ask a Hipster — Advice you didn't know you needed
Big Screen — Movie commentary
Blurt — Music's inside track
Booze News — San Diego spirits
Classical Music — Immortal beauty
Classifieds — Free and easy
Close to Home — What it’s like on the street where you live
Cover Stories — Front-page features
Drinks All Around — Bartenders' drink recipes
Excerpts — Literary and spiritual excerpts
Feast! — Food & drink reviews
Feature Stories — Local news & stories
Fishing Report — What’s getting hooked from ship and shore
From the Archives — Spotlight on the past
Golden Dreams — Talk of the town
The Gonzo Report — Making the musical scene, or at least reporting from it
Letters — Our inbox
Movies@Home — Local movie buffs share favorites
Movie Reviews — Our critics' picks and pans
Musician Interviews — Up close with local artists
Neighborhood News from Stringers — Hyperlocal news
News Ticker — News & politics
Obermeyer — San Diego politics illustrated
Outdoors — Weekly changes in flora and fauna
Overheard in San Diego — Eavesdropping illustrated
Poetry — The old and the new
Reader Travel — Travel section built by travelers
Reading — The hunt for intellectuals
Roam-O-Rama — SoCal's best hiking/biking trails
San Diego Beer — Inside San Diego suds
SD on the QT — Almost factual news
Sheep and Goats — Places of worship
Special Issues — The best of
Street Style — San Diego streets have style
Surf Diego — Real stories from those braving the waves
Theater — On stage in San Diego this week
Tin Fork — Silver spoon alternative
Under the Radar — Matt Potter's undercover work
Unforgettable — Long-ago San Diego
Unreal Estate — San Diego's priciest pads
Your Week — Daily event picks
John Moores sinks Padres pay to number 29 of 30 teams
Response to 221, $150 million loan from Chase, $70 million from the sale of charter seat licenses, $102 million from the sale of naming rights and sponsorships and $15 million in tax increment financing by the city. This is a great place to see a game.Have you ever heard the saying "The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco"? Candlestick could be terrible; always cold and windy at night or so it seemed. But AT&T, well not so much. We've been to a 20 or 30 games there vs at maybe a hundred or so at the Stick and there is no comparison. And no suprise that the attendance is better. I've seen games at the Stick that maybe had 6-8km at most, but most every game we've been to at AT&T has been close to, if not a sellout. I think last year was the first year the Giants didn't beak 3 million in attendance and they only missed it by about 150k. And they have has some BAD teams.— September 5, 2009 5:58 p.m.
Rancho Peñasquitos man fights with city over concrete spill
You know the old saying, " you can't fight city hall"— September 2, 2009 5:05 p.m.
John Moores sinks Padres pay to number 29 of 30 teams
Pete, I completely disagree with our statement that the Chargers haven't done anything since 1963. From 1963 thru 2008, the Chargers have made the playoffs 14 times and won their division 12 times. During that same period the Packers made the playoffs 16 times but won their division only 9 times. Or put it another way, in 2 less appearances, the Chargers won 3 MORE division championships the the Packers. So you can't say that the Chargers have done nothing in the last 35 seasons. Granted, the Packers have been to 4 Super Bowls and won three and San Diego Showed up once, but you didn't say Super Bowl victories, and if you did then you would be saying that Green Bay failed 40 out of 43 times. However, I do agree with your assessment that football is an afterthough, for alot of people, in San Diego. The diehards fans show up for regular season games and most I still know don;t give a Krap about preseason. With theirI expect at most only 1 regular season game doesn't sell out, Probably the Cincinati. That is unless that start out really badly, and fans run away in droves. LOL BTW, I read a report today in Sportsbusiness Journal saying that the NFL expects at least a dozen teams to have at least 1 game blacked out this year. I also read something I wasn't aware of 2002 was the first year that 90% of all games were sold out.— September 2, 2009 5 p.m.
John Moores sinks Padres pay to number 29 of 30 teams
response to 185 Don, this will kind of give you the idea: http://ownthedollar.com/2008/12/inside-look-at-cr…— September 1, 2009 7:07 p.m.
John Moores sinks Padres pay to number 29 of 30 teams
Gringo, Of course you are correct about big pay back in the day. As I recall, alot of the money Grange made was based receiving a percentage of the gate along with his salary. I looked up a quote that I read once that I think is cool: I was interviewing George Halas and I asked him who is the greatest running back you ever saw. And he said, 'That would be Red Grange.' And I asked him if Grange was playing today, how many yards do you think he'd gain. And he said, 'About 750, maybe 800 yards.' And I said, 'Well, 800 yards is just okay.' He sat up in his chair and he said, 'Son, you must remember one thing. Red Grange is 75 years old.' But salaries like those of Ruth and Grange were the exception, not the rule. If one were to go back and look, many, if not most teams in that era had a highly paid player or 2. But I was refering to Don's post about the high salaries today, for all players, comparing them to the salaries of players during the time when their teams literally owned them as players. In 1960 the average MLB player madeless that 20k; in 1970 it was still only about 30k. Ten years later it was about 150k and in 1990 it was over 1/2 million. Today, I believe its north of 3 million as an AVERAGE and the MINIMUM is over 300k. Salaries would absolutely never have increased that much were the old "rules" in affect. My point is/was that there were the "exceptional" players like a Koufax, Drysdale/ Ruth,Grange, Dimaggio, et al, who could get that kind of money because they were an integral part of both the teams success and popularity. But until things changed in the sixties, they were only ones. But now players get the best deal they can becuses they don't face the same restrictions. One only needs to look at Brette Favre and Michael Vick to see how much the "rules" have changed.— September 1, 2009 5:34 p.m.
John Moores sinks Padres pay to number 29 of 30 teams
SurfPuppy619, Ryan was indeed the first million dollar player in 1979. I think it was 4 yrs, 4.5 million The interesting think is only 2 years earlier, Mike Schmidt became the first $500,000 player. Double the contract in only 2 yrs. And look where salaries are 30 yrs later.— September 1, 2009 5:16 p.m.
John Moores sinks Padres pay to number 29 of 30 teams
Don, back in the early days of the NFL up to probably the mid sixties, players didn't get rich playing football. The owners might have but the players didn't.It's over simplifying but basically Al Davis and the other AFL owners started going after the NFL players throwning tons of money at them, like Joe Namath's 400k contract. As a result, the NFL approached the AFL and the merger happened. AD didn't want it because he thought he could knock the NFL out of the game. But up until about that time, all but the very elite players worked in the off season at regular jobs to be able to support themselves. The same for baseball. Until Curt Flood challenged MLB's reserve clause, players were basically nothing more than indentured servants to there teams. They had 2 choices; play for what their team offered ( and go thru it again every year because there were no multi year contracts) or refuse to sign, don't play and don't get paid.Unless your names happen to be Drysdale and Koufax. In 1966 Willie Mays was the highest paid baseball player at about 125k. Drysdale and Koufax held out, demanded a 3yr, 1 million contract split equally between them over 3 years. That's about 160k each and the Dodgers finally ended giving Koufax the same as Mays and Drysdale a little less. So the era of big bucks started in pro football and mlb at about the same time. Of course with lawyers getting involved as agents, I think Koufax and Drysdale were the first, the propogation of big bucks contracts began. Of course you can blame the players, but the fact is had the owners not treated the players as a commodity to used and discarded as they pleased, I don't think things would have gotten quite so out of hand, like paying Kevin Brown 107 million 10 years ago. It's kind of like not allowing your kids to eat candy and then taking them to a candy store, throwing open the door and telling them to have at it. You just know it's going to get out of control.— September 1, 2009 1:42 p.m.
John Moores sinks Padres pay to number 29 of 30 teams
gringo, my point exactly. As I said people remember the cold and the last play. One lasting memory I have to this day is both teams lining up for the last play and seeing their breath as they came to the line. Kind of like one of the Budweiser Clydesdale commercials they show during football season.— September 1, 2009 12:42 a.m.
John Moores sinks Padres pay to number 29 of 30 teams
BTW, the combined passing yards in that game are irrelevent. In the 82 season, the Chargers put 50 on cincinnati and Fouts thru for 435 yrds and Ken Anderson about 415, in only 4 quarters. And in that game, Chuck Muncie even thru a halfback option for a 60 yard TD. How often did that ever happen??? It was the effort both teams put out in the playoff game in that kind of weather. One could argue that had the game been played in San Diego, with the exact same plays and outcome, in typical january San Diego 65degree weather, it would not be as famous as it is.— September 1, 2009 12:36 a.m.
John Moores sinks Padres pay to number 29 of 30 teams
SurfPuppy619, I would debate you whether or not that was THE greatest game ever played, but lists calling things the greatest are by their very nature subjective and can never be definitive, since they are subject to the opinions of the people who created them. As for my own greatness, well I'll simply quote Woody: "The only thing standing between me and greatness is me."— September 1, 2009 12:12 a.m.