Thou Hast Erred, Mr. Commissioner

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In heaven, our typewriters don’t clack and ding. Each keystroke brings a chime. Every end-line is marked by a chorale. There are no deadlines on the Afterlife Gazette. Columnists write while sitting on velveteen clouds. My cloud never strays far from San Diego. Abe of Spoon River, my canine partner in life and after, sleeps gently at my feet.

There are moments when I miss the decades spent as sports editor of The San Diego Union. I requested and was granted this afterlife perch above our fair city. So I keep abreast of the goings-on. I recently covered the Super Bowl. One doesn’t necessarily experience pride in the afterlife. Permit me, though, to express joy that the National Football League has now thrice seen fit to hold its championship game in the stadium that once bore my name.

Let me get one thing out of the way. Some people wonder if I was angered when they renamed Jack Murphy Stadium in favor of Qualcomm. Of them I would ask: When Cassius Clay decided he should henceforth be known as Muhammad Ali, did it make him a better boxer? No. Whatever new moniker you ascribe to an entity, it remains substantively intact in your heart under the name by which you came to love it.

Such is my feeling toward the stadium.

It wasn’t my desire alone that enabled San Diego to start down the road toward major-league status. True, I penned column after column in favor of building a stadium that would play home to pro athletes and the cacophony of partisans who would gather to cheer them. A collective will of good people saw to it that sports would become an intangible rallying factor in the lives of men and women who live and work here. They, on a daily basis, are our true heroes.

With consternation, then, did I listen as National Football League commissioner Paul Tagliabue declared, “I think it’s unlikely that there will be a Super Bowl in San Diego in the near future.” When the commissioner added: “I’m surprised we’re here this week,” Abe rose, growling. I hadn’t seen my faithful companion act with such menace since that Roseanne Barr woman mangled “The Star-Spangled Banner” and spit on the field before a Padres game.

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