1-Man’s Opinion Column-Friday “Shiny Stadium-Chargers-Stained Roster-Padres

Posted by on April 22nd, 2016  •  0 Comments  • 

You want to talk about something snazzy, or something shabby? Your call. Let’s talk about what looks good, then we’ll talk about what looks bad.

The Chargers have unveiled the slick sales piece, architectural drawings, of their proposed 65,000-seat NFL Stadium to be built downtown. Like a number of the other renderings they’ve presented in year’s past, this one looks great.

It will have a retractable roof, even though this is San Diego, where it hardly ever rains. It will include Field Turf, because grass really doesn’t grow well without much sunshine. It will include a beautiful view looking out to open spaces towards the Bayfront, an area, that can be utilized for 10,000-additional seats for a Super Bowl.

It will have sub-level parking for possibly 1,300-vehicles to replace the space eaten up by the new stadium at Tailgate Park. It will have the convention center annex along side the Stadium.

Adorned by palm trees, blue skies, and a clean look, it is impressive.

Of course it costs 1.8B to build. And at this point there is no-one from City Hall, City Council, the Hoteliers, the Convention Center Board, the Tourism board, on board with what Dean Spanos and Fred Maas are proposing..

There is a generic plan how to fund it thru hotel taxes. No one really knows whether it will take a 50-plus-1 vote to approve, or whether it has to be Two-Thirds yes vote to put the tax plan in place.

The Chargers will ask the city voters to start signing petitions tomorrow downtown at a press conference, that will include Roger Goodell, who will say all the right things, about keeping the team, helping the Spanos Family, etc, etc.

Of course there is still great debate about the ‘fine print’ financing, cost over-runs for the convention annex, and assorted other financing questions. The Chargers have yet to provide answers to the Mayor and City Attorney’s open letter, wanting specific answers before signing off, or condemning the proposal.

This will be interesting to see if this community is overwhelmed by the slickness of the Stadium brochure, or whether, they will recall-remember and revisit all the bad deals taxpayers got in dealing with the owner of the team.

It’s snazzy, but at this point the word ‘slick’ sure seems to have a negative connotation till we get answers.

On the other side of the Tailgate Lot parking lot, we had the Padres debacle last night.

Yes it only counts as 1-loss, but it was the same thing said on opening day, when the Padres lost to the Dodgers (15-0). This wasn’t as bad, the (11-1) bashing by the Pittsburgh Pirates, but almost as bad.

A flawed baseball team, filled with lots of utility men, now has significant injuries, just 3-weeks into the season.

Two starting pitchers gone, and the shadow of a serious injury to pitching ace Tyson Ross is not going away. Now add the ailing elbow of Robbie Erlin after just two starts, and this does not bode well.

A thin infield brigade is down three players now. Yangervais Solarte with a significant hamstring. Cory Spangenberg with a quad. Super-utilityman Alexi Amarista with a tender hamstring too.

Add in an ugly defensive performance by young backup catcher Christian Bethancourt, and another letdown performance by the bullpen, and we have a Padres team at (6-10) with plenty of issues.

Yes it only counts as one loss, but the problem going forward, there may be more of them coming.

So we have a shiny new stadium design, and a staned baseball roster.

The Chargers don’t have much ‘currency’ in their pocket trying to pus their initiative to a vote. The Padres seem ‘bankrupt’ trying to field 25-major leaguers right now..

Some Friday we wake up to, eh?

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