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The San Diego Sports Curse is a mythical explanation for San Diego's inability to win a Super Bowl, World Series, NBA Finals or any other major league sports championship in the United States.
Because of the lack of a championship, and the city's population, San Diego has the distinction of being the largest city in the United States to have never won a Major League Sports championship.[1] Furthermore, San Diego has one of largest sports championship droughts in all of the United States, only winning the AFL championship in 1963.[2] This record surpasses Cleveland, Ohio, another cursed city, who's Browns have last won an NFL Championship in 1964. Since then, no other team has won in that city.
Unlike other "curses" that seem to strike particular teams (the Boston Red Sox's Curse of the Bambino, the Chicago White Sox's Curse of the Black Sox – both of which seem to have been lifted, and the Chicago Cubs' Curse of the Billy Goat), this evil is said to have struck all professional teams in the city and county of San Diego (much like Philadelphia's Curse of Billy Penn). Neither the San Diego Padres nor the San Diego Chargers has ever won a championship. Nor has any other major sports team that has resided in San Diego (the Clippers, the Conquistadors and the Rockets) done so while located there. Furthermore, San Diego does not have an NHL team nor an NBA team, making it harder for the city to break the long running problem of being the largest American city without a championship.
[edit] Possible explanations for the curse
The cause of the curse, which is theoretically impossible to prove, can be related to the trade of Chargers wideout Lance Alworth to the Dallas Cowboys in 1970[3], which is similar to Boston's Curse of the Bambino, as the flip side of the curse was the Cowboy's success after the sale, from becoming a team that seemed to be a perennial loser in championship games over the previous five seasons (the Ice Bowl, Super Bowl V) to a team that won the Super Bowl during his first season in Dallas (and has won 5 Super Bowls overall), as well as the distinction of being "America's Team", while the Chargers were sent into a huge championship drought, although that wouldn't explain why all San Diego teams are cursed (the trading of Bambino cursed just the Red Sox, not the Patriots, Celtics, or Bruins, as they all have dynasties in their respective leagues). Other causes of the San Diego Sports Curse (SDSC) are the exceptional weather and the high quality of life many San Diegans enjoy. This line of thinking promotes the idea that the more miserable a place is to live, the more likely that place is to have a winning sports franchise. Of course, that premise is refuted when one looks at Buffalo, New York (the only NFL team to lose four straight Super Bowls), and looking at recent NHL/NBA champions from the Southern U.S. (Mighty Ducks, Lightning, Hurricanes, Lakers, Spurs)
[edit] Signature moments
The Championship Record of all of San Diego Sports teams as of 2007 stands at 1-7 with appearances at 5 AFL Championships, 2 World Series, and 1 Super Bowl.
[edit] San Diego Padres
Many famous athletes, such as
Major League Baseball Hall of Famer
Tony Gwynn (pictured), were unable to win Major League championships during their tenures in San Diego.
- In the Padres' two lone World Series appearances, their record is an appalling 1-8. They lost the 1984 World Series to the Detroit Tigers, 4 games to 1, and the 1998 World Series to the New York Yankees, 4 games to 0.
- The Padres came back from a 2-0 deficit to win the best-of-five 1984 National League Championship Series against the Chicago Cubs. The NLCS was changed to a best-of-seven series the following season. Also, in 1989, Dave Dravecky lost his pitching arm to cancer, Alan Wiggins died from AIDS complications in 1991 and Eric Show died mysteriously in 1994.
- In Game 1 of the 1998 World Series, Padres pitcher Mark Langston threw what appeared to be strike three to Yankees first baseman Tino Martinez in a 2-2 count, bases-loaded, two-out, tie-game situation. Home plate umpire Rich Garcia called the pitch a ball, and Martinez hit the next pitch for a grand slam, putting the Yankees ahead 9-5. Sports Illustrated's October 19, 1998 cover story was entitled "Kill the Umps! Missed Calls and Skewed Strike Zones are Marring the Postseason: Here's How."
- San Diego has lost to the St. Louis Cardinals, 3 times in the National League Division Series (1996, 2005, and 2006), with an overall record of 1-9 against the Cardinals in the playoffs. Following the 2006 series loss, the Cardinals went on to win the 2006 World Series.
- In 2007 the Padres blew a lead in the NL Wild Card race by losing the last two games of the year to the Milwaukee Brewers. They then lost a tiebreaking game to the Colorado Rockies in 13 innings after star closer, career saves leader, and likely Hall-of-Famer Trevor Hoffman blew his second save in three games and allowed the winning run, this one on yet another blown call by a home plate umpire. (In the first of the three games, Tony Gwynn, Jr., the son of the Padre legend, tied the game with a triple in the ninth with two outs and two strikes against him.)
- The Padres are currently the only MLB team to win at least two league championships and never win the World Series.
- The Padres have never had a player hit for the cycle or a pitcher throw a no-hitter.
- Padres pitcher, Jake Peavy, was on the verge of tying Tom Seaver's MLB consecutive strikeout record at 10 on April 25, 2007 when umpire Jeff Kellogg missed Eric Byrnes' go around on what would have been the third strike, Byrnes would eventually walk.
[edit] San Diego Chargers
- The Chargers overall playoff record, as of 2007, stands at only 8-13, which calculates to a dismal .380 winning percentage.[4] Until defeating the Tennessee Titans on January 6, 2008, the Chargers had not won a postseason game since their Super Bowl run in 1994.
- In the Chargers' only Super Bowl appearance to date (Super Bowl XXIX, 1995), San Diego lost to their regional rivals, the San Francisco 49ers, 49-26, for San Francisco's fifth Super Bowl win. The MVP was 49ers quarterback Steve Young, who threw a Super Bowl record 6 touchdown passes.
- San Diego has appeared in only 4 AFC Championship games, three of which have ended in failure. One is the Freezer Bowl, on January 10, 1982, against the Cincinnati Bengals, at Riverfront Stadium, which they lost 27-7. The other was played on January 11, 1981, where they lost to their arch rivals, the Oakland Raiders, 34-27, who would later go on to win Super Bowl XV. They also lost against the New England Patriots .
- The Chargers defeated the heavily-favored Pittsburgh Steelers in the 1995 AFC Championship game. Within 18 months, Chargers running back Rodney Culver was killed in a plane crash in Florida.
- Many former Charger players, such as Lance Alworth and Rodney Harrison, upon leaving San Diego to other teams, went on to win the Super Bowl.
- The Chargers are the only team in the AFC West to have not yet hoisted up a Vince Lombardi Trophy (although the Seattle Seahawks, in the AFC West for most of the history of the NFL, have not won a Super Bowl either.)
- Possibly because of the lack of a Super Bowl win, the Chargers have a weak fan loyalty base, being ranked 22nd at fan support by a recent study of NFL team fan loyalty, a weak 24th place in average fan attendance and an even-worse 28th in percentage of fan capacity, despite having over 50,000 upcoming season ticket holders for the 2007 season.[5]
- Also not aiding the Charger cause is the fact that San Diego plays in one of the oldest stadiums in the entire NFL, Qualcomm Stadium, which opened as San Diego Stadium in 1967. The relative age of the stadium was the prime reason for many alleged scares, of the Chargers exiting San Diego for Los Angeles, which was eventually proven to be false.
- Former head coach Marty Schottenheimer has been known to choke in the playoffs, with all three teams that he has been head coach (Cleveland, Kansas City, and San Diego), and the Chargers are no exception. In the 2004 NFL Wildcard Playoffs, they lost to the New York Jets, 20-17 in overtime by a field goal. Two years later in the Divisional Playoffs, San Diego had the NFL's best regular season record, at 14-2. But they lost against the New England Patriots, 24-21, by a field goal during the last minutes of the game. Both losses occurred in San Diego's own Qualcomm Stadium.
The only sports that have featured championship teams were the San Diego Sockers, who won 10 professional indoor soccer league championships, and the San Diego Gulls won five West Coast Hockey League championships.
[edit] Other moments/trivia
- 22 years after the Rockets relocated to Houston, they won two consecutive NBA finals in 1994 and 1995.
- Every time San Diego has hosted the Super Bowl, one of the Chargers division rivals has represented the AFC (The Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XXII and XXXII and the Oakland Raiders in XXXVII).
- The curse of post-season failure extends even to college sports. The San Diego State Aztecs have never won a game in the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament[6], and the football team has not won a bowl game in the past 37 years (0-3 since their 1969 Pasadena Bowl victory)[7].
- The USD Toreros men's basketball team won their first NCAA Tournament game by upsetting national powerhouse UConn in 2008. This first win for any San Diego school, and thoughts of continued winning were dashed when head coach, Bill Grier was offered a job at Pac-10 School Oregon State 2 weeks later, but he decided to stay at San Diego.
- The curse may also extend to native San Diegan individuals.
- San Diego native Ted Williams is considered by many to be the greatest hitter in baseball history, but he never played on a World Series winner, had an unsuccessful managerial career, and the last years of his life and the events surrounding his death were controversial.
- Although he won NCAA Championships at UCLA and NBA Championships with the 1977 Portland Trail Blazers and the 1986 Boston Celtics, San Diego native Bill Walton had an injury-plagued career that prevented him from showing his full potential.
- Many native San Diegans have won collegiate and/or professional championships (for example, Marcus Allen, Terrell Davis, Cliff Levingston, Lincoln Kennedy, Reggie Bush), but none have ever done so as a member of a San Diego-based team.
- The Los Angeles Clippers, who have been inept for years after leaving Buffalo and before going to Los Angeles played a few years in San Diego.
[edit] See also
[edit] References
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