A Doug's Life: Even in Padres land, he's loyal to Dodger blue

By Doug Spoon, Editor

It wasn’t until my neighbor saw me wearing a Dodgers jersey and shouted “Go Padres!” that I wondered if I could actually be in enemy territory.

Growing up in the San Gabriel Valley, I always considered the area to be Dodger territory. I somewhat followed the Angels, but they were Orange County’s team. And when the San Diego Padres were born in 1969, well … San Diego was far away in a young man’s mind.

The Dodgers got here first, and they were Southern California’s team, as far as I was concerned. Then when I became a sports writer and started covering the Dodgers in 1983, they became even more synonymous with major league baseball in my mind.

Then in 2011, I moved to Menifee.

In my mind, L.A. was more connected to the Inland Empire than was Orange County, even though Angels Stadium is about 26 miles closer to Menifee than Dodger Stadium. I’ll stick with the winning tradition, I figured. If it’s a choice between watching the Dodgers or Angels, I’ll take the Dodgers every time.

But now there’s this Dodgers-Padres rivalry that has cropped up, and there sure are a lot of Padres fans getting worked up around here. I’ll admit they have a beautiful stadium, but I don’t see myself jumping on the Padres bandwagon anytime soon.

Pardon my stubbornness, but I have trouble thinking of the Padres as anything other than an expansion team that wears dreary mud brown uniforms. OK, so 1969 seems a lifetime ago, but some things never change. I can feel comfortable calling myself a Menifeean, but a Padres fan? Can’t do it.

Even so, I have to give credit to San Diego sports fans. They’re loyal to their teams. I have friends who, rather than calling the Chargers traitors after they moved to L.A., drive north on a regular basis to watch their home games. That’s admirable.

So while I can understand longtime residents of Riverside County staying loyal to the Padres, I will continue to bleed Dodger blue. I will always have the memories of sitting in Dodger Stadium as a kid, fascinated with the events unfolding on the field below. I will always remember taking my son to Dodger games and watching him catch home run balls in batting practice.

I will always remember covering the Dodgers as an adult, witnessing the heroics on the field and the pranks in the clubhouse. I remember Tommy Lasorda stopping the team bus in Philadelphia to pick up pasta at his favorite hometown restaurant. I remember the road trips to New York and Chicago and Philadelphia and Montreal (when they had a team). I remember Kirk Gibson’s World Series home run.

And I remember the camaraderie with my fellow Dodger beat writers in the press box. I remember the days spent typing my game story on a portable typewriter, then faxing it into the office. I remember when the first Radio Shack laptops came in (better have a fresh set of AA batteries).

I remember one day, during batting practice, when Bill Russell signaled that he was going to throw a baseball into the press box to see if we could catch it. I remember how he was a bit wide left, the ball crashing into the laptop of a colleague who was downstairs at the time.

Oh, I will venture down to Petco Park once in a while to catch a Padres game. But in general, it’s the Dodgers for me. And if you see me around town wearing my Dodgers jersey, let me know who you’re rooting for. Competition is healthy.