"71" // Episode Three

You're listening to I Have No Process. I am your host, Nicholas England. This is the third episode of 71.

When I was a boy, I didn't care about sports.

I watched the Olympics out of genuine interest. But for the most part, I reckoned that the sporting industrial complex was both self-serious and insignificant. In team sports, especially. If this side or that side won, what did it matter to those who weren't playing? From someone watching from the stands or at home, what was there to learn about life? I didn't understand. I wasn't naturally gifted in athletics. In elementary school, I was a notorious defender on the soccer field.

Anytime I'd go for the ball, I'd miss and take out somebody's shins instead. My hand-eye coordination has always been subpar. My arm strength weak. The one schoolyard game I excelled at was dodgeball, and only because I was fearless throwing my body around the pavement. I liked to swim. I liked to boogie board. I liked to hike. I loved digging trenches, building forts. I loved playing outside, in the canyons, in the streets. But my father and I never played catch.

I never looked at my youthful body and thought, "I should wield this in competition against my betters." From the outside looking in, I thought sports were sort of boring. My first suicide attempt took place in September of 2007. I was 18 years old, just starting my second year of college. Once I recovered, I dropped out of school and took some time to re-examine my life. I realized, among other things, that I had to stop overthinking so much.

I needed to relax, to take the drastic character out of my concerns. So one of my solutions for salutary change was to start watching sports. Because according to my naive logic, sports were a mindless, meaningless enterprise. Sound and fury, maybe, but not a lot of substance. I had a good friend who was watching football with his roommates down at UCSD every Sunday. I asked if I could join them on a regular basis. Put my feet up for 10 hours.

Enjoy the company of some intelligent, fun-loving guys. Put my brain in neutral for a day. Take it easy. By the end of that regular season, I'd memorized the touchdown-to-interception ratio for every starting quarterback in the league. I'd rented every NFL films documentary covering seasons going back to 1966. I understood the nickels and dimes, the A-gaps and wide nines, the bubble screen and the QB spy.

Within three months, I was a bona fide expert who comprehended the touchstones and shorthands of football's great mythology. The immaculate reception, 47 wide right, the drive, the catch. I might as well have been there for all of them. I suddenly had opinions about who the greatest players of all time were. Men I'd never actually seen with my own two eyes. People like Otto Graham, Barry Sanders, Deacon Jones. This was all academic, notions shrouded in the archival.

None of it could compare to the season that was unfolding before me. In 2007, my birthtown Patriots went undefeated in the regular season with a then-record 50 passing touchdowns from Tom Brady. Many pundits considered this the greatest team in the history of the sport. Meanwhile, my hometown Chargers ended their campaign in style. They disappointed in the first month, evened out a bit in the second, then went on to win their last six games to take the AFC West.

The team was full of talent and personality. They played in the greatest football game I would ever see. One where Darren Sproles had two return touchdowns, they picked off Peyton Manning six times and still barely won. Classic Chargers. I was nine weeks into watching football. Classic Chargers, I'd think. The Patriots and Chargers ended up meeting in the AFC Championship game. That whole week leading up to the contest, I thought, I have to root against the Chargers just this once.

The Patriots had a perfect season on the line. It hadn't been done since the 72 Dolphins. It'd never been done in a 16-game season. To root for them was to root for history, greatness, things impersonal, things beyond. So I rationalized anyway. That cold January morning, just before kickoff, I knew none of that crap mattered. I had to root for the Chargers. They were my team. Those were my guys. They had a chance at the Super Bowl?

This kind of opportunity doesn't come around every year, much less every decade. You think your arrow is pointing up, but the stepping stone is as high as you ever reach. This was their best chance to win it all. No banking on tomorrow. No such thing as destiny. This was it. I was fanatic. This was it. It was a brutal game.

The Patriots pulled off goal line stand after goal line stand, the most insulting of which was when Junior Seau, the former San Diego legend, tackled Michael Turner just short of the end zone. After three tense and grueling hours, the undefeated Patriots were going to the Super Bowl. Classic Chargers. I was disappointed, but not without solace. At least that perfect season would come true after all. I drove up to the Bay Area to stay with my brother those couple weeks before the Super Bowl.

He was a Patriots fan, as he was much older than me when we moved to San Diego, and therefore more connected and loyal to the teams he'd grown up with. We talked at length about the Patriot way. Do your job. What we could each take away from their virtuous example. How ennobling and empowering it was to watch them play. There were life lessons to sports after all. There was philosophy, history, tradition, discipline, tenacity, everything.

Twenty-two men on the field, each one of them matters every second that goes by. I was in love with the set pieces, the drama, the triumph, the tragedy. My brother and I didn't talk as ecstatically after the Patriots lost the Super Bowl. It wasn't that the result didn't make sense to us. It was that everything we'd told ourselves was bullshit. Every way we'd puffed ourselves up. Grass in the breeze. Little did I know, that's the nature of watching and caring about sports.

I exclusively watched football until 2010. The Padres were a lovable bunch of losers, so my interest in them took a while to burgeon. The Chargers continued their titillating run of mediocre excellence. They started slow again in 2008 and came on strong again. In the divisional round, facing the eventual champion Steelers, they held the ball for seventeen seconds in the third quarter, and that was the end of that.

In 2009, the Chargers started off slow yet again, but when they picked it up, they looked truly dominant. There was a game against the Cowboys where they executed a long drive in the fourth quarter to put the game away, just like Mendenhall and the Steelers had done against them the year before. I thought, this is it. They've matured. They've finally figured it out. This is winning football. Then Nate Kading missed three field goals against Mark Sanchez and the Jets, and that season was over.

2010 was the most Chargers season ever. They had the number one offense in the league and the number one defense, and they missed the playoffs because their special teams were just that special. Amid growing concerns with concussions, domestic violence, and the rigid conservatism of the owners and their puppet, Goodell, I gradually lost interest in football. When the Chargers left town years later, I said, good riddance.

I was happy to devote myself entirely to the Padres, because they weren't meant to win, so there was nothing to worry about. This was the dream. Root for a crap team, never have expectations, never suffer. I finally found what I'd been craving since I first got into sports. With the Padres, I could take it easy. Through most of the 2010s, the Padres tended to have fairly good pitching and absolutely zero run support. In 2011, Ryan Ludwig led the team with 11 home runs.

In 2014, it was Yasmine Grandal with 15. From 2011 to 2018, we won between 68 and 77 games each year. We gave up on prospects who turned into superstars, like when we traded Trea Turner for Wil Myers. We signed accomplished players who were past their prime and ready to underachieve. The Orlando Hudsons and Jorge Cantus of the world. If we had a talented player, like Adrian Gonzalez or Chase Headley, we had to trade them for draft capital because we weren't going anywhere with them.

When great players signed with us, they performed as though they had dementia. We're still thinking of you, Eric Hosmer. And when we ditched a mediocre veteran, they suddenly remembered their skills as soon as they moved on. Edinson Volquez's World Series with the Royals is a testament to that. The people of San Diego knew the score. The Padres weren't just afterthoughts. They were cursed. There was no way to construct them or manage them into something formidable.

They were supposed to let you down. It was all part of the plan. It was baked into the experience. And it came with the ironic benefit that you were never let down. Everything changed when they brought up Tatis. When Fernando Tatis Jr. made his big league debut, he was sensational. He had blazing speed, unbelievable power, and show-stopping defensive chops. Within three years, the Padres handed him the equivalent of a lifetime contract.

Before we knew it, a player on the Padres was the face of baseball's bright future. And he wasn't alone. The Padres signed Yu Darvish, one of the most creative aces of his generation. They signed Manny Machado, arguably the best third baseman in the league. They traded for Joe Musgrove, the local kid from El Cajon, who went on to pitch the first no-hitter in Padres' history. There was no going back. The Padres were for real, a pleasant mix of homegrown talent and expert veteran mercenaries.

And they were trending up. They were building toward being that ultimate kind of special. A championship crew in San Diego. A city that hadn't won a title in any major sport since the mergers. Then Tatis got injured, riding on his motorcycle in the off-season. Our guy was a super-duper star at 22 years old. He was living large. His behavior might have been reckless, but who were we in our armchairs at home to complain? Then Tatis got caught using steroids during his recovery.

He'd miss a full season, recovering from injury and ignominy. Wouldn't you know, the Padres didn't miss a beat without him. All the rest of those amazing guys the team had amassed during Tatis' ascendancy, they were putting in the work. At the end of the '22 season, the wild-card Padres went on to stun Buck Showalter's 100-win Mets. And then the Padres did something truly unthinkable. They defeated their biggest rival in the playoffs.

The Los Angeles Dodgers. The Padres' nemesis, their bully of an older brother, who'd owned the division for a decade, who couldn't even call us a rival in return, because we didn't mean that much to them. The Padres were 22 games behind the Dodgers at the end of the season. Then they went into LA and absolutely smacked the crap out of them. Without Tatis, without fear, they won. That was our World Series. In a way, it meant as much as any World Series could.

Because sometimes, it's about who you beat, and beating LA was the sweetest thing we could taste. We lost to a tough Philadelphia team in the next round. No hard feelings there. As we approached the spring of '23, we knew we had it made. We'd eclipsed the Dodgers. We had Tatis coming back. Talent and depth at nearly every position. An experienced manager at the helm. The precipice to greatness had arrived. The hopes of thousands were riding on their quality.

It was make it or break it time in San Diego. God how they broke it.

Game 16.

Brewers 3. Padres 10, April 15, 2023. Douglas Adams, Jackie Robinson, and the Buddha have not spoken. Neither among one another, nor with Nelson Cruz, now the age of 42. There is a popular saying when one yearns for touch. "We are all so and so." But you know you are not Jackie Robinson the moment you wear his number. Game 17. Brewers 1. Padres 0, April 16, 2023. My brother occupies the recliner beside me as Hader commands the mound. Max's head tilts with the weight of his vagrant wonder.

"Does a pitcher grow their hair out for the same reason a Japanese warrior puts a feather "at the tip of their spear? "To distract their opponent?" The contest ends with the bases loaded. The count full. Grisham, patient for once, strikes out looking. Looking for the right swing. There will be more games, other opportunities, but he will never find that swing again. Game 18. Braves 2. Padres 0, April 17, 2023. In two innings, the Padres strand four more runners.

At this, they are the worst in the league. Now every man petrified out there on the base paths is a twist of the knife lodged within my throat. I would rather hold my mother's hand while it's still warm. Game 19. Braves 8, Padres 1, April 18, 2023. Two men on for the Padres. Two outs, two balls for Kim. Strider leaves a breaking ball up in the zone, yet Kim just watches it go by. This was the chance to break the slump. To turn the tide. It is foolish of me to remark upon this.

For what that never happened mattered? Game 20. Braves 0, Padres 1, April 19, 2023. Were I to wield the shillelagh, I would want my walk-up music to relax the tension clutched within the pitcher's stomach. Should his center dissolve, so too might the strike zone. My selection. Cong Su's "Lunch." Game 21. Padres 7, Diamondbacks 5, April 20, 2023. "Three quarters of the globe are covered by water. "The other quarter is covered by that guy, Trent Grisham." "The second base umpire is all over it.

"He's jacked too. "He works out." "And slap some cheese on that thing while you're at it." Were any of these not said by Mark Grant? Game 22. Padres 0, Diamondbacks 9, April 21, 2023. Do we have a choice but to turn the other cheek? Tatis' cosmic talent sears my retinas. A threat to collide with his teammates. He misses the smart play, attempting the otherworldly. As though he alone should be enough. His return has brought me no relief. Fear eats my heart.

The fear old men feel when they stare at their purblind young. When a star implodes, how long does it take to crush everything around it?