I cried at my first sporting event.
I wasn’t upset that the home team was losing. UC Santa Barbara, by all media reports, played a fine basketball game that night before succumbing 59-47 to the defending NCAA champion Cal Bears.
My problem was the noise. The sellout crowd roared with each Gaucho score during the grand opening of a brand-new Robertson Gym.
It was Dec. 14, 1959 — and when you’re 5 years old, you care more about the pain in your ears than the one in your heart.
It didn’t keep me from coming back, however. It was the first of countless games in which I tagged along with my dad, Santa Barbara News-Press sports editor Phil Patton. He seized the opportunity to hone my awful math skills, having me keep his statistics at UCSB football and basketball games.
Two decades later, I followed in my late father’s footsteps as a News-Press sports writer, just before UCSB was to open a new basketball arena.
And things got even louder.
ESPN’s Barry Tompkins put it into perspective while announcing UCSB’s historic, 1990 basketball win at the Thunderdome over eventual NCAA champion UNLV:
“The noise in here is at least the equivalent of an airplane firing its engines for takeoff,” Tomkins gushed. “This is unbelievable. I can’t even hear myself.”
The Gauchos completed that raucous season by making the second of their six forays into the NCAA Tournament.
The last one came less than five months ago, just as I was concluding my 43-year tenure at the News-Press. Coach Joe Pasternack guided UCSB to a 22-4 record and a near-upset of Creighton in the first round.
The irony amid all that winning wasn’t lost on me as the COVID-19 pandemic raged on: It had been the quietest of seasons, with spectators banned from every game.
It was enough to make a retiring sports writer cry all over again.
The beauty of sports, however, is that there’s always a next season. The fans will be back … and as it turns out, so will I.
Noozhawk has recruited me to its internet platform to write, among other things, a weekly column about local athletics. It’s an exciting time for sports in this town, as well as for this expanding news medium, so count me in.
UCSB has been modernizing its athletic venue with improvements to the Thunderdome, Caesar Uyesaka Baseball Stadium, Harder Soccer Stadium, and Pauley Track. It’s also about to complete its new, $5.25 million Arnhold Tennis Center.
SBCC has been in a reconstructive mood, as well, laying down a new playing surface at La Playa Stadium as well as plans for a remodeled Sports Pavilion.
The gymnasiums, baseball diamonds and football stadiums at all of the area’s public high schools have undergone renovations, as well.
Peabody Stadium was already 36 years old when I attended my first football game, watching Santa Barbara High’s CIF championship team of 1960 celebrate its homecoming with a 27-6 win over Ventura.
I had tagged along with my new neighborhood pal, Scotty Cathcart, who was the son of the Dons’ head coach. And I was no longer a 5-year-old crybaby. We were big, bad 6-year-olds, joining in to make our own noise at the jam-packed stadium.
A reconstructed Peabody Stadium was unveiled last spring on — no joke — April Fool’s Day for Santa Barbara High’s coronavirus-delayed, home opener against Hueneme. Only family members, however, were allowed to attend.
A grand reopening for all Dons fans is just two weeks away, with Saugus coming to town for the Aug. 20, season opener.
But the beauty of Santa Barbara is that you don’t have to wait — or even spectate — for your sports. Something is always on tap, whether you’re fond of surfing, or golfing, or running, or cycling, or playing slo-pitch softball. I’ve tried them all with varying degrees of ineptitude.
Or maybe you just want to enjoy a balmy evening and watch a Santa Barbara Foresters baseball game at seaside Pershing Park.
I’ve seen it all since Pop came here from the Merced Sun-Star, trading that dusty Central Valley town for this Pacific paradise. I was just a few weeks old at the time, and Mom said I wailed the entire way here.
Must’ve been tears of joy.
— Noozhawk sports columnist Mark Patton is a longtime local sports writer. Contact him at sports@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk Sports on Twitter: @NoozhawkSports. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook. The opinions expressed are his own.