Welcome to PETCO Park: Home of Your Enron-by- the-Sea Padres

The story of the controversy surrounding the public funding of San Diego’s PETCO Park and the legal efforts to stop the construction

Mark Hitchcock I. Introduction

On September 12, 1998, the San Diego Padres fell behind the Los Angeles Dodgers 7-0 before roaring back for an 8-7 win. Greg Vaughn capped his incredible fifty-homerun year by driving in the winning run with a two-out single in the sixth inning. Future Hall-of-Famer Trevor Hoffman closed out the Dodgers to win the National League Western Division title for the Padres in front of a sellout crowd of 60,823 at Qualcomm Stadium. Even with eight home games left to play, the clinching sellout was enough to set the franchise record for season attendance. Led by Tony Gwynn, Ken Caminiti, Vaughn, and Kevin Brown, the Padres would go on to defeat the Houston Astros and the Atlanta Braves in the playoffs to win only the second National League pennant in the history of their franchise. Although the Padres would be swept the New York Yankees in the World Series, 1998 was a thrilling year for the Padres and their fans. 1 Indeed, Major League Baseball could hardly have wished for a more successful season than the 1998 year. Still reeling from the 1994 strike that cancelled the World Series for the first time in ninety years, attendance throughout baseball was up significantly in 1998 as fans came out to watch the dominant Yankees win 114 regular season games and record-breaking individual performances across the league.2 At the center of baseball’s revival were Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, who spent the summer one-upping each other as they chased and eventually shattered Roger Maris’ single season mark of sixty-one homeruns, arguably baseball’s most hallowed record. Commissioner Bud Selig called it “a renaissance” in baseball. The New York Times called the 1998 season “magical.”3 In a news year dominated by the Clinton / Lewinsky scandal, baseball was the feel-good story of the summer. The San Diego Padres were no doubt thrilled with how the 1998 season panned out, both in terms of the team’s individual success and in the resurgence of baseball more generally. McGwire and Sosa were treated as national heroes4, and baseball truly reasserted itself as America’s national pastime. The timing could hardly have been better for the Padres. Throughout the 1998 season, as his team compiled the most wins in the franchise’s history, 1 Krasovic: Padres cap dream season with 8-7 comeback vs. Dodgers. San Diego Union-Tribune. September 13, 1998. A-1; Center: Padres hoist the flag: L.A. blows 7-0 lead in sweet clincher. San Diego Union-Tribune. September 13, 1998. C-1. 2 Wertheim: Did Mac and Sammy Save Baseball? Sports Illustrated, September 20, 1999. 3 Kakutani: The Taint Baseball Couldn’t Wash Away. New York Times. July 5, 2005. 4 But see, Mitchell: Report to the Commissioner of Baseball of an Independent Investigation Into the Illegal Use of Steroids and Other Performance Enhancing Substances By Players in Major League Baseball. December 13, 2007. Available at http://i.l.cnn.net/cnn/2007/images/12/13/mitchell.report.pdf.

Padres majority owner John Moores was preoccupied with the upcoming election. In August 1998, Moores had convinced the City of San Diego City Council to pass an ordinance that placed Proposition C on the November 1998 general election ballot.5 Although strategically drafted to refer only to the “redevelopment” of downtown San Diego, Proposition C was in fact a referendum on a new baseball stadium for the Padres that would be built with mostly public funds. The proposed $270 million ballpark would be the centerpiece of a $411 million plan to redevelop part of downtown San Diego. The plan called for the Padres to contribute $115 million, while the City of San Diego would be responsible for the remaining $296 million.6 While the San Diego City Council was working with John Moores and the Padres to develop a plan to build a dramatic new downtown baseball-only stadium, City officials were seemingly neglecting other managerial duties. A 2006 report by an indepe

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