PHOENIX, Arizona. An explosion rocked Phoenix this morning after Arizona Cardinals' owner William V. Bidwill caused Sun Devil Stadium to be demolished in the erroneous belief that he owned it.
Bidwill: "I own the Royals? They suck too."
The stadium is owned by Arizona State University and is the home field of that school's football team, as well as the site of the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl. The Cardinals played there from 1998 to 2005, but moved to a newly-constructed stadium last month.
Green: "I'll explain it at my next press conference."
Cardinals coach Dennis Green expressed regret when informed of the mistake. "Wow--that's a doozy. I hope we have insurance."
"Sorry--I couldn't hear you. Did you say 'Wait a minute!'?"
Major league teams often destroy their former home fields when they build a new stadium said Janice McNeil of HOK Architecture, the firm that designed Baltimore's Camden Yards. "You should always make sure you have the deed to the stadium when you blow it up," she cautioned. "I tell my clients to put that at the tippy-top of the list of things to check before they push the little red button on the detonator."
Bidwill, managing general partner of the team, promised that ASU would be reimbursed for the damage. "I don't know why they're making such a big deal out of it," he said. "The place was a dump."
John David Crow, former Cardinals running back: "Bidwill still owes me meal money."
The Cardinals are the oldest continuously-operated pro football franchise in America, and the most inept. The team traces its lineage back to 1898, when it was formed as the Morgan Athletic Club. It was known for a time as the Racine, Wisconsin Normals, and took the name "Cardinals" in 1901 when it received a set of used University of Chicago jerseys whose trademark maroon coloring had faded to red.
Since adopting the Cardinal as their mascot, the team has played in and fled from fans in Chicago and St. Louis before moving to Phoenix in 1988. In 107 years of competition the Cardinals have finished at the top of the standings only twice, first in 1925 by virtue of having the league's best record (NFL postseason play did not begin until 1933) and the last in 1947 when they defeated the Philadelphia Eagles 28-21 in the NFL Championship Game.
Boldin: "Throw the freakin' bean bag!"
Cardinals' wide receiver Anquan Boldin was outraged when he learned that the Detroit Lions had been voted the worst NFL franchise of all time in a recent on-line poll. "Just shows you there's a lot of ignorant people on the internet," he said, noting that the Cardinals' all-time won-lost percentage of .414 was much worse than the Lions' .476. He urged Cardinals' coach Green to "Throw the freakin' bean bag and challenge the call!"
Con Chapman is the author of "The Year of the Gerbil: How the Yankees Won (and the Red Sox Lost) the Greatest Pennant Race Ever," a history of the 1978 AL East pennant race, and "CannaCorn", a novel about minor league baseball to be published by Joshua Tree Publishing in 2009. He has written a number of plays, including "Number One Hockey Mom," "Please, Pope," and "What Mickey Belle Isle Told You," a trilogy about hockey (JAC Publishing). His articles and humor have appeared in newspapers and magazines including The Boston Globe, The Boston Herald, and The Atlantic Monthly, among others.
