Balboa Park

Statue of El Cid

San Diego is renowned for outdoor landmarks, like its zoo and Sea World, but it has attractions that will appear to the indoor crowd, too. Balboa Park has been nicknamed Smithsonian west because of the 15 museums that dot its 1,200 acres (“the nation’s largest urban cultural park”) near downtown San Diego.

The museum pass entitles the pass-holder to one visit per museum over a consecutive seven-day period. The price was a bargain $35 (no charge for parking). We spent three leisurely days walking around Balboa Park and its museums. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, and the temperature never rose above 80 degrees.

Hall of Champions, Balboa Park

Our first visit was to the Hall of Champions, which honors sports figures who have a connection with San Diego.

The youngster was impressed that I knew most of the names on the chart that explained football's West Coast Offense. Like most casual fans, he thought 49er coach Bill Walsh developed the short-passing ball-control offense that achieved spectacular success in the 1980's, but the chart showed that the originators of West-Coast-Offense principles were San Diego Chargers coaches Sid Gillman and Don Coryell.

Tony Gwynn played for the Padres during his entire career, had the highest lifetime batting average (.338) of players beginning their careers after World War II, won the National League batting title eight times, and will be inducted to the Hall of Fame later this month.

Ted Williams, aka the "Splendid Splinter", was the last Major League player to hit over .400 (.406 in 1941) for a season. He was born in San Diego and played for the then-minor-league Padres before beginning his Hall of Fame career with the Red Sox.

There's even a connection with my home state. When Duke Kahanamoku visited Southern California in the early 1900's, San Diego became one of the first cities on the Mainland to embrace surfing. © 2007 Stephen Yuen