Deja vu all over again

Look at some of the headlines from today’s pre-game stories and you’ll see the word “reunion” a lot. A reunion of boyhood chums like John Doyle and Dominic Kinnear, a reunion of former teammates like Ryan Cochrane and Kelly Gray with, well, Ryan Cochrane and Kelly Gray. Maybe it’s just us, but we look forward to the day when a visit from the Houston Dynamo is just another match for the Quakes, instead of an all-too-real reminder of the day in December, 2005, when AEG finally followed through on their threat to move the team to Houston.

To fans, the Dynamo is a reminder of their greatest success and their greatest failure. Two MLS Cups, a Supporters’ Shield, and a forced march to the meteorological hell that is southeastern Texas. San Jose fans know all the reasons and some will even admit that the move was justified on business terms, but it was a wrenching experience nonetheless. The fact that Houston still plays in a stadium where the team plays second fiddle to college football, after all of AEG’s complaints about how playing in Spartan Stadium put them in a terrible financial bind, may satisfy one’s sense of irony, but it is a bitter victory at best. While it may not make sense to the Dynamo players who formerly wore Earthquakes blue with such pride, in many ways it is an insult to Earthquakes fans that their team even exists, even if the players are blameless in the matter.

We hope that doesn’t sound too bitter. Things could be a lot worse. Two years, five months, and seven days have passed since the move was announced (not that we’re counting), and the team that left is not reflected quite so strongly in the orange-clad one that will take the field tonight. For every Dwayne De Rosario or Brian Mullan, there is a Bobby Boswell or Stuart Holden, guys that Quakes fans have no particular feelings about. Only 11 players on the Dynamo roster have ever worn the Quakes’ colors, and one of them, Richard Mulrooney, left San Jose at the end of the 2004 season. Think how jarring it would have been had there been a 2006 San Jose Earthquakes to play against the 2006 Dynamo. Houston has Kinnear but the Quakes have Frank Yallop and trainer Bruce Morgan, the latter of whom is the only person on Earth who has attended, in person, every San Jose match in MLS history. (Can that be said of anyone about any other MLS team? We don’t know but we doubt it. Do not underestimate the Morgan mojo.)

More importantly, San Jose finally has committed owners. Lew Wolff and company have already invested more money in improving the Quakes than any of the team’s previous operators, and that commitment will be on display tonight. Despite whatever sentimental attachment fans have to Spartan Stadium, Buck Shaw is now a better place to see a game. The field is perfect and will remain so, thanks to the fact that college football will never be played there. The seats — even the temporary ones — are at least as nice as those at Spartan, and the new lighting, sound system, and video board at Buck Shaw all show Spartan to be the relic it is. If that’s not enough, drive by 1125 Coleman Avenue tonight and take a look at the 74.8 acre plot that Wolff’s team of investors will start paying for next month, and picture a new stadium, practice fields, hotels, 75,000 square feet of retail, and over a million square feet of office space. That’s the kind of ambitious thinking that will do this soccer team proud and, best of all, it will remove all speculation about the team’s future viability.

Tonight will undoubtedly be a reunion, but it’s more than that. It’s a meeting of San Jose’s soccer past with its future. And no matter how glorious the past was, it was unsustainable because the team simply wasn’t able to turn a profit. The future will be different, and while the team’s current place at the bottom of the table is not pleasing to anyone, the stage is set for even brighter days than we have seen here in the past.

On to the headlines:

- “Departed Earthquakes return to San Jose a Dynamo,” Associated Press
- “Dynamo back where it all began,” Houston Chronicle, which includes the scoop that Kinnear will be having lunch today at The Freshly Baked Eatery on 3rd Street in downtown San Jose “at about 11:01.”
- “Once they were mourned; now old Quakes are the main rival,” in which the Mercury News once again demonstrates how out of touch they are by claiming that Houston and not the L.A. Galaxy are now the Quakes’ archenemies.
- “The once and future Earthquakes meet,” San Francisco Chronicle. Reporter Tom FitzGerald almost gets it right when he says, “For the fans, it will be like seeing a new spouse side-by-side with a former one, when the ex-spouse is a Hollywood star and the new spouse is waiting tables.” Actually, for the fans, their ex-spouse actually is married to a Hollywood star, but their new spouse is a billionaire who’s getting ready to build them a mansion.
- “Quakes trade for Kirovski, Gray,” Soccer America