The Kept Faith: Ten Years

The Kept Faith: Ten Years

The day after the Padres Opening Day 2008 I published the first post on thekeptfaith.blogspot.com. No, I wasn’t in my mom’s basement. I was 27 years old and was using my future wife’s better computer at her apartment in University Heights. Once posted, I sent the link to the new blog to about thirty people from my first email account (JohnnyUtah37@hotmail.com) and The Kept Faith journey was off and running.

I recently found a word file of the first post. It’s a Bill Simmons influenced mess, but here’s a taste:

Being a fan of The San Diego Padres is like being a hardcore fan of Dennis Quaid.  Dennis Quaid is completely watchable in almost everything he does and he was with Meg Ryan. While he has the chops to carry a movie that can be the best movie of the year, he also doesn’t upset anybody if he gives a bad performance. You never hear anybody complain about Dennis Quaid mailing it in and you never hear somebody say after watching the Oscars, “Man, next year is going to be Quaid’s year.” If it were possible for you to be a hardcore Dennis Quaid fan, you would have to except that you would probably never get to go out to a bar after the Oscars, puff out your chest, and start shit with a bunch of Russell Crowe fans saying things like, “Your boy should have played another crazy mathematician,” and “That was for Proof Of Life, BITCH!” 

I go on to talk about Meg Ryan leaving Quaid for Crowe. Then I go into her performance in Top Gun and tie it to San Diego…blah blah blah. Regardless, that night after posting I hung out with Dallas McLaughlin at his then girlfriend’s house. While sitting on his couch, he opened his web browser on his laptop and I saw that he had made my new blog his homepage. I decided he could write for the site right there and we were off.

Ten years later, along with Travis Russell, we’ve built out a website, grown a weekly podcast, and made lasting connections with people all over this community from all walks of life. The common thread with all of this is the love for our city. Sports are played in San Diego and the decisions made by the people in charge of them still seem to inform our identity. I’ll always be fascinated by that dynamic. They ask for our faith and we give it to them. Then what? We’ve been trying to answer that question for a decade and we’d like to thank you for coming along with us on that journey.

When Kevin Klein from 97.3 The Machine posted the *JUMP/Coronado Bridge meme he wasn’t just displaying a tasteless lack of compassion for the subject of suicide, he was also asking this community to come to his show. He wanted us to take a leap of faith that his content would fill a hole in our lives that we needed early in the morning. We might not be the best sports city in the conventional sense, but we know we aren’t that. I want to spend the next decade of The Kept Faith figuring out who we are with out being victimized by our past. I want to fill in the gaps so a suit at Entercom doesn’t try to shape us with some “fake edgy” sensibility that’s disgusting on multiple levels.

Hopefully the Padres win the World Series in 2020, the Chargers fold, and Joe Tsai saves us all. Until then, keep stopping by. We’ll be here!

 

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Nick was born in San Diego in 1980. He started The Kept Faith on blogspot in 2008.

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