This weekend, the San Jose Earthquakes begin their 2025 campaign. A new jersey sponsor, El Camino Health, at whose Mountain View hospital I was delivered, now adorns all Quakes uniforms.
I tried very hard not to make this column personal. But I failed. You are now reading the results of that failure.
Just when I think I’ve finally written enough about San Jose Earthquakes history—two books and maybe 100 other stories over the course of 25 years, all to articulate the births, deaths and reincarnations of this club—the team now cuts a landmark local sponsorship deal and holds the press conference where I was born.
The only way for me to understand this history is via what Buddhists call interconnectivity. All things are mutually dependent. All things influence each other. Everything arises due to causes and conditions.
You see, one primary feature of some journalism schools is to tell kids there should be no “I” in journalism, thus removing the observer from the experiment. Not for this column. Sorry. I never went to journalism school, I tend to ignore these things anyway, but especially in this case, there is no other way for me to explain any of this. So here goes.
As the ’60s came barreling to a conclusion, my parents lived in a small Palo Alto apartment at 1036 Colorado Ave. My dad worked at IBM, which then had a lab in Palo Alto. I was supposed to be born at Stanford, but due to a minor flu epidemic in the pediatric department, the doctor sent my parents to El Camino Hospital instead.
Even though I was born in Mountain View, we moved to San Jose when I was about three months old, so I’ve always claimed to be “born and raised” in San Jo, even if that’s not 100% true. I will continue to make that claim. San Jose is my home town. Always will be.
Once again, every phenomenon arises due to the coming together of previous phenomena. The journey of the San Jose Earthquakes, inseparable from my own journey, is a prime example. I have seen the long strange trip from day one and now I am returning to where I came from—El Camino Hospital—to write another column and report what I’ve learned. It isn’t quite the Hero’s Journey from all the Joseph Campbell stuff, but it’s close enough.
So what have I learned?
El Camino Hospital first opened in 1961, replacing a 20-acre orchard on Grant Road, just five years after Shockley Semiconductor was founded and 25 years before Bill Graham and Jerry Garcia designed Shoreline Amphitheatre. In 2011, the hospital celebrated its 50th anniversary. More recently, the kids of Quakes star forward Christian Espinoza were also born at El Camino Hospital.
Similarly, the original San Jose Earthquakes team was born in 1974. Last year the club celebrated its 50th anniversary. Both organizations are survivors. A few weeks ago, the press conference announcing the partnership featured doctors, nurses, Earthquakes first-team players and youth academy participants.
Assessing the journey, I felt nothing but gratitude. Had my dad not emigrated to the US and met my mom at San Jose State, I would never have emerged at El Camino Hospital. If they hadn’t purchased tickets to Earthquakes games in the ’70s, I would never have attended those games. Without additional season tickets beginning at the inception of the next phase, Major League Soccer in 1996, I wouldn’t have cared about covering the games, as a journalist, beginning in 2001. Had I not continued on this path, History Press would not have published two books and I would not be here in 2025 carrying on about the hospital where I was born, which is now on every current Earthquakes jersey.
OK, well, maybe not the actual hospital, but the nonprofit that runs it. The partnership between El Camino Health and the Quakes is a great deal.
All of this makes much more sense than some of the other clubs’ jersey sponsors, if you really think about it. Many of them have national sponsors—car manufacturers, beer companies, banks and even national health networks. The Quakes prioritize local connections that go way back, a beautiful thing.
