Craig Martin and Steve Ynzunza have been longtime Sharks season
ticket holders
Craig Martin and Steve Ynzunza have been longtime Sharks season ticket holders
n By MARC DAVID SPORTS EDITOR
Gilroy – To longtime hockey fans, it seems like yesterday when the San Jose Sharks were an expansion team.
That was 16 seasons ago. Before there was HP Pavilion, there was the Cow Palace in San Francisco. And there were a bunch of Gilroyans who made the 1 1/2 hour trek 40 times a season.
“I made every home game that first season,” Gilroy High School teacher and coach Craig Martin said. “There were a group of us, six or eight of us, who would make those trips. We carpooled up together. There were many, many nights when we got home after midnight.”
Sometimes, way after midnight.
“Yeah, sometimes we didn’t get back until 1:30am,” said Steve Ynzunza, the 911 Communications Supervisor for the Gilroy Police Department.
It was Martin who got Ynunza interested in hockey. They started playing roller hockey together and graduated to the ice. And they attended their first professional game at the Oakland Coliseum. But don’t ask Ynunza who played.
“There was a Hofbrau outside the Coliseum,” Ynunza recalled. “I can’t remember who played that night.”
He can remember the good times, including the ESPN-televised game they attended when one of their buddies’ wife called during the contest.
“She called and told him you were just on ESPN, so nobody better have called in sick (to work),” Ynunza said.
Ah, for the good times. For the first time this season, neither Martin nor Ynzunza is a regular at the games. Martin is coaching junior varsity basketball at GHS, and Ynzunza has simply tired of the drives.
However, Martin gave up coaching volleyball so he should be able to get to more playoff games than in the past.
While he still retains season tickets, his sons Scott and Neil have more opportunities to see those games he misses. Ynzunza is splitting his ticket with a friend.
“I’ve only been to two games but I expect to get to some during the next homestand after Thanksgiving (when he gets a break from basketball),” Martin said. “And I expect to get to more playoff games.”
It’s not the same during the early years when Martin would tow his two young sons and wife, Mitzi, to the games. The Sharks played their first three seasons in San Francisco before moving to San Jose.
“Those were crazy, exciting times,” Martin said. “I was there for the first win at home, for the first playoff when they won the series when Jamie Baker got the game winner.
“I got the opportunity to watch Wayne Gretzky, (Jaromir) Jagr, (Mario) Lemieux, (Eric) Lindros and all the other great players,” Martin said. “I got to boo most of them.”
Martin, in fact, was so gung-ho at the beginning that he Federal Expressed his first $100 deposit to make certain the Sharks would receive it on the first day that season tickets became available. That way he got seniority to get choice seats when the Sharks moved from the Cow Palace to San Jose.
He would buy 10 season tickets and sell them to friends. Everyone would sit in Section 208. He stopped that practice when he had trouble collecting money from his friends, and eventually moved to a different seating section.
“Parking at the Cow Palace could be pretty scary,” Ynzunza said.
Martin remembers one of their friends coming out of the Cow Palace to find his car stolen. It was recovered four blocks away stripped.
“I was happy when they moved to San Jose,” Ynunza said. “We would meet different people and make friends and have barbecues with them.”
Martin remembers them meeting between periods with opponents from other ice hockey teams. They would have a few beers and talk hockey.
“Those first few years were pretty crazy,” Ynunza said. “We’d pile in cars and follow each other up (to San Francisco). They were long nights, but we would always end up back at work the next day.”
