We are early in the 30th season of Major League Soccer. It makes some of us think about that first year, 1996. And about that first game, April 6, when the San Jose Clash hosted D.C. United in Spartan Stadium. The field was small. The ambitions were big. The crowd of 31,683 was raucous. I was there, with a spectacular view of the game’s only goal.
I was lucky enough to have spectacular views of a lot of San Jose’s goals in the club’s first 16 years of existence. From 1996 to 2011, I was the radio and TV voice of the team known first as the Clash and then the Earthquakes. Unfortunately, I was not calling the first game on the radio. Our team president Peter Bridgwater was an old-school Brit. He didn’t believe in doing home radio. He thought it might impact the home gate. We changed his mind on that, but it took a couple of seasons.
So, I was sitting in the stands with my family for the very first game played in the history of MLS. Dave Johnson was there. He has been the voice of D.C. United for all its 30 seasons. He was in the stadium but, like me, did not have a microphone in hand. Phil Schoen and Ty Keough did; they were in the TV booth for the ABC broadcast, with Bill McDermott on the field. Michael Cohen produced the game, Doug Wren directed.
I talked with all six of them about that day in San Jose. This is their story.
It would be difficult to overstate the importance — emotionally, psychologically, financially — of the first game in MLS history. The top-tier professional league, which had been mandated by FIFA when it awarded the 1994 World Cup to the United States, was already delayed. It was supposed to be up and running in 1995.
Two former NASL cities — San Jose and Washington, D.C. — were picked for the opening game. The San Jose Clash was picked to host, in venerable, cozy Spartan Stadium.
“I remember that feeling of excitement,” Dave Johnson said. “It was like Christmas morning times 20 for that first game in San Jose. To see a sellout crowd, it really was a feeling that, you know, maybe we’re on to something.”
Right before kickoff Phil Schoen says he felt time kind of stood still, “There probably was a tear in my eye.”
As a college player at St. Louis University Bill McDermott had won a national championship on that Spartan Stadium field. And there he was 17 years later doing the sideline reporting on national television.
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