San Diego, CA (special) -- Football was Bob Breitbard's sport growing up. He played it at Hoover High School and at San Diego State, and later coached it at both institutions. But the Jewish athlete won his greatest fame neither as a player nor as a coach, but as a fan-- and not only of football but as a fan of all sports.

In an interview preceding the July 1 reopening of the San Diego Sports Museum and Hall of Champions in Balboa Park, Breitbard recalled that the institution had its origins with the creation in 1946 of the Breitbard Athletic Foundation.

"Paul Helms, who owned a bakery in Los Angeles, had this Helms Athletic Foundation giving awards to athletes in the Southern California area," Breitbard recalled. "I noticed that we had only one or two kids from San Diego ever getting involved, or getting any of those awards. I said 'gosh, I want to start something like that here.'"

It was just after he had left high school football coaching to take a position with his family owned linen and industrial supply business that "we started in 1946 having an annual dinner giving these awards out." At first, awards were granted in amateur sports for football, baseball, basketball, and track and field. As there were only about 10 high schools in San Diego County, the first awards banquet attracted perhaps 150 people, he recalled.

But San Diego began to grow in population, and the number of sports offered in schools multiplied. "Now I think there are maybe 60 high schools in San Diego County, and now we have not only men's sports but women's sports, and we give awards in football, baseball, track and field, hockey, soccer, volleyball, swimming, diving, softball -- you name it. Both men's and women's sports. We give over 10,000 awards away a year to high school and amateur athletes and professional athletes."

From a dinner for 150, the annual banquets now attract about 1,500 people. Along the way, the Breitbard Foundation decided to create a Hall of Fame, in which outstanding athletes who came from San Diego or who played for San Diego teams could be recognized. The first to be inducted in 1953 was Brick Muller, who played on an undefeated University of California team in 1922 and also competed as an Olympic high jumper.

The second, in 1954, was Boston Red Sox great Ted Williams, who graduated with Breitbard from Hoover High School in February, 1937, and went on to compile the best slugging percentage in professional baseball, hitting .406 in 1941.

"We have been close friends for over 65 years," Breitbard said. "We talk every day and sometimes twice a day. He is a wonderful human being, a great friend. In fact, he gave me two of his bats -- that is how we started the Hall of Champions. One is a bat he used the season he hit .406. So I have those, and Maureen Connolly gave me the racket she won Wimbledon with, her tennis shoes and the outfit she wore, and I got things from (boxing champion) Archie Moore.

"I had them sitting in my garage and my wife (Lilly) said, 'Gee, what are you going to do with all this stuff you have here? Either do something with it or get rid of it!' and I said, 'Okay, I am going to do something.' That is how I started the Hall of Champions." 

In 1961, Breitbard's Foundation moved its "stuff" into a 4,000-square foot space in Balboa Park's House of Charm where the Mingei Museum is today. Twenty years later, in 1981, the museum moved to an 18,000 square foot space in the Casa de Balboa, which previously had been the home of the Aerospace Museum. That museum had moved to larger quarters in the Ford Building (its present home) following a disastrous fire.

Now, the Hall of Champions is taking over the Federal Building (a former gymnasium) and its old space in the Casa de Balboa will be utilized by an expanded Museum of Photographic Arts. The Federal Building had only 28,000 square feet, but "what we did was take the floor out, then went down 22 feet, and built a theater which will seat 158 people," Breitbard said during the interview last week.

"We just have the shell there now, and we have to put in seats, sound system, a screen, but that will come. We just have to take it one step at a time. We can't do everything at once."

In addition to the theater there is place for storage on the bottom floor, and there is room for traveling exhibits like the one on the nazi Olympics. In all, the new facility has 68,000 square feet, more than triple the space previously occupied by the Hall of Champions.

Since the award program began in 1946, many amateur athletes have gone on to become famous pros, among them a Point Loma basketball player named Don Larsen who later would make his mark in another sport when he pitched for the New York Yankees the first perfect game in a World Series. 

Another was Bill McColl, who also was a basketball player at Hoover High School, but went on to become an All-American football player at Stanford University and a player for eight years for the Chicago Bears while attending medical school. He later quit football to become an orthopedic surgeon, and went with his wife, Barbara, and five children to Korea for two years to work at a leper colony.

Others include tennis player Maureen Connolly, and golfers Billy Casper, Gene Littler, and Craig Stadler. "That is the beautiful thing, seeing these kids as high school and college students and watching them all grow and go into the pros."

Concerning the exhibit on the nazi Olympics, Breitbard said he was proud that the Hall of Champions was chosen as the exhibit's only venue in California. 

He was a high school student in 1936 and "it was a shock to me and to everyone else in the country that this could happen, but it did happen and these things will happen in the future -- there will be discrimination,"Breitbard said. 

"There are a lot of youngsters who don't know about this, and I think having a lot of schools coming in to see the exhibit, will help teach tolerance to the young people."

Of particular importance, he said, is that the exhibit will be supplemented by speakers who can tell of their personal experiences with discrimination and sports. "I think it is good for all of us to hear, I don't care, Christian or Jews, or anybody," Breitbard said.

Future traveling exhibits coming to the museum will include the works of sculptor Thomas Schomberg, as well as special presentations assembled by the such sports broadcasting operations as NBC, ABC and ESPN, Breitbard said.

The main floor of the museum is being reserved for 8 or 9 interactive exhibits where "kids can go to the floor, test their strength, touch things and see immediately how they stand related to sports," the museum's founder said. "We think it will be an attraction. You never know. But we are going to spend some money on it."

Breitbard said he considers the July 1 premiere of the nazi Olympics exhibit as a "pre-opening" for the overall Hall of Champions. "We don't have everything going yet," he said. "It may be another seven months till we are fully open."