Years and years ago, in the old black and white days, Seattle had a wonderful old baseball stadium. It was called Sicks Seattle Stadium. That is Rainier Avenue to the right and Martin Luther King (Empire Way in those days) Way to the left. It was located in the Rainier Valley about midway from Dearborn and Columbia City.
I was lucky to attend games there (season ticket holder for the Rainier’s in the early 70's) and even more lucky to actually get to play there. For my sophomore and junior years at Seattle U this was home.
It was pretty run down then, but hey, it was still a big league park to us. The drinking fountain in the dugout was horrible (see the scene in THE NATURAL where Pop tries to take a drink), but they were real "dug"outs and there was a locker room and bathroom available up the ramp. The outfield walls were big and tall and had old signs on them. Our crowds were small, parents and girlfriends and wives all sitting in fold up chairs. My brother still has a wonderful picture he took of his wife Patti, sitting alone amid the scattered chairs just as the sun is setting and the lights were coming on. As you can just imagine, you got a little pumped up every time you came to that glorious palace to play a game.
I wish the picture*(that I have stolen from Dave Eskenazi and Steve Rudman's Wayback feature on sportspressnw.com) was a more full shot. I wish it showed more of the left field corner. As a young player I had many faults, none greater than my impatience at the plate. In a round field I would have made the big leagues as most of my best hits were on the wrong side of the left field line. Against Gonzaga my sophomore year (with the bases loaded and two outs in the ninth) I hit a ball OUT of Sicks Stadium, over the fence, over the bleachers and saw it bounce on Empire Way and attack the apartments....just foul. Maybe Carlton Fisk could have kept it fair, but my ball wouldn't listen no matter how hard I waved my hands. On the next pitch I swung five times on a change-up to end the game.
Link to Wayback archive at sportspressnw.com:
http://sportspressnw.com/author/daveeskenazi/
* Postscript. After asking Dave's permission for the post (thanks Dave) Dave provided a better picture of Sicks Stadium (taken during a Pilot game) that shows the true magnitude of my my blast. And now that I have a picture, I guess my memory of the ball hitting the apartments has been proven WRONG (but what are memories for), but it did bounce in the street, just between the light pole and the foul pole!
I also saw many Rainier games there....I think the most notable player I saw was Jay Johnstone....only you old timers will remember him.
ReplyDeleteBut most notable I saw the Pilots play the Oakland A's there on my birthday. That night (cold April night) Reggie Jackson hit 3 HR's and the A's won 15-3. One of my friends got one of the HR balls and a cop told him he would get some signatures on it for him. He came back with Reggie's, Sal Bando's and if memory serves Joe Rudi's.
Steve