A seminal anniversary in Seattle sports history passed quietly Saturday -- the day 20 years ago that seeded the town's two most recent national pro-team championships. Newbies and youngsters, pay attention: The Seahawks and Sounders have become two of the most formidable franchises in North American sports because of what happened on June 17, 1997.

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The ever-expanding social conscience of DE Michael Bennett was on view Wednesday at Seahawks practice. Two themes emerged -- he provided shelter from the storm for two put-upon players from the position he likes least (quarterback), and he promoted the notion that he can put football second to the players he likes most (his three daughters).

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Richard Sherman apparently figured the best way forward was to back up and cover some tracks. The Seahawks' star cornerback, meeting with local media Wednesday for the first time in a gnarly off-season in which he was on the trade market and the subject of a provocative national story, was his familiar glib, loquacious self, while dismissing the controversy around him and the tensions in the locker room as just, well, no big deal.

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By the time the past season ended, the Seahawks' Legion of Boom imploded into the Legion of Gloom.

For CB Richard Sherman, you perhaps have read more this off-season-- a sore knee and a bit of a sorehead. FS Earl Thomas had been lost for the season with a broken right leg in early December. SS Kam Chancellor was playing with bone spurs in both ankles that he felt for the past two seasons. And CB DeShawn Shead tore his ACL in the final playoff game.

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The one and only name for the Mariners baseball park, Safeco Field, will be no more after the 2018 season. The 20-year deal signed in 1998 is expiring, and the insurance company notified the ballclub that would not extend the naming rights deal, according to a statement from the club Tuesday.

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The set-up Sunday looked for all the world like a pivot point for the Mariners season, and perhaps beyond. The Big Maple, unbeaten James Paxton, was on the mound, matched against a so-far-shaky J.A. Happ, the debut of a three-rookie outfield of athletes who can hit, and a chance to send 30-some charter buses full of Canadian fans -- the rowdy majority of the 120,000 who filled Safeco Field over the weekend -- back over the border to weep in their Molson's.

But no.

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The ceiling was too high. The warehouse floor was too old. The neighborhood was too seedy. The parking was too aggravating. At least that's what everyone told Mick McHugh about his new bar.

My only problem with the 11,000-square-foot joint at the corner of Pioneer Square and Sports was the walls. They needed ears, and a way to gossip back the alcohol-fueled secrets.

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Among the notable attendees at Wednesday's announcement about the winner of the KeyArena fixer-upper derby was Francesco Aquilini. Since 2004, he and his family have owned Rogers Arena and the NHL Vancouver Canucks, a franchise that has pined almost since inception in 1970 for an NHL team in Seattle, a loathsome rival from which money could be mined.

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For a man whom everyone figured was home beating on the figurative chest of his inert arena project, waiting for a heartbeat, Chris Hansen was remarkably serene Wednesday after a rival arena project was celebrated by the mayor and his staffers as a deliverance on a righteous crusade.

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Not sure yet what is the most remarkable thing in the young career of George Fant, The Power Forward Who Plays Left Tackle in the NFL After 7-8 Snaps in College (big title, big man, big upside). For now, I'm going with the fact that when he played hoops at Western Kentucky, he weighed 250. Now he weighs 320, and he can still dunk.

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Jawanza Brown recalled the time Seahawks RB Thomas Rawls spoke to the Boys & Girls Club in their hometown of Flint, Mich. Rawls was playing football at the University of Michigan, Brown was a star-struck kid.

"I remember he talked about pushing through adversity by saying, 'I was built for this,'" Brown said by phone the past week. "That quote stuck in my head. I'm keeping that in mind this summer."

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The plan to remodel KeyArena into a world-class concert and sports venue took a hit Sunday when Seattle Partners unexpectedly pulled out of the project, blaming the city of Seattle for "unrealistic" financial expectations and an absence of thoroughness and transparency.

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Pete Carroll has always been a defensive coach. But in some rare moments of genuine dismay Friday, he was a coach that was defensive. Speaking for the first time since a recent, detailed ESPN.com story described fractures within the Seahawks, he called it "an old story revisited," saying, "I’m proud of where we are and how we’ve handled our past."

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The Mariners are a meteorological phenomenon. On an afternoon rich in sunshine and promise, they conjure up a dark cloud and affix it above the heads of all.

This team needs more injuries like President Trump needs a Russian ambassador wedged under his bed. All Seattle lost Thursday were the American League's leading hitter and the AL's top RBI man.

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The intense resolve of the University of Washington's women's rowing team was expressed by sophomore Elise Beuke, when she and her varsity eight teammates crossed the finish line first the past weekend to complete a Huskies sweep on New Jersey's Mercer Lake of all three races in the national rowing championships, a first in NCAA history.

"OK," she recalled thinking Wednesday, "What's next?"

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For a man whose political career was abruptly scuttled by scandal, Ed Murray was beaming three weeks ago when the competing bids for remodeling KeyArena were unveiled at a public open house. The Seattle mayor answered questions, shook hands and seemed to take on an air of prideful ownership.

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Until Sunday in Boston, the Mariners went a week with just one significant swing of a bat in the first five games of a tough road trip, a three-run homer by Nelson Cruz Thursday. But at Fenway Park, Seattle had a season-high-tying 16 hits to back seven innings of shutout ball by Christian Bergman for a 5-0 triumph, the fourth win in 13 games for a temporarily broken team.

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Perhaps by now you have read Seth Wickersham's intriguing story on ESPN.com about the drama that enveloped CB Richard Sherman's season, which was sufficiently disruptive to lead the Seahawks to entertain trading one of the NFL's most valuable players. If you don't have time for the magnum opus, I will share a central point of the story, then explain why the story misses a greater point.

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Former Huskies and Trail Blazers star Brandon Roy, who in one freaky season at Nathan Hale High School was named national coach of the year, will take his coaching talents to the south end of Seattle and his alma mater, Garfield High. On its sports Twitter account, the school confirmed Thursday earlier media reports.

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As he often did, Cortez Kennedy said it best, in his own self-deprecating, yet honest way, when he was drafted in by the Seahawks with the third pick in the 1990 NFL draft.

"I may be the fattest player in the draft," he said after his selection, "but I'm a helluva player."

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