Many of the historic images on Sports Press Northwest are provided by resident Northwest sports history aficionado, David Eskenazi.
A Seattle native, David has amassed an extensive archive of Seattle, Northwest, and West Coast historic sports photographs, artifacts and ephemera. We draw from this archive to illustrate stories in The Vault, and our weekly Rotation feature, The Wayback Machine. Youll see many unique and evocative representations of our sporting past, many of which have never been seen publicly. You are in for a treat!
David enjoys sharing his collection and zeal for Northwest sports history. His historical showcase activities have included displays at numerous museums, historical societies, and community events, including an annual Northwest baseball history display at Mariners FanFest, and working on baseball-themed fund raising events for the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center.
Since the early 1990s, The Seattle Mariners have enlisted David to help recognize and illustrate Seattle and the Northwests 120-year baseball legacy. This collaboration has produced historical displays at Safeco Field, including seven 35-foot long historical storyboards surrounding the Safeco Field main concourse, Fred Hutchinson seat end stanchions, and classic early photographs on the suite level, all created for the opening of Safeco Field in 1999. From its opening in 2007 to the present day, David has provided thematic ideas, design elements, images, and scores of original historic Northwest baseball artifacts for the Baseball Museum of the Pacific Northwest at Safeco Field.
David also contributed visual materials, historical consultation and on-screen interviews for documentaries on The Seattle Rainiers, The Spokane Indians, and the Seattle Pilots, and provided images and other inputs for a multitude of books, magazines, web-sites and other media focusing on Seattle, Northwest and West Coast sports history.
Recent books he contributed to extensively include SABRs Rain Check: Baseball in the Pacific Northwest, and Dan Raleys Pitchers of Beer: The Seattle Rainiers Story.
David has a keen ongoing interest in sharing stories, expanding and enhancing his collection, and broadening his knowledge and archive of Northwest sports history and memorabilia.
If you have questions, memories to share, stories to suggest, or would like to talk to him about selling or trading Seattle and Northwest sports artifacts, please contact him at (206) 441-1900, or at seattlesportshistory@gmail.com
By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
During the many decades that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer sponsored the annual Sports Star of the Year awards (1935-09), the newspaper largely confined its list of winners to the top male and female athletes from the previous year. But when the Seattle Sports Commission took over after the P-I bellied up in 2009, it immediately added several new categories for recognition.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
Prior to their home opener in September, the Seahawks celebrated their first four decades (1976-15) by announcing the franchise's 40th Anniversary Team. Several media outlets followed with their own anniversary teams, so another version here would largely be redundant. However, if we had selected one, the honorary captain would be former quarterback Dave Krieg (1980-91), the only graduate of defunct Milton College to play in the NFL.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
In 1999, the editors of Total Football, in cooperation with the Pro Football Hall of Fame, selected the “300 Greatest Players in Pro Football History.” Among the 300 were six Apple Cup graduates – three Huskies and three Cougars. From Washington: Arnie Weinmeister (1942, ’46-47), Hugh McElhenny (1949-51) and Warren Moon (1975-77). From Washington State: Mel Hein (1928-30), Turk Edwards (1929-31) and Drew Bledsoe (1990-92).
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
Quizzical looks crossed the faces of most University of Washington football fans when they learned in January 1957 that Jim Owens had replaced Darrell Royal as head coach of the Huskies. The Oklahoma native had no national profile, had never been a head coach anywhere, and had yet to turn 30, all of which made him an incongruous choice to resurrect a program still reeling from a slush-fund scandal that brought with it a two-year probation.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
If Sam Schulman had gotten his way, the chairman of the board of the San Diego Chargers would have relocated the franchise to Seattle in the spring of 1970, the year the American Football League officially merged with the National Football League. But Schulman, also owner of the NBA’s Seattle SuperSonics, couldn’t extricate the Chargers from an onerous lease at San Diego Stadium.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
Starting with little more than a keen intellect and abounding curiosity, Jeff Obermeyer launched more than 20 years ago a personal research project focused on the history of professional hockey in Seattle. Now the acknowledged expert, Obermeyer operates the definitive website on the subject, seattlehockey.net, and is the author of three books, Hockey In Seattle (2004), Emerald Ice (2007) and Seattle Totems, the latter new in area bookstores and available on amazon.com.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
Based on four decades of international achievement, George Pocock warranted induction into the State of Washington State Sports Hall of Fame in 1960, when HOF originator Clay Huntington, a Tacoma sportscaster and radio station proprietor, first called for elections. That Pocock didn’t make the cut for 55 years ranks among the more baffling oversights in Pacific Northwest athletic history.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
After the University of Washington freshman football team wrapped up its 1964 season, coach Ed Peasley met with head coach Jim Owens to brief his boss about which of the Pups Owens could count on to contribute to the 1965 varsity. When the conversation turned to Al Worley, a position-less product of Wenatchee High School, Peasley was adamant that Worley wouldn’t be of any use.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
From Thursday through Sunday, Chambers Bay will host the U.S. Open as it comes to the Pacific Northwest for the first time in the event’s 115-year history. Although certainly the most prestigious golf event contested in the region, there was a period (1936-48) when touring professionals made semi-regular visits to Puget Sound, and another era (1961-66) when the PGA made an annual tour stop in the greater Seattle area.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
Once every season, the Mariners present a “Turn Back The Clock” game to acknowledge the Pacific Northwest’s rich baseball history. The promotion is notable for colorful -- and sometimes quirky -- throwback uniforms that modern players don for the occasion, and for the celebration of the old timers who wore the original togs.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
Author Edgar Rice Burroughs introduced Tarzan in 1912 and began selling his “ape man” stories to film producers in 1917. By all accounts, Burroughs loathed the cinematic perversion of his signature character: From Elmo Lincoln to Johnny Weissmuller, Hollywood cast Tarzan as a monosyllabic savage in contrast to the cultured, well-educated English “Lord Greystroke” Burroughs created for his novels.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
About two hours before the 8 p.m. tipoff, lines started forming in the plaza on the west side of the Seattle Coliseum (KeyArena). Within an hour, they snaked a block deep in both directions on First Avenue North. By the time the Seattle University Chieftains and Texas Western Miners took the court, more than 16,000 fans, nearly 2,000 above capacity, were already in full frenzy.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
He never hoisted the 12th Man flag nor threw out a ceremonial first pitch. He is not in any Hall of Fame or Ring of Honor. But no individual did more to shape modern professional sports in the Pacific Northwest than Herman Sarkowsky, whose DNA is buried in the histories of four of the region’s franchises, as well as its largest race track.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
Although “Take Me Out To The Ball Game” was written in 1908 (by New Yorkers Jack Norworth and Albert Von Tilzer), it took decades to evolve into baseball’s biggest hit. The song’s first rendition at a major league game occurred in 1934 in St. Louis, where a jug band led by Cardinals third baseman Pepper Martin played it before the start of the World Series. It didn’t become a seventh-inning stretch tradition until the 1970s when broadcaster Harry Caray made it so at Chicago’s Comiskey Park.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
Seattle Post-Intelligencer sports columnist Royal Brougham created the Man of the Year (now Sports Star ) award in 1936 to recognize the city’s most accomplished athlete or coach from the previous 12 months. Brougham saluted the first winners at a downtown luncheon he dubbed his “little clambake,” and the affair proved so popular it morphed into an evening banquet carried on live, local television.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
It’s been five years since Don Coryell’s name first appeared on the Pro Football Hall of Fame ballot, and the Washington state native is again a semifinalist (finalists will be announced next week). To the great consternation of the legion of Hall of Famers who have long championed his cause, Coryell’s induction is way past due and an oversight, in their collective mind, that defies logic.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
No football player in the early part of the 20th century captured the public’s imagination more than Illinois halfback Red Grange, whom Chicago American sports writer Warren Brown christened “The Galloping Ghost.” So great – and hyped -- was Grange that even the best players of the era, including several hatched beneath Notre Dame’s Golden Dome (George Gipp and the Four Horseman) paled by comparison.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
Sometime in the fall of 1903, Alfred Strauss filed a written complaint with the University of Washington’s Board of Control, a student oversight committee, arguing that it should compensate him “for the loss of several teeth.” According to The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Strauss, a halfback on the football team, contended that since he had lost the choppers while “fighting for his college,” the university ought to pay his dental expenses.
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The Washington-UCLA football series, which resumes for the 72nd time Saturday at Montlake, dates to Dec. 3, 1932, when the Huskies posted the first of four consecutive shutouts, a 19-0 victory in Los Angeles. The Bruins' first victory in the rivalry was in 1938, also in Los Angeles, and in 1939 brought a unique -- for the era -- collection of athletes to Seattle to face a UW team coached by Jimmy Phelan.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
It’s a rare occurrence when a graduate of the University of Washington football program succeeds in the National Football League to a greater degree than he did as a Husky. Most notably, tackle Arnie Weinmeister had a World War II-interrupted career of no particular distinction at UW from 1942, ’46-47 and then proceeded to All-Pro recognition and a Hall of Fame salute following six seasons with the New York Giants.
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