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
The Washington-Washington State rivalry presents a marvelous opportunity to play, “Who Knew?” It’s unlikely, for example, that the 59,887 fans who froze throughout the 1985 Apple Cup at Husky Stadium (26 degrees at kickoff) had any inkling that they might be watching a future Super Bowl MVP, a College Football Hall of Famer, and 28 players who would be selected in two subsequent NFL drafts.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
The Feb. 5, 1959, resignation of University of Washington rowing coach Al Ulbrickson completed the withdrawal from active duty of an esteemed triumvirate of Washington coaches who, for 40 years, represented the best tradition of Husky athletics. In addition to Ulbrickson, the trio included Clarence “Hec” Edmundson Pavilion, for whom the school’s basketball facility is named, and Dorsett Vandeventer Graves, known to all as “Tubby.”
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
At 1325 Sixth Avenue at Union Street in downtown Seattle, on the same block as the 5th Avenue Theater, the Washington Athletic Club is working on its seventh consecutive 5 Star Platinum Club of America award. Last year, as it has many times in its history of more than 80 years, the WAC was also selected the best athletic club in the state and one of the top four nationally.
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Roosevelt High School dates to 1921-22 and is named after former President Theodore Roosevelt, whose famous military regiment, the Rough Riders, gave the school its nickname. From then until now, Roosevelt has ranked among the most important secondary education/athletic institutions in the Seattle area, a segue into the exercise at hand.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
Former University of Washington football coach Don James (1974-92), who directed the Huskies to six Rose Bowl appearances and the 1991 co-national championship, left a Seattle-area hospital a week ago following two surgeries to rectify gastrointestinal issues. According to a statement released by the school on behalf of the James family, doctors believe the surgeries were successful.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
Never in four decades (well, nearly four) has a regular-season Seahawks game stirred local masses quite as much this year’s Week 2 showdown with the San Francisco 49ers at CenturyLink Field. It has to do with soaring expectations. Several pundits have picked the Seahawks to reach – and win -- the Super Bowl, with the caveat that only the 49ers in the NFC, who lost to Baltimore in February, are standing in their way.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
Last week's Wayback Machine, "Genesis Of Husky Stadium," examined how an enterprising athletics executive named Darwin Meisnest (1896-92), a son of German immigrants, galvanized the Seattle business community into constructing the original Husky Stadium, dedicated Nov. 27, 1920. Meisnest even hand-picked the opponent for the inaugural, Dartmouth's Hanover Horde.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
Had he been given to wild dreams, and to a degree he was, it’s doubtful Darwin Meisnest (1896-1952) could have conceived of the scale of the new Husky Stadium, which will receive a public unveiling Saturday when Washington commences its 124th football season opposite Boise State. But that hardly detracts from the vision Meisnest had for the facility when the idea to build it struck him. Looking back, it was remarkable for its time.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
Garfield High School dates to 1917, when the Seattle School Board authorized the purchase of property at a site suggested by the board’s secretary, Rueben Jones, because it was “on a hill and the school would stand out.” Opening its doors originally as East High in 1920, the school, we now know, would have stood out even without the hill.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
Saturday, Ken Griffey Jr. will join Alvin Davis (1997), Dave Niehaus (2000), Jay Buhner (2004), Edgar Martinez (2007), Randy Johnson (2012) and Dan Wilson (2012) in the Mariners Hall of Fame. Griffey’s induction ceremony will be prior to the 6:10 p.m. scheduled first pitch against the Milwaukee Brewers.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
The Baseball Museum of the Pacific Northwest and Seattle Mariners Hall of Fame, on the Main Concourse along the third base line at Safeco Field, offer a rich collection of artifacts, photographs and interactive exhibits that link the region’s baseball present with its fascinating past.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
At the suggestion of Kenny Alhadeff, the only individual in Washington state history to win a Breeders’ Cup race (Margo’s Gift, Monmouth Park, 2007) and a Tony Award (Memphis, Best Musical, 2010), Wayback Machine today will begin a series of periodic looks at Seattle-area high schools in order to identify the most significant athletic figure in each institution’s history.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
Seattle has served as home base for professional hockey franchises largely without interruption since 1914-15 when the Patrick brothers, Lester and Frank, made the city part of the newly formed Pacific Coast Hockey Association with their creation of the famed Metropolitans.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
In these normally damp climes, any list of the longest-tenured sports traditions would include the Apple Cup (1900-present), Longacres Mile (1935), Man/Star of the Year Banquet (1936), Seafair Trophy Race (1951), Hutch Award (1965) and Opening Day Regatta (1970)/ Windermere Cup (1987), the international rowing frolic on the Montlake Cut.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
One day after shocking the track and field realm with his May 25, 1963 long jump of 27 feet, 4 inches at the California Relays, University of Washington sophomore Phillip Kent Shinnick, a month shy of 20, still couldn’t believe he had practically leaped the width of a city street, or that news of his feat had circled the globe.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
At approximately 8 p.m. on July 2, 1963, 19-year-old University of Washington pole vaulter Brian Sternberg, the world record holder at 16 feet, 8 inches, arrived at Hec Edmundson Pavilion on the UW campus to get in a workout on a trampoline in preparation for a trip to the Soviet Union for the annual USA-USSR dual meet. For Sternberg, life could not have been going a whole lot better.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
Four years ago, in connection with the annual Star of the Year awards program, the Seattle Sports Commission conducted an online poll asking fans to vote on the top sports story of the previous 75 years. The commission sorted through dozens of potential stories, finally arriving at a list of 10 finalists. These were the 10 offered to voters for their consideration, listed in chronological order:
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
Two years ago February, Baseball Prospectus published a list of what it titled, “The 101 Hottest Prospects” in major league history. In a companion piece, BP writer Steven Goldman added, “The Top 50 Busted Prospects,” an eye opener for this reason: Six of the 50 “busts” played – or attempted to play -- for Seattle teams, including the Giants in practically the Cretaceous period, the Pilots and the Mariners.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
Not many Seattle sports columnists had the audacity to read the riot act to Rogers Hornsby in 1951, the year he managed the Rainiers to a Pacific Coast League pennant. Beyond the fact that Hornsby presided over a successful ball club, he was a Hall of Famer and one of the game’s legendary hitters. Maybe the only thing Hornsby did better than hit was intimidate.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
Following Seattle native Fred Couples’ rousing speech at his World Golf Hall of Fame induction ceremony in St. Augustine, FL., last week (video here), a local sports talk show host blurted – and we paraphrase – “Couples is probably one of only four or five athletes actually born in the state of Washington to make a major Hall of Fame.”
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