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
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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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
With so many calendar pages having turned since Benjamin Bradbury Cheney’s formative years (1911-20) in the tiny mill town of South Bend, WA., it’s difficult to know exactly who nurtured his philanthropic instincts. It might have been his paternal grandparents, B.F. and Rebecca Cheney, who reared young Ben and his sister Lulu after the death of their mother and sudden abandonment by their father.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
It’s remarkable what one man can do when he puts his mind to something. In the case of Benjamin Bradbury Cheney (1905-71), what he accomplished was actually more awesome than remarkable given that he started his working life as a dirt-poor kid from South Bend, Pacific County, who had little going for him save his ingenuity and a desire to make a difference.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
By 1959, Dewey Soriano, a one-time Civic Stadium peanut vendor, had amassed a remarkable baseball portfolio. It included a decade as a minor league pitcher of distinction, his successful ownership and presidency of the Yakima Bears of the Western International League, and his stints as general manager of the Vancouver Capilanos and Seattle Rainiers. But Dewey the doer had only just begun.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
Dewey Soriano got his start in baseball growing up in the Rainier Valley in the 1930s. He was a friend of Fred Hutchinson’s, and any friend of Fred’s had to play baseball. Soriano got his start in business as a young teen peddling concessions at Civic Stadium, home of the Seattle Indians, and at University of Washington football games.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
On a clear, spring morning in 1950, with the Seattle Rainiers ensconced at their preseason headquarters in Palm Springs, CA., new manager Paul Richards, neatly attired in freshly pressed slacks and a jacket, stood near the edge of the swimming pool at the Warm Sands Motel, chatting up player/coach Doc Cramer. Startled by a burst of loud yells and war hoops, Richards and Cramer quickly scanned the premises to discover the source.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
Had head coach Babe Hollingbery been just a little more persuasive in his recruiting efforts, Bill Lawrence might have become a star halfback or end on Hollingbery’s great Washington State football team that featured Mel Hein and Turk Edwards and played Alabama in the 1931 Rose Bowl.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
On the morning of May 29, 1948, a small group of boys, faces flushed with excitement, stood expectantly on the sidewalk in front of a white house at 2412 E. McGraw St. Inside, Hillis Layne, the Seattle Rainiers’ popular third baseman, donned a light raincoat to repel the dampness, picked up a baseball glove and stepped outside to greet the boys, who gave him a hearty cheer.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
Imagine the clout that a sports executive would wield today if he not only owned his own ball club, but personally acquired its players, made every trade, negotiated business contracts, hired and fired front-office personnel, set ticket prices, collected gate receipts, controlled the flow of information about the team, and occasionally filled out the lineup card.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
In the sporting era that preceded free agency and multi-million-dollar contracts, professional athletes commonly supplemented their sports salaries by taking offseason odd jobs -- or odd, offseason jobs. In Paul Gregory’s time with the Seattle Indians and Rainiers (1936-41), his teammates, as well as most other Seattle athletes, found work in a variety of ways.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
Eddie Basinski always conceded that he never looked much like a baseball player. He sported a slender frame and bottle-thick, steel-rimmed classes, prompting many fans to view him as a Mr. Peepers in flannels and Brooklyn Dodgers president and general manager Branch Rickey to describe him as “the escaped divinity student.”
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
After Alan Strange extended his hitting streak to 23 consecutive games during an Aug. 21, 1939, doubleheader victory over the Sacramento Solons, a Seattle Post-Intelligencer reporter asked the popular Rainiers shortstop to comment on a newspaper report that Strange had become a strong candidate for selection in major league baseball’s annual minor league draft (today’s Rule V draft). Strange’s response would probably baffle a modern baseball fan.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
Seven members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame also played major league baseball (in alphabetical order): Morris "Red" Badgro, John "Paddy" Driscoll, George Halas, Ernie Nevers, Clarence "Ace" Parker, Deion Sanders and Jim Thorpe. Badgro is hardly the most famous man in the septet, but for many years was considered the greatest all-around athlete produced in the Pacific Northwest, and is still the answer to several trivia questions.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
It’s not often that a graduate of the University of Washington football program succeeds in the National Football League to a far greater degree than he did as a Husky. Most famously, that was the case with Warren Moon, whose play at quarterback under Don James in the mid-to-late 1970s provided zero hint that he had a Pro Football Hall of Fame career in front of him.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
Seattle has been represented by many franchises in a variety of sports, none as short-lived as the Seattle Steelheads of the West Coast Negro Baseball League. The Steelheads, who played most of their home games at Sicks’ Stadium, came and went in a two-month span (June-July) of 1946, their arrival greeted by one paragraph in The Seattle Times, their departure summed up in a single sentence with no headline in the same newspaper.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
The athletic careers of pro bowler Johnny Guenther, hydroplane driver Billy Schumacher, thoroughbred jockey Gary Baze, synchronized swimmer Traci Ruiz and rower Anna Mickelson Cummins collectively spanned more than six decades. All have one thing in common besides entering Halls of Fame in their various sports: Each received four Man or Star of the Year nominations and none won.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
When banquet goers arrived at the Westin Seattle Hotel for the Sports Star of the Year awards in January 2009 to select winners for 2008, most assumed they were attending the final edition of what, over seven decades, evolved into a civic institution. With the Post-Intelligencer awash in red ink and six weeks away from ceasing publication, even the newspaper assumed the worst.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
Between 1935 and 1971, only six women received Man/Star of the Year awards (78th MTR Western Sports Star of the Year is Friday at Benaroya Hall). One of the six, swimmer Lynn Colella, had to share it with her younger brother, Rick. From Colella's 1971 award through 1994, not a single woman won, although dozens were nominated, including synchronized swimmer Tracie Ruiz-Conforto a record four times in the 1980s.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
With major pro sports -- Sonics, Seahawks, Mariners -- entrenched in Seattle, and the Star of the Year program (78th is Jan. 25 at Benaroya Hall) having become a popularity contest decided by banquet attendees who had the power of the vote, amateur athletes, except for University of Washington football players, and women had little opportunity to win.
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