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
Note: The Seattle Pilots' one and only MLB season opener in Seattle's Sicks' Stadium was April 11, 1969. In the presumably temporary absence of baseball this spring, Sportspress Northwest is re-publishing this March 6, 2012 feature on beer baron Emil Sick, who bought the minor-league Seattle Rainiers in 1937 and privately funded for the team his namesake stadium in 1938, which housed the Pilots and survived until 1979. Let us divert . . .
By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
If all the flattering words used to describe Emil Sick in the aftermath of his Nov. 10, 1964, death could be bumped together in a single volume, the work probably would be fatter than a James Michener novel.
"If you couldn't work for Emil, you couldn't work for anybody," Edo Vanni said after Sick's graveside service. "I would have worked for him for nothing."
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
Editor’s note: The potential arrival of a National Hockey League franchise in 2020 in a renovated Seattle Center arena prompted Sportspress Northwest to present a series revisiting the sport’s Seattle history from previously published Wayback Machine stories. This is the final of the six-part series.
If all goes well with Oak View Group's extraordinary plan to provide more than $600 million in private money to renovate Key Arena, fans in 2020 will welcome the National Hockey League to Seattle, culminating a century-long odyssey. It began in 1914, when the Patrick brothers, Lester and Frank, made the city part of the newly formed Pacific Coast Hockey Association with their creation of the Metropolitans.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
Editor’s note: The potential arrival of a National Hockey League franchise in 2020 in a renovated Seattle Center arena has prompted Sportspress Northwest to present a six-part series revisiting the sport’s Seattle history from previously published Wayback Machine stories. Sixth and final part next Wednesday: The prospective arrival of an NHL team in 2020 will culminate a century of passion, championships and travail for hockey in Seattle.
Of the thousands of professional athletes who have meandered through the Pacific Northwest, none had a more varied or intriguing career than Bill MacFarland, whose Aug. 12, 2011 passing in Scottsdale, AZ., came and went with far too little notice or acknowledgment.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
Editor’s note: The potential arrival of a National Hockey League franchise in 2020 in a renovated Seattle Center arena has prompted Sportspress Northwest to present a six-part series revisiting the sport’s Seattle history from previously published Wayback Machine stories. Part 4 next Wednesday: The Totems' Bill MacFarland: Player, coach and lawyer.
An odd thing happened to hockey icon Golden Guyle Fielder the most recent time he visited Seattle in 2008. En route to his induction ceremony into the State of Washington Sports Hall of Fame, Fielder couldn't locate KeyArena, his enshrinement site, even though played for several years in the facility, known in Fielder's heyday with the Seattle Totems as the Center Coliseum.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
Editor’s note: The potential arrival of a National Hockey League franchise in 2020 in a renovated Seattle Center arena has prompted Sportspress Northwest to present a six-part series revisiting the sport’s Seattle history from previously published Wayback Machine stories. Part 4 next Wednesday: Golden Guyle Fielder and the Seattle Totems.
For most Puget Sound-area sports fans today, the primary winter sports passion has been basketball, despite the loss in 2008 of the SuperSonics to Oklahoma City. But if Oak View Group's renovation plan works for a premier arena at Seattle Center, the opportunity presents itself for the city to revert to its sporting self-image in several decades prior to the NBA: A hockey town.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
Editor’s note: The potential arrival of a National Hockey League franchise in 2020 in a remade Seattle Center arena has prompted Sportspress Northwest to present a six-part series revisiting the sport’s Seattle history from previously published Wayback Machine stories. Part 3 next Wednesday: Hockey icon Pete Muldoon, who could skate on 26-inch stilts.
In the tortured history of major league sports in these parts, mainly a dense catalog of soaring mediocrity, no team ever came closer to achieving dynasty status than the 1917-20 Seattle Metropolitans of the Pacific Coast Hockey Association (1911-24). Boasting three future Hall of Fame players (and, in hindsight, putting all future Seattle franchises to shame), the Metropolitans battled for the Stanley Cup three times in a four-year span.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
Editor's note: The potential arrival of a National Hockey League franchise in 2020 in a remade Seattle Center arena has prompted Sportspress NW to create a six-part series revisiting the sport's Seattle history from previously published Wayback Machine stories. Part 2 next Wednesday: How the Mets missed a dynasty.
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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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