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.” You’ll 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 Northwest’s 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 SABR’s Rain Check: Baseball in the Pacific Northwest, and Dan Raley’s 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
Based on a blurb that appeared in the Feb. 28, 1908 evening edition of The Seattle Times, its baseball reporter, who went unidentified (no bylines in that era), found intriguing the prospect of
Dan Dugdale’s Siwashes coming to terms with 26-year-old shortstop
Frank Tealey Raymond.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
During the years (1989-99)
Ken Griffey Jr. patrolled center field in the Kingdome, the Mariners kept a running tally of the almost-absurd number of left fielders who played adjacent to the 10-time All-Star. A couple of dozen ultimately did so, starting with
Greg “Pee Wee” Briley (April 3, 1989) and ending with
Shane Monahan (Oct. 3, 1999). The Mariners never did find the right solution in left during Griffey’s prime.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
“The Next 50” is a six-month celebration, underway at spruced-up
Seattle Center, aimed at marking the 50-year anniversary of the
1962 Century 21 Exposition (World’s Fair), an event that began as a promotional stunt to put Seattle on the map, but wound up shaping the future of the city.
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David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
Roscoe “Torchy” Torrance, a volunteer in the Student Army Training Corps at the University of Washington, received orders near the end of October, 1918, to report to the Artillery School at Fort Still, OK., ASAP, where, following boot camp, he would be deployed to Europe to aid the American cause in World War I.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
Not much excites a baseball fan more than the debut of a can’t-miss prospect, especially when the prospect is a young flamethrower on the order of the one the
Seattle Rainiers touted excitedly in a news release Aug. 9, 1955.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
From the dignified, derby-topped
Dan Dugdale at the dawn of the last century to
Eric Wedge today, the men who have directed Seattle’s numerous professional baseball enterprises – we count 56 spanning the Siwashes through the Mariners -- represent remarkable managerial diversity.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
Had
Rogers Hornsby, the incoming manager of the
Seattle Rainiers, opted to stay away from Puerto Rico in the winter of 1950, and he very nearly did, a significant chapter in
Pacific Coast League history never would have unfolded, and a local championship, the last under the Rainiers banner, probably would not have occurred.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
Lorenzo Romar is a three-time Pac-10/12 Conference Coach of the Year, has won 20 or more games six times, and directed the Huskies to six NCAA and one NIT tournament appearances. Romar’s record is unmatched in the modern history of University of Washington basketball, but even Romar will have to go some to warrant a night like the one that his UW mentor,
Marv Harshman, enjoyed when the Huskies met Washington State in Hec Edmundson Pavilion Feb. 23, 1985.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
Emmett Watson, later to become one of Seattle’s most popular and prolific daily newspaper columnists, as well as one of its most eccentric celebrities (CEO of Lesser Seattle Inc., whose motto was "KBO," or "Keep The Bastards Out"), spent the afternoon of May 16, 1948 at Sicks’ Stadium covering that day’s baseball entertainment between the
Seattle Rainiers and
Sacramento Solons. Watson filed this report for the consumption of Seattle Times readers:
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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 would probably 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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