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
In the decades before Seattle became a major league sports city, Royal Brougham' s Man of the Year sports awards program (78th edition is Jan. 25 at Benaroyal Hall) mostly featured amateurs, the nominees including badminton (1937, 1939) players, conservationists (1944, 1945), playfield operators (1947, 1948), an archer (1943), a squash athlete (1948), even a Labrador retriever (1952).
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
For the amusement of his audiences, Man of the Year sports awards program (78th edition of which is Jan. 25 at Benaroya Hall), founder Royal Brougham, lead sports columnist at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, enjoyed spicing his annual Olympic Hotel "clambake" with skits and vaudeville acts.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
Royal Brougham launched the Man of the Year program in 1936 -- now the Sports Star of the Year, the 78th edition will take place Jan. 25 at Benaroyal Hall -- with the intent of saluting outstanding athletic achievement in the Seattle area in 1935.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
A Seattle institution now in its 78th year, the Star of the Year sports award program started with a simple question posed by Royal Brougham in his popular Seattle Post-Intelligencer column, The Morning After, published Feb. 23, 1936.
Who, Brougham queried his readers, was the Man of the Year in local athletics in the past 12-month period?
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At halftime of Thursday’s men's basketball game between the Seattle University Redhawks and Washington Huskies at KeyArena, members of the 1953 teams will be honored in recognition of the 60th anniversary of the first meeting between the schools. It occurred March 13, 1953 in the NCAA Division I West Regional semifinals in Corvallis, OR., and at the time was one of the most anticipated sporting events in state history. This is how it unfolded:
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
When the University of Washington announced its 11-man All-Century Basketball Team Feb. 13, 2002, the most noticeable thing about the selections was that none played prior to World War II and only three, Jack Nichols (1944, 47-48), Bob Houbregs (1951-53) and Bruno Boin (1956-57, 59), played before 1960.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
Joe Mooney, the late Seattle Post-Intelligencer sports scribe who had a wonderful knack for banging words together, once wrote, “The Washington State Cougars go to the Rose Bowl like clockwork on the 16th and 30th years of every century.” Referencing their 1916 and 1930 appearances, Mooney penned that in the early 1980s, long before the Cougars won trips to the 1998 and 2003 Rose Bowls, but his point is still valid: Washington State and Pasadena go together, as Mooney also wrote, “like ketchup and waffles.”
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
It’s not often that an athlete gets carried off the field on the shoulders of his admirers. Rarer still is the athlete who receives such treatment after a defeat. So imagine how great a game the University of Washington football star Chuck Carroll must have played Nov. 17, 1928 at Stanford Stadium in Palo Alto, CA.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
Few athletes in Washington state sports history possessed the range of athletic skills that came so naturally to Sammy White (1927-91), who played major league baseball for 11 years, could have had careers in the NBA or on the Pro Bowlers tour, and wound up his life as a golf professional.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
It has been nearly 70 years since James Merlin Phelan last coached a football game for the University of Washington, a tenure that ended with a 14-13 upset of Southern California in Los Angeles, and his subsequent summons into the offices of Ray Eckmann, the Huskies athletic director.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
The reporting on the March 19, 1956 NCAA Tournament game between John Woodens UCLA Bruins and Al Brightmans Seattle U. Chieftains in Corvallis, OR., leaves no doubt that the game was a tumultuous affair so much so that The Eugene Register-Guard newspaper felt moved to note that UCLAs 94-70 victory will go down in annals as one of the roughest college games in history.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
In February of 1946, there came to the University of Washington, via the recommendation of fanatical Husky booster Roscoe Torchy Torrance, an insurance salesman named Harvey Cassill. He was a man of action and vision who pushed to get things done, a can-do fellow in the can-do era that followed World War II.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
Had it not been for the extreme cold that gripped Seattle, the charity football game at Memorial Stadium Dec. 6, 1953 likely would have attracted a far larger crowd than it did. But with temps in the mid-20s and icy rain in the forecast, its remarkable that 5,200 braved the elements. That they did spoke mainly to the drawing power of Don Heinrich.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
The San Pedro, CA., Sportswalk, that citys answer to the Hollywood Walk of Fame, runs along 6th Street from Pacific Avenue to Harbor Boulevard and features numerous plaques saluting famous professional athletes. Most of them Wilt Chamberlain, Tracy Austin, Don Drysdale, Jackie Joyner Kersee, Lisa Leslie, to cite five -- have national reputations, but it would probably take a San Pedro native or a Seattleite on Geritol -- to recognize Bobby Balcena.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
Last week, in what one ESPN blogger described as a throwback game for the ages, Ichiro went 7-for-8 in leading New York to a day-night doubleheader sweep of the Toronto Blue Jays at Yankee Stadium. The former Mariner icon, flourishing in the Big Apple, made a game-saving catch in the opener, had the game-winning hit in the nightcap and became only the fourth player in the live-ball era to record a pair of four-hit, four-steal games in his career.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
For a long time in the era spanning the baseball seasons 1939 through 1949, Joyner (Jo Jo) White almost ranked as a demigod in Seattle. His celebrity rivaled the kind that Jim Zorn and Steve Largent enjoyed in the 1970s, Jack Sikma and Downtown Freddy Brown had in the 1980s, and Ken Griffey Jr., Edgar Martinez, Gary Payton and Ichiro reveled in after that.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
In the spring of 1950, figuring it was high time, Emmett Watson of The Seattle Times wrote the equivalent of a sports page ode to Eddie Taylor, a pint-sized coach who had labored for many years ultimately under five managers for the Seattle Indians and Seattle Rainiers. As was Watsons bent, he went without a long preamble and got straight to the point.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
The photograph above, from July 17, 1932, shows a collection of baseball old timers, a few of them Northwest legends, who gathered at Civic Field to participate in a charity game, proceeds from which would be used to aid old ball players down on their luck. The players represented the State All-Stars and Seattle-All Stars, although many had no connection to Washington state or Seattle.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
After 22 1/2 seasons of confinement in the artificial light and sterile atmosphere of the Kingdome, Seattle Mariners fans reveled in the great outdoors for the first time July 15, 1999, when Safeco Field, constructed for an outlay of $517 million, opened its doors and retractable roof to the nearly universal acclaim of a sold-out house.
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By David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman
The Seattle Times devoted two pages and part of a third to the Seattle Rainiers April 16, 1952 home opener, held at Sicks Stadium against the Los Angeles Angels. The Times, as well as the rival Post-Intelligencer, typically made much of the pre-game festivities, which featured the usual introduction of players and short speeches by Seattle Mayor Allan Pomeroy and PCL Commissioner Clarence Pants Rowland, and printed three stories related to the contest itself, a 6-0 win in front of 12,000 fans.
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