Steve began his journalistic career in an era in which social networking mainly occurred in saloons.
In the years since, he has been a reporter and columnist (Seattle Post-Intelligencer), a magazine founder and editor (The National Sports Review), the Director of Research at ESPN (once had the chore of looking up the history of rain delays in major league baseball), a radio talk show host (fired by KIRO because stupid people need radio stations, too, according to the program director), and the producer of a syndicated sports statistical feature (titled Wow!Stats), distributed by Universal Press Syndicate (quick, name three countries in which athletes are eaten when they fail to perform).
He wrote (with Karen Chave) 100 Years of Husky Football, Who The Hell is Bob? (one of Seattles more remarkable people) and collaborated with Art Thiel (Sports Press Northwest) and Mike Gastineau (KJR-AM) on The Great Book of Seattle Sports Lists, a ribald compendium of Seattle sports exotica that should be made into a movie (Brad Pitt playing Steve).
He gained everlasting infamy in 1985 (at least in Corvallis, Ore.), when, in a column in the Post-Intelligencer, he called the Oregon State Beavers The Barney Fife of College Football, then sat stupefied as the 37-point underdog Beavers cast aside a 28-year slump and beat the Huskies.
As of this writing, that game (which resulted in an official, Oregon State-issued game ball for Steve) still generates 314,000 Google pages, most of them from unenlightened (and presumably salt pillar-licking) OSU fans. Steve has yet to issue an apology on Facebook or Twitter and has no plans to do so.
Despite losing four of their past six to Houston (1-2) and Toronto (1-2), the Mariners ended their home stand as they entered it, trailing Baltimore by two games in the chase for the second AL wild card. Although Seattle played poorly, and needed a 12th-inning, walk-off sac fly by Robinson Cano Wednesday to retain a modicum of dignity, it got lucky: The Orioles simultaneously dropped four of six at Camden Yards, to Tampa Bay and Boston.
READ MORE»
Pete Carroll not only appeared rattled, but close to ashen when queried about his dithering offense Sunday following a 9-3 loss to the L.A Rams. Coming off a one-touchdown effort in a 12-10 win over Miami a week earlier, the Seahawks failed to score a single six-pointer against a Rams team shellacked 28-0 six days prior by the San Francisco 49ers.
READ MORE»
Despite a remarkable run – a season-high eight consecutive victories (longest since 2013) and nine in the past 10 games – to hoist themselves back into American League wild card contention, the Mariners are not considered much of a threat to reach the postseason. That’s based on up-to-the minute calculations by both Baseball Prospectus and FanGraphs.
READ MORE»
After snatching a game-winning, two-yard touchdown pass from Russell Wilson Sunday with 31 seconds remaining, WR Doug Baldwin summed up his quarterback in a mere nine words: “He has shown a propensity to do miraculous things.” Aside from the fact that Baldwin might be the first wideout in NFL history to use "propensity" in a sentence, some might describe his words as hyperbole. They are not.
READ MORE»
When the Seahawks made their cuts to a mandatory 53 players, the always-subject-to-change roster featured 15 rookies, including seven undrafted free agents. According to an examination of all of Seattle’s opening-day rosters by The Seattle Times, that constitutes the second-most in franchise history, trailing only the 1976 opening-day roster, which, predictably for an expansion team, featured 17.
READ MORE»
The Seahawks reached the mandatory 53-man roster limit Saturday by making two dozen cuts and two trades, notably severing ties with G Jahri Evans, FB Will Takaufu, DT Jordan Hill and rookie RB Troymaine Pope, while acquiring a pair of safeties, Dewey McDonald and L.J. McCray, in trades with Oakland and San Francisco, respectively.
READ MORE»
During the final session of Pac-12 Media Days in Los Angeles, conference scribes/throats picked the Washington Huskies to finish second in the North Division. For the first time in 56 years, they also chose Stanford as the favorite to win the overall league title over projected South Division winner UCLA. The poll always provides time-filling talk-show fodder, but is wrong almost as often as it is right, especially lately.
READ MORE»
The Michael Pineda-for-Jesus Montero absurdity that then-general manager Jack Zduriencik made with the New York Yankees in 2012 seems to have an unmistakable verdict: The Mariners were hosed. It wasn’t the first time they had such an indignity, one of many reasons why Jerry Dipoto replaced Zduriencik in September.
READ MORE»
If you haven’t noticed, Jerry Dipoto has not been on vacation during the Dog Days. During the first 10 days of August (first 10!), the first-year general manager of the Mariners made 28 separate transactions that affected his major league roster. The moves included two trades, nine recalls/options involving AAA Tacoma, four DFA’s, a waiver claim and a spate of activity related to the disabled list.
READ MORE»
Ending a tortuous slog into history, Ichiro Suzuki finally notched his 3,000 career hit Sunday, at Coors Field in Denver, in his 2,452nd major league game and 9,567th at-bat. The achievement assures his first-ballot passage into the Baseball Hall of Fame. The historic knock, off Colorado reliever Chris Rusin in the seventh inning, nearly cleared the wall in right field.
READ MORE»
After Edwin Diaz struck out three Boston Red Sox hitters in the ninth inning Tuesday night at Safeco Field to clinch a 5-4 Seattle victory and secure his first career save, the Elias Sports Bureau generated a remarkable factoid about the 22-year-old Mariners rookie, who joined the club June 4 as a call-up from the AA Jackson Generals.
READ MORE»
The Seahawks and head coach Pete Carroll Tuesday agreed to a three-year contract extension through 2019 two days after general manager John Schneider, who has collaborated with Carroll to transform Seattle into one of the NFL’s dominant franchises, signed on for another five seasons. Owner Paul Allen confirmed the news in a tweet.
READ MORE»
Ichiro’s status as an everyday major league player effectively ended two years ago when the New York Yankees declined to re-sign the 40-year-old outfielder. Since then, Ichiro has labored with the Miami Marlins to become the 30th man with 3,000 career hits, which will secure his passage into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
READ MORE»
When Ken Griffey Jr. won election to the Baseball Hall of Fame in January with 99.32 percent of the vote (named on 437 of 440 ballots), two topics dominated the ensuing discussion: The identity of the three schmos who bewilderingly failed to vote for Griffey, and the question of what his career would have looked like had he not lost so many games to injury.
READ MORE»
Ken Griffey Jr., who spent 22 seasons in the major leagues, 13 with the Mariners (1989-99, '09-10), Sunday will become the first player drafted and developed by the franchise to enter the Baseball Hall of Fame. Griffey received landslide backing, collecting a record 99.3 percent of the vote from the Baseball Writers Association of America.
READ MORE»
In order for the Mariners (45-44) to break their light-years-long (well, since 2001, anyway) absence from the MLB postseason, they will have to leap four teams – Houston (48-41), Detroit (46-43), Kansas City (45-43) and the Chicago White Sox (45-43) -- that enter the second half ahead of Seattle for the second wild card spot.
READ MORE»
Rewind to April 6, when the Mariners completed a 2-1 series win at Globe Life Park with a 9-5 victory over the Texas Rangers. In that game, Robinson Cano homered in the first inning and again in the ninth, giving him four long balls in the season’s first three games. The significance: no player in franchise history, not even Ken Griffey Jr., had ever hit four home runs in the first three games of a season.
READ MORE»
The Mariners never held a Humberto Quintero Bobblehead Night at Safeco Field. Yorvit Torrealba, Guillermo Quiroz and Eliezer Alfonzo passed through the park similarly dismissed, as did most of the 22 catchers in the 10 years that followed Dan Wilson’s retirement after the 2005 season. Of the 22, four had opportunities to be the next big thing, but weren't.
READ MORE»
The Mariners won a game Tuesday night against the Oakland Athletics they seemed destined to lose. Trailing 5-4 in the ninth inning at Safeco Field, C Chris Iannetta popped out to second base for the first out and SS Shawn O'Malley followed with a ground ball to short for the second. LF Nori Aoki gave Seattle faint hope by drilling a double to right.
READ MORE»
Had it not been for newcomer Ichiro Suzuki, who led the American League in batting (.356) and stolen bases (56), and won Gold Glove, Silver Slugger, Most Valuable Player and Rookie of the Year awards, Bret Boone would have been the undisputed sensation of the 116-win Mariners in 2001, the last edition of the club to reach the postseason.
READ MORE»
RSS
