Before he ever thought of saying on a game telecast, “I had the only beard in the Western Hemisphere that made Bob Dylan’s look good, ” Luke Walton’s father had to deal with me and mine. Rummaging through the closet of the manager’s office at Safeco Field almost 20 years ago, Lou Piniella was sorting his civilian clothes into a duffel bag. After 10 seasons managing the Mariners, the last three producing seasons of 91, 116 and 93 wins, he was going home to Tampa, where he was born and raised and kept his off-season home. He was also going…
Author: Art Thiel
Art Thiel
Never having met a metaphor he could not twist beyond recognition, Art has been illuminating, agitating, amusing and annoying Puget Sound sports readers for a long time. Along with Steve Rudman, he co-founded Sports Press Northwest because it didnt seem right that the Google monster should aggregate daily journalism into oblivion without at least a flesh wound from somebody. Thiel and Rudman labored under the Seattle Post-Intelligencer globe until the print edition died an undeserved death in March, 2009. Art continued on at its online successor seattlepi.com while working on SPNWs creation. His radio commentaries can be heard Friday and Saturday mornings and Friday afternoon on KPLU-FM 88.9. In 2003 he wrote the definitive book about the Seattle Mariners, Out of Left Field, which became a regional bestseller. In 2009, along with Rudman and KJR 950 afternoon host Mike Gastineau, Thiel authored The Great Book of Seattle Sports Lists, a cross between historylink.org and Mad Magazine that has become mandatory reading for any sports fan who has an indoor bathroom. A graduate of Pacific Lutheran University as well as two dead papers and a live one, the News Tribune of Tacoma, he has become a fan of entrepreneurial online journalism because it allows him to continue a lifelong passion to take the English language to places it rarely visits willingly, and does not involve the cleaning of kennels or stables.
The Seahawks had the least time of possession in the NFL last season, so coach Pete Carroll set about to fix that with new defensive assistants. / Drew McKenzie, Sportspress Northwest Deducing forward motion within the bumper-cars off-season for the Seahawks coaching staff is nearly impossible. What can be said is that Pete Carroll is willing to risk some reinvention. From afar, the knee-jerk assessments of the 70-year-old head coach is that’s he’s too old and stubborn to change. They obviously didn’t see, or failed to remember, the 2015 NFC Championship. The Seahawks were down 16-0 to Green Bay until…
Cooper Kupp was denied a touchdown on this play by offsetting penalties, but made up for it on another catch that won the Super Bowl for the Rams Sunday. / therams.com Probably a dozen or more NFL head coaches, their players and fans spent a part of Sunday evening muttering something along the lines of, “The Rams? Hell, gimme Aaron Donald and Cooper Kupp, and we could have won the Super Bowl too.” It’s close to the truth. Despite being on home turf, the Los Angeles Rams were in a mostly game-long stumble against a team that lost seven regular-season…
Cooper Kupp got away with a 10-yard touchdown pass against the Seahawks at the Los Angeles Coliseum, part of a 28-12 Rams win in December 2019. / Drew McKenzie, Sportspress Northwest What remains of the sports world that doesn’t know much about Cooper Kupp likely will be filled in Sunday. The Super Bowl match in Los Angeles against the Cincinnati Bengals provides the biggest stage in sports, and the Rams are eager to feed the beast they helped create. On a Sofi Stadium field full of premier players, Kupp is the most unstoppable. Even Aaron Donald can be negated with…
Former Seahawks star Richard Sherman appeared in King County District Court July 17, 2021. / Via KING5 When we would next hear from Richard Sherman about his time in Seattle, I had hoped he would be relevant and topical, the rhetorical trademarks from his Seahawks playing days. Perhaps with a little less bombast, figuring his career was concluding. But he was almost always worthy of a listen. In his current situation, relevant and topical means matters of his personal welfare — mental health, relationships, alcohol use, gun ownership. Among top-tier pro athletes, those are normally seldom-shared subjects. But Sherman made…
Clint Hurtt has been promoted from defensive-line coach to coordinator by the Seahawks. / Art Thiel, Sportspress Northwest The decision to move up defensive line/assistant head coach Clint Hurtt to replace fired Ken Norton Jr. as Seahawks defensive coordinator isn’t surprising. An in-house candidate is often the safest, easiest choice. Hurtt has been on Pete Carroll’s staff since 2017, is popular with players and most importantly, understands that Prof. Dumbledore is in charge of defending Hogwarts. The succession, first reported by the Seattle Times Friday, hasn’t been announced by the Seahawks yet, nor has the signing of longtime Carroll friend…
The Beijing Olympics Water Cube, an aquatics center where U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps starred in 2008, has been converted to a curling rink for the 2022 Winter Games. / Xinhua Fake snow. Fake budgets. Fake smiles. Real authoritarianism. As slogans go for an Olympics, that’s a little clumsy. But for the Winter Games just underway in Beijing, it works for me and maybe a lot of other people who don’t work for NBC. Based on pre-Games reporting from multiple credible news sources, the return to the same city that hosted the 2008 Summer Games is far more awkward than that…
New Huskies football coach Kalen DeBoer talked about his first recruiting class at Washington Wednesday. / Art Thiel, Sportspress Northwest Some returning members of the Washington Huskies football team will be on their third head coach in five years. The assistant-coach positions will have undergone an almost complete flush. Players return after a 4-8 season that was among the most embarrassing in UW history (a delay of game penalty on a first play?), concluding with the worst purple loss in Apple Cup annals, which included the implanting of the Cougars flag in the sacred, ersatz sod of Husky Stadium. The…
At the Super Bowl in Phoenix, Patriots QB Tom Brady spent much of his podium time denying the claims that created a four-game suspension in 2015 for scheming to deflate footballs. / Art Thiel, Sportspress Northwest The football day began with a written farewell from Tom Brady, whose opus had no room for mention of his 20 years and six championships with New England. By afternoon, national talk abruptly turned to a bombshell civil-rights lawsuit filed against the NFL by fired Miami Dolphins coach Brian Flores, whose juiciest evidence was a series of mis-targeted texts he received from Patriots coach…
This was in 2019 against the Seahawks, but DT Jarran Reed’s strip of 49ers QB Jimmy Garoppolo was the sort of late-game play that pock-marked his career. / Drew McKenzie, Sportspress Northwest As Tom Brady readies to exit the NFL stage, the football nation turns its lonely eyes to Joe Burrow. He is the last, best hope to spoil the diabolical dream of dominion by the Los Angeles Rams. The plan by owner Stan Kroenke — harvest at all costs the best mercenaries to win the grandest game in the world’s most spectacular sports cathedral that he built and runs…