Author: 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 didn’t 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 SPNW’s 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.

Even in soccer, where goals and are distributed with frequency nearly equal to Willy Wonka’s Golden Tickets, four consecutive shutouts in a row is a highly respectable stretch of defense. But that can’t be said definitively, because a season-high gathering of 39,312 at the Clink Saturday night did not get to witness four. Zeroes stopped

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Searching for meaning on the first the first day of rookies’ padless football practice against air is barely more productive than looking for life on the moon from one’s porch. But one thing was plain Friday at Seahawks headquarters, even without a telescope — the scouts weren’t lying: Bruce Irvin is meteor-fast.

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