An otherwise dreary 8-2 Opening Day defeat in Houston, evoking the demons of 2019, was enlivened by rookie Kyle Lewis’s 438-foot home run off Justin Verlander.
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.
It’s year two of extended spring training for the Mariners, who have only 60 developmental games, yet have to manage two national scourges while doing it. Fun.
Nobody wants a small fish that gets eaten by bigger fish. Totems? Out of fashion. Metropolitans? Ineligible. How about remorseless sea menace? Yes. Kraken.
The ploy by NFL players to Twitterbomb owners into ditching fake games was clever. But the hard part looms: Playing a collision sport outside a bubble in a pandemic.
Not having Blue Jays fans in Seattle this summer was a teensy silver lining to the shutdown. But not allowing the team in Canada because the U.S. is so infected . . . wow.
Wishing and hoping are no matches for the virus. College football players don’t have a union to protect them. The schools have little choice but to call off 2020.
Once the “wartime president” turned his back on the virus fight, NHL took its playoffs to hub cities in Canada. Would have gone further north, but the Arctic is melting.
Pac-12 went conference-only for fall sports, meaning Washington dropped Utah St. and Sacramento St. Seahawks’ Carroll hinted NFL camps may get pushed back.
A compedium of pandemic sports news, starting with a large casualty: The Michigan-Washington epic is no more. If you need laughs, watch the meme at the end.
Redskins owner Daniel Snyder surprised many by considering changing the name of his NFL team. But it has nothing to do with any sudden attack of righteousness.