In 1958-59, Elgin Baylor, who died Monday at 86, led the Seattle University basketball team to one of the most improbable runs in Northwest and NCAA championship history.
Author: David Eskenazi
David Eskenazi
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
If he had never owned the PCL Rainiers, or built a new ballpark, Emil Sick, a brewery operator, would still rank among the most influential Seattle citizens of the 20th century.
Since the 1917 Stanley Cup champion Metropolitans folded in the mid-1920s, Seattle has had five opportunities to return to the top tier of professional hockey.
Bill McFarland had a major impact on pro hockey in Seattle, playing 10 years with the Totems, coaching for four. He went to school at UW to become a lawyer.
Golden Guyle Fielder starred for the Seattle Bombers, Seattle Americans and Seattle Americans and remains the greatest pro hockey star in the city’s history.
One of Seattle’s iconic hockey figures also boxed, played lacrosse, ice danced and skated on stilts. Not many knew that he used an alias throughout his life.
In late winter 1919, an epidemic and the U.S. military foiled Seattle’s chance to launch a pro sports dynasty that would have been emblazoned forever on the Stanley Cup.
Frank Foyston joined the Seattle Metropolitans after a “corporate raid” on the Toronto Blueshirts and developed into the city’s first hockey legend.
Warren Moon arrived at the University of Washington in 1975 as a junior college transfer. Forty years later, he will be honored Wednesday the annual Sports Star of the Year event.
To commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Seahawks, here are 40 moments, memorable and miserable, that left the 12s reeling alternately in dismay and delight.