The courageous manner in which Seattle baseball icon Fred Hutchinson coped with his cancer diagnosis inspired three friends to create the Hutch Award.
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
With so much rich history to it (104 games), it’s as much fun looking back on the Washington-Washington State rivalry as it is anticipating the next addition to to the series.
Not only did Hec Edmundson, a two-time Olympian, have a profound coaching impact on Washington athletics, he co-founded the state high school basketball tournament.
An eclectic cast of characters, the Bob Lemon-managed 1966 Angels of the Pacific Coast League remain the last pro baseball team to win a championship in Seattle.
A Texas native, Ralph “Pest” Welch, who coached UW football from 1942-47, has never particularly interested Husky historians, but his short tenure is not without its intrigues.
Seattle lost its first major league team, the Pilots, to Milwaukee in 1970, but some clever lawyering by William Dwyer resulted in the creation of the Seattle Mariners.
The 1907 Seattle High baseball team took an unprecedented, two-month trip to the Midwest, East and Southwest in the summer of 1907. Several players became professionals.
Sonny Sixkiller played only 28 football games for the University of Washington, but they were enough to stamp him as the most iconic figure in the 121-year history of the program.
Of all the records set by Hugh McElhenny during his career at the University of Washington, the one he established 60 years ago this week probably ranks as the most remarkable.
Enoch Bagshaw took over what had been a lame UW football team and turned it into one of the West’s powerhouse programs by the mid-1920s, when UW played in two Rose Bowls.