Missing Baseball Part I

September 23, 2019

Missing Baseball, Part I

The major league playoffs are under way, and once again, I don’t care.  I don’t have a team to root for.  But it wasn’t always that way.

Starting this piece is a bit like recalling a lost love, my first love, though it came before I even started liking girls.   First, however, I must mention my most recent dalliance, and work backwards in time from then.

My team used to be the Seattle Mariners.  The last time they made the playoffs was 2001, a season ne’er to be forgotten; aye, but that was already 18 years ago, hard to believe. 

That year 2001, MMI, was a watershed year in other respects, for the world, the country, for me personally.  We made it to a new Millennium! *  Within the much smaller scope of this piece, it was the year the Mariners won 116 games in the regular season, tying a major league record that had stood since 1906.

Though the M’s season was cut short, and by short I mean before making it to the World Series, it was otherwise most noteworthy as the Major League debut of Ichiro Suzuki, who led the majors that year with a batting average of .350 and 242 base hits.  To say he was a sensation would be an understatement.  He was an All-Star, Rookie of the Year and MVP in the American League.  The Mariners led baseball in attendance in 2001, too, putting over three million butts in the seats of the relatively new (and beautiful) Safeco Field.  I’ll return to Ichiro and the 2001 Mariners later.

That was the peak year, but I wasn’t just a peak-year fan.  My Mariners fanhood goes back almost to the inception of the team in 1977, when they joined the American League as an expansion team.  I was living there at the time.  I’d been to the opening event at the Kingdome, the Billy Graham Crusade. [1] The following year, everyone was aware that there was Big League baseball back in town, finally, since the one-year failure of the Pilots on 1969.   But I didn’t care much.  I caught a few games on TV, was aware they had a couple of good hitters, but couldn’t get very interested.

It wasn’t always that way.  

 Backwards again, twenty years.  Baseball was the first game I loved, thanks to my father.  By the time I was six, old enough, thanks to his help, to understand the game, he started taking me to Portland Beavers games.  That first summer had to be 1957, when I was six.  

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Aerial view of Multnomah Stadium, 1956

I remember vividly the sights and sounds of those first games at Multnomah Stadium.  My dad would drive and park somewhere on the north side of Burnside, the busy Blvd. that divides the city north and south.  Then, taking my hand, he’d lead me across the street at the light, probably right at 20^th St.  Then I saw the ticket windows, brick façade and the heavy metal turnstiles.  Dad bought the tickets, then led me through the dark concourse, filled with the smells of cigars, cigarettes, coffee, popcorn, hot dogs.  Maybe he’d buy hot dogs for us then, or a bag of peanuts. (My dad at time weighed almost 300 pounds; he was never stingy with food.)

Then, ah! We’d walk through the gate and see the ball field!  I shall remember it all my life as my first vision of heaven. [2]  The green grass, players from both teams warming up on the infield and sidelines, the stands filling up with fans in expectation of nothing else than—a baseball game. 

My dad was working as a sales rep for a local brewery back then.  Sometimes the company gave him tickets for box seats down very close to the ball field.  I could see and smell the cigar smoke drift above the men, holding beer in big paper cups.  

The Beavers’ home uniforms were blinding white--like angels!--with vivid red lettering and caps.  If we were sitting down close, we could hear the players’ chatter and the slap of the balls in their mitts as they warmed up.

In 1958, there were only six teams in the Pacific Coast League:  The Phoenix Giants, San Diego Padres, Vancouver Mounties, Salt lake City Bees, Sacramento Solons, Spokane Indians, Seattle Rainiers, and our Beavers.  The league was designated AAA, which means it was the last step up (or down) to the majors.  Since there were only sixteen teams in the Majors, eight in each league, the level of play in the PCL was comparable, almost equal.  (There are currently thirty teams in the Majors.)

I still remember some of the players from those few years, 1957-60, notably George Freese, the Beavers’ 3^rd-bagger.  In 1958, he hit .305 with 35 home runs.  The next year he hit .319.  During his sixteen-year career, Freese went up for several cups of coffee in the Majors.

 

George Freese

(To be cont. in Part II)

NOTES:

1. Billy Graham Crusade, Seattle.  May 9-16, 1976.

2.  I was a Catholic school kid.  I had to deal with the nuns'conception of heaven, and it did not compare favorably to that ball park.  I attended kindergarten at a public school.