Be careful turning back that clock
The Seattle Mariners, with very little in their present to get excited about, on Saturday turned back the clock to 1969, when the major league baseball team in town was known as the Seattle Pilots.
The players wore Pilots uniforms, and the team tried to make everything else during the game appear as it was 50 years ago.
The Mariners did their part on Saturday to look like the old Pilots, who went 64-98 in their lone season in Seattle.
Seattle lost 8-4 to the Baltimore Orioles, who had come into the game with a 21-55 record and were on a 10-game losing streak. But on this day, the current Orioles looked more like the 1969 Orioles, who went 109-53 and played in the World Series.
Mariners fans can only hope their team doesn’t suffer the same fate as the Pilots, who wound up in another city (Milwaukee) in 1970.
THE PILOTS, of course, were immortalized in the best-seller “Ball Four” by Jim Bouton, which I read so many times growing up, the paperback was in several pieces after a while.
Bouton pitched for the expansion Pilots for most of the 1969 season until being traded to Houston for the stretch run, and the book was highly controversial at the time because it told stories from the inside that normally never would have reached the public.
Something about the sign in the clubhouse that read, “What you see here, what you hear here, let it stay here when you leave here.”
Taboo or not, the telling of those stories provided an entertaining read from Bouton, who sadly is having health issues these days.
Who can forget Bouton’s stories of Pilots manager Joe Schultz going to the mound, in a key situation late in the game, and the pitcher asks the skipper for advice on how to pitch to the next batter.
“Give ’em some low smoke and let’s go in and pound some Budweiser,” was Schultz’s reply, according to the book.
You think Scott Servais ever went to the mound with that kind of wisdom? Of course these days, when the manager goes to the mound, it’s usually with the hook.
Over time, the Pilots became a much bigger deal because of “Ball Four” than for anything they did on the field.
NOT THAT there are rumblings about the Mariners moving — their park, some two decades old, is still a thing of beauty, even though the team on the field seldom has been.
By contrast, the Pilots played at Sicks Stadium, which was 31 years old at the time, and built for a minor league team. It was a temporarary home for the Pilots until a domed stadium could be built. Seats were still being added to the stadium as the season went on.
Seattle sued the American League after losing the Pilots and eventually was granted another expansion franchise, with the Mariners beginning play at the Kingdome in 1977.
Meanwhile, Portland has been hankering for a major league team in recent years. So imagine the uproar if Seattle, still stinging after losing the Sonics to Oklahoma City, lost the Mariners to that city some 175 miles south on Interstate 5.
Especially if Russell Wilson, who with wife Ciara has put up some money in the attempt to bring a baseball team to the Rose City, decides to play a few games at second base.
Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at mnelke@cdapress.com. Follow him on Twitter@CdAPressSports.