Hello. Are we ready? -Hello. -Welcome. Thank you all so much for being here. We’re really excited to have you back. Happy New Year and welcome to January History Cafe, Seattle Sports and Urban Progress. My name is Sora. I use they/them pronouns, and I work in public programs here at MOHAI.
And before we begin, I have a couple housekeeping notes for y’all. If you need a restroom, they are through the cafe to the left past the deli case. And thank you for wearing masks at all times while not actively eating or drinking throughout tonight’s events.
We’re in the middle of a large COVID surge, so it’s really appreciated. History Cafe is a series presented in partnership with History Link on the third Wednesday of every month. Hey, Jen. And tonight’s schedule of events. We’ll start with about an hour of presentation with some trivia intermixed.
So get ready to get your thinking caps on. And then we’ll have about a 30-minute Q&A followed by a book signing. Tonight, we’ll be reflecting on Seattle’s sports history and its impact on the fabric of our city. And with that in mind, it’s critical
That we acknowledge the people who are here first playing and living and stewarding this land. And here at MOHAI, we are on the historic and contemporary lands and waters of the Duwamish, Suquamish, Muckleshoot, and all Coast Salish people. Historically, native communities were forcibly removed from this city with lasting impacts to today.
That said, we honor their continued endurance with deep respect and gratitude for their unbroken stewardship of this place. We encourage you to visit the websites of local tribes to learn more about the people whose lands you’re on. Tonight’s speaker is Shaun Scott, a Seattle-based writer, abolitionist and organizer. He’s the author
Of “Millennials and the Moments That Made Us: A Cultural History of the U.S. From 1982-Present” and the new book, “Heartbreak City: Seattle Sports and the Unmet Promise of Urban Progress.” Please give him a warm welcome. Sora, thanks so much for the wonderful introduction. It’s great to be here with everybody this evening.
A putting together a book that spans some 170 years of history that takes up about 230 pages worth of space. Each one precious, of course. It’s a lot of work, it’s a lot of work that takes place in isolation and a lot of work that takes place at times
Where you don’t necessarily feel like writing or researching, but you do it anyway because you imagine nights like this where people will come out to want to hear about the topic that you’ve been delving into. This was an especially fun topic to write and research about.
I knew that when I sort of first had the first conversations with the University of Washington press about putting together a book proposal, the energy that I had in mind was something that I would be able to think and talk and write and speak about and research at any point of the day.
Seattle politics and Seattle sports fit both of those criteria. So I thought it would probably be a good idea to try to put those two together for a book project. So it’s just awesome to be here with everybody. I wanna take a moment to sort of clarify what exactly it is
That we’re gonna be talking about tonight. I wanna do a countdown of the 10 most politically impactful sports figures in Seattle history. But what we’re not doing is we’re not talking about the 10 best athletes in the city sports history, right? If we were to talk about who could run the fastest
Or jump the highest or anything like that, there would be a lot of names that are on this list that probably would be swapped out for some others. I think about Doris Heritage Brown pictured here, who was actually the first woman, a Seattle runner, who was the first woman to run a sub,
Five minute mile in 1966. She’s somebody who would probably be at or near the top of this list. If anybody here has ever tried to run a sub five-minute mile, you know why. Somebody like Warren Moon would probably be on this list. When we look at, you know,
The NFL playoffs are going on right now with, you know, so many Black quarterbacks like Patrick Mahomes and Lamar Jackson, Jordan Love, others that throwing the ball really far, you know, tremendous scrambling ability. Warren Moon was kind of the forerunner to all of them. And his career actually started here
In the University of Washington, where he endured a significant racism as a Black quarterback in a pioneer in that respect. He’s somebody who would probably be on this list if we were talking about the best athletes proper. Somebody like Bernie Morris, who was at his point,
Or during his day, one of the fastest skaters in the world. Somebody who led the offensive attack of the 1917 Seattle Metropolitans. He’s somebody who would probably be on this list as well if we were talking about the best athletes. But that’s not what this conversation is about, right?
This conversation is really about not athletes that would be the most likely to win the fight, but I think athletes that were the most indicative of fights to make Seattle a more progressive city, to make the United States a more progressive union generally.
So as a result, there are actually a few names at this list, particularly at the top that would probably be on both lists and we’ll get into that. But there are also some figures in this countdown that we’re gonna do that are not necessarily athletes,
But that’s still had a really, really huge impact on the city and its politics. We’re talking about huge gobs of public resources devoted to big stadiums. We’re talking about groups of people that are typically in the margins of mainstream politics that are suddenly closer to the center
Because they were following galvanizing athletes and teams that represented marginalized communities and backgrounds. And ultimately, I think it’s gonna be a lot more far ranging of a discussion than it would be if we were just talking about what was taking on between the lines of play, as it were. This was not planned,
But today is actually Muhammad Ali’s birthday. I can’t really think about a better athlete to sort of get this conversation started off. When you think about Muhammad Ali as somebody who was an anti-imperialist, somebody who was a civil rights icon at a time where it was not popular
To be a civil rights icon. Somebody who spoke out against the worst impacts of US militarism at home and abroad. Muhammad Ali was somebody who I think has to be at the top of any list, whether you’re talking about impactful athletes or people who are just really, really good
At doing what they did. This quote I actually thought about quite a lot, often during the writing process when Muhammad Ali says, “I hated every minute of training, but I said, ‘Don’t quit, suffer now. Live the rest of your life as a champion.'” I promise, he was talking about boxing
And not about historical research, but that doesn’t mean that there wasn’t some cross application there. So wanted to get us started on that note with January 17th being Muhammad Ali’s birthday. And what a great sort of spirit to gather around today as we’re getting ready to talk about political impact in sports.
Heartbreak City is a book that, as I mentioned earlier, spans about 170 years of history. It doesn’t have innings or it doesn’t have chapters, it has innings. We go from the first inning in the progressive era, the second inning in the 1920s, all the way down to the present day.
And I wanted to try to put together a book that unfolded as much like a novel as one that unfolded like a history book. So, you know, any great nonfiction that you read or watch is gonna have defined characters, it’s gonna have strong motivations, it’s gonna have people that you meet
That leave an impression, whether they’re on the screen or the page as it were, for a short or a very long time. So really what this is about tonight, I think is just kind of an introduction of some of the characters that I thought were some of the most central to the story
That we’re getting ready to tell about the city and its history and its relationship to sport. And I wanna get us started off at number 10, one of my favorite characters before we reveal who this is, I wanna take a second to read an excerpt from my book that sort of frames
What this figure meant to the city at the time that he was around. As the hardy gilded age gave way to the progressive era, brainy city bureaucrats and recalcitrant labor leaders replaced the brony pioneers of yesteryear. Seattle founder, author Denny, was disgusted, quote, “If people possessed
More of the spirit of the old settlers,” he wrote, near the turn of the century, “we would hear less about a conflict between labor and capital. We had no eight or even 10-hour days, and I never heard of anyone striking. Every man who was worthy of that name struck at whatever obstacle stood
In the way of his success,” end quote. If masculinity was in a crisis in the progressive era, many believed that the full extent of the problem could be seen in the sorry state of University of Washington football. Established in 1889, the University of Washington football team had some success at the turn
Of the century, typified by a smashmouth too, nothing win against Nevada that clinched the Pacific Coast Championship in November of 1902. But as Seattle became a more mature city as the 1900s progressed, separating itself from its wild past with manicured parks and new rules regulating violent sports, UDub football seemed to grow soft.
After the subpar 1907, an article in the college’s alumni publication titled, “What’s the Matter With Washington Athletics” argued that the school was too preoccupied with contemporary distractions. Quote, “Too much society, too many social stunts, too many young men and women wasting energy cleaning, too much competition among the sororities
And fraternities as to which could give the biggest social affair.” End quote. It was time to get tough again. In 1908, Washington search for a new coach to reinvigorate its football program. School officials decided on Gilmore Dobie, who hadn’t lost a game in four years as head honcho at a Minneapolis High School
And at North Dakota State. Upon arriving in Seattle, Dobie laid the gauntlet to players and fans alike. He challenged Washington students to come out and support a winner and inadvertently coined the mascot name the team would come to be known by in the coming years. Quote, “The Huskies must come out,
And if they do not, the rest of you must get them out.” End quote. Born January 21st, 1878, Robert Gilmore Dobie was a hard boiled product of the Gilded Age who had worked as an indenture child laborer after his destitute parents orphaned him in the 1880s.
A real thin man, Dobie dawned a black trench coat to look tough. He wore sweaters made from animal skins. He chewed cigars on the sidelines and cursed at referees. He liked to remind Washington players of his personal motto, quote, “I’m always right and you are always wrong.” End quote.
Gil Dobie challenged the whole team to a fight, but had no takers. He made them run 20 laps after they won a game by 70 points. Why wasn’t it 100? Football was figurative war, and his nine seasons as Washington’s head coach Dobie’s team never lost. From 1908 to 1916, it won 58 0-3
Decimating rivals earning Seattle national praise and attention, and setting a standard for competitive excellence that went utterly unmatched. In anticipation of a November, 1915 game between Washington and California, a Washington alum penned the fight song, “Bow Down to Washington,” which remained a fixture at Husky Football Games.
Washington creamed rival California 72 to nothing. And after the game, the New York Times confessed that the best in the west was the best bar none. Quote, “Turn the spotlight so it may shine upon the most remarkable coach in college football. Gilmore Dobie, pilot of the football destiny
Of the University of Washington in Seattle.” End quote. So if you happen to watch the National Championship game a few weeks ago, I suspect that there could be a lot of people that wish that we had a coach like Gil Dobie at the command of our team at that particular juncture.
But when we look at the University of Washington today, a, you know, huge multi-million dollar, I believe it was a $280 million renovation of Husky Stadium that took place in 2013. Huge sums of public research funds that are generated as a result of the advertisement of the college
That college football plays a huge role in. I think that that’s where you would see sort of Gilmore Dobie as a central figure in the story of how Seattle developed its love affair with sports. I mean, this was really one of the first figures that we saw.
Helm a team to a national title in Seattle, they’re certainly not the last. And so I would put Gilmore Dobie somewhere at the top of this list. So it’s why I have him ranked here at number 10 before we move on to our next slide. Right? So next figure. Anybody who may have,
Maybe you’ve taken transit to a Seahawk or a Mariner game, this name is probably familiar to you. Royal Brougham was named after this man, Royal Brougham who was at one point in time, the preeminent sports columnist in the City of Seattle. Somebody who worked as the team statistician
For the Seattle Mets as they went on their Stanley Cup run in 1917. Somebody who was in his, I believe it was 84 years of life, was a sports booster without parallel. When he ended up passing away, and I should point out the story of his passing is covered in the book.
He actually died at a Seahawks game. There’s a very, very tight game between the Seahawks and Broncos that led to this man’s expiration. And it’s kind of fitting because I mean, his life and his work and his obsession was Seattle sports. So it was kinda fitting that it was the Seahawks
That sent him to one last final rest. But he was somebody who advocated in the 1960s for the arrival of the Seahawks and Mariners, or the construction of the stadium that led to their arrival. We’ll talk about that a little bit later. Somebody who pushed for the integration
Of the city sports throughout the ’40s and ’50s. Many bowling leagues in the City of Seattle were racially exclusive. A national Japanese American organization had written him a letter in the late ’40s thanking him for pushing for the integration of bowling alleys across the city. He was somebody who, when youth athletes
Were sort of putting their imprint on the sports fabric of the country with the University of Washington rowing team, and Helene Madison, who we’re gonna get to shortly, is really the first Seattle sports superstar. He was one of the first people to beg the question
Of why can’t these athletes end up getting paid for their labors, even though they’re youth athletes? That’s no excuse for them having to live oftentimes in poverty. So Royal Brougham was, you know, somebody who I think his biography sort of serves as the backdrop and the through story through the first six
Or seven chapters of the book. And is definitely somebody I would encourage everybody to read about in, if not my book, then online. Right? Okay. Helene Madison at number eight, I think of all the historical personages people that I had the opportunity to learn about
For the first time in the course of researching this book. She was one of the ones who left one of the most profound and lasting impressions on me personally as a writer. She was somebody who at one point in time, owned in the early 1930s, practically every women’s swimming record
That was in existence. Somebody who cleaned up at the 1930 US National Championships in Miami. And then again at the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. The Washington Athletic Club was a backer, a booster of hers raced funds for her ability to travel to compete at these national games at which Seattle
Was finally recognized as a sports destination town, largely as a result of her exploits. Unfortunately, she was also somebody as a result of being somebody who did not get paid for her work, who led a very, very difficult and hard life later on as she eventually expired in 1970.
But we’ve seen, you know, over the past few months, you know, a lot of, I mean, I feel like collectively Seattle, we get together and every, you know, seven or eight years or so, we get together and deter and ask ourselves whether or not the boys
Are still in the boat with the rowing team, right? And we checked with Dan Brown’s book in 2013 Boys were definitely in the boat at that time. There’s a George Clooney film that’s come out. Good to see that they’re still there. And it’s unfortunate to me that I think that Helene Madison,
Who was really somebody who laid the fundraising template that the University of Washington rowing team eventually enjoyed in 1936, was somebody who’s been kind of written out of that history unfortunately. So being able to tell her story in the course of this book, and she’s covered quite a lot in the third inning,
Which covers the 1930s, was something I wanted to make a point to do because I think that there are a lot of people that just sort of assume that the first and greatest thing that you hear about what was going on with Seattle sports in the 1930s was sort of the only thing
When really, there was quite a trailblazer that we had in Helena Madison as well. So I would encourage everybody to check out more about Helene Madison. I believe it was a historian Maureen Smith who called her Seattle’s first individual homegrown superstar. I think that’s accurate. Bernie Morris on the striker
For the Seattle Mets was somebody who, you know, earned a lot of fame and recognition here in the City of Seattle, but was not necessarily from here. And so somebody like Helene Madison who learned to swim at GreenLake was from the neighborhood of Wallingford, enjoyed local fundraising support.
Certainly deserves a lot of recognition as I think Seattle’s first as Marine Smith put it, homegrown superstar in the City of Seattle. All right, we wanna do some trivia. Okay, so we’re gonna take a break from the countdown and pose this question. I wanna see if anybody might have the answer
To this question. Profiled in Jet Magazine in the 1970s, this University of Washington staffer helped to acclimate athletes of color to campus life earning praise and respect from the likes of Spencer Haywood and Warren Moon. Anybody have a stab at who this might be? Some famous siblings? [Audience Member] A Woman?
She was, is. [Audience Member] Gertrude Peoples? Ey! Got it. So this first trivia question is definitely on difficult mode. It’s gonna get a little bit easier a little bit later, but kudos to you for getting that right. I was almost certain that nobody was gonna get that.
And guess it as casually as you guessed it as well. So well done. [Audience Member] What was the answer? The answer was Gertrude Peoples. Gertrude Peoples. Yeah, she was somebody who at a point in time, when the University of Washington in the ’70s, as a result of the civil rights movement
And campus movements to make the school and the college more inclusive was brought on. And many of the athletes that were able to attend the University of Washington as a result of athletic scholarships sort of cited her as a very, very important part of their on-campus support system.
So you have like a whole generation of athletes that at a point in time where, let’s face it, Seattle was a segregated city in the 1970s. A city that in the ’70s was in the middle of a really nasty dispute over whether or how to integrate its schools
With forced bussing, a city that in 1964, only a few years earlier, I believe, had voted down an open housing integration measure. For black athletes in particular and Warren Moon’s story. I should talk about in the seventh inning of the book, he was somebody who was a subject
Of a lot of racism on campus. And I think Gertrude Peoples was somebody who helped sort of buffer him and other athletes as well from the hostility of the sort of surrounding city. So Gertrude Peoples, congrats to you for guessing that. I’m impressed. All right, so back to the countdown, right?
Lenny Wilkens and Spencer Haywood, these two are kind of linked in history as former members of the Seattle Supersonics, who actually, I think I’m gonna read an excerpt about the both of them. And this is from the seventh inning of the book called “Fade Away.” Briefly, in 1975, sophomore football prospect Warren Moon
Was classmates with a man who helped to integrate the National Basketball Association. Warren Moon was a Seattle pioneer in his own right, a young man venturing to play the quarterback position in an era when it was largely denied to Black athletes. Spencer Haywood meanwhile, was a bonafide basketball star
Taking college classes in his spare time and moonlighting as a campus jazz radio show host while playing for the Seattle Sonics. Life was good at a time. When the average player’s salary was about $700,000, the 6’8 225-pound forward Spencer Haywood was on a six-year $8 million deal with Seattle.
Back in 1971, the US Supreme Court had ruled in Haywood’s favor in the case Haywood versus National Basketball Association when he sued the NBA over a rule that disallowed players from entering the league, unless they were four years removed from high school. After the Sonics were blocked by the league when they tried
To sign him, Haywood successfully argued in court that the rule was discriminatory. Most players who were impacted by it were Black, poor, and playing basketball to get out of poverty. The NBA knew this. Slowing the flood of young, gifted and Black players was a way for conservative white team owners to control
How their legacy was, how their league was perceived, and to retain power in it. Quote, “I ain’t Jackie Robinson recalled Haywood, but in a way, I was.” Journalist David Halberstam breaks of the game relays that in the 1970s the NBA’s players came from the ghettos of cities in the post-industrial age,
But its new markets were in Denver and Portland in Seattle. But the civil rights movement still smoldering, professional basketball seemed caught in a bind. How would the NBA market a black urban sport to a growing white suburban fan base? On NBA on CBS broadcasts in the 1970s, musical cutaways to commercials toggled
Between the blonde crooner Olivia Newton-John and the black led soul band, MFSB, a telling act of musical vertigo that signaled basketball’s attempted cross-racial appeal. The 1977 NBA finals between the Philadelphia 76ers and the Portland Trailblazers modeled the demographic tensions that tugged at the league. And as Portland hoisted the championship trophy,
Lenny Wilkens watched from Seattle with disgust. Wilkens was the Supersonics director of player personnel in 1977. From 1974 to ’76, he was the head coach of the Portland Trailblazers, and only one of five Black NBA coaches since the league began in 1946. It was Wilkens who mentored Bill Walton during his rookie
And sophomore seasons, helping to mold the young hippie into the NBA finals, MVP he became. It was Wilkens who coaxed the trailblazer roster into winning form, crafting the nucleus that won the championship. And it was Wilkens who Portland Management fired in 1976, replacing him with white coach Jack Ramsey.
The very next year, the trailblazers were champs. That was Lenny’s team. Only, it wasn’t anymore. Beneath the calm demeanor Wilkens simmered. Born October 28th, 1937, Leonard Randolph Wilkens was raised in the Bedford Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn after a stint with the St. Louis Hawks, he was traded to Seattle in 1969.
When Wilkens took on the role of player coach in Seattle, Seattle fans sent the team hate mail. But the team improved under him posting its first winning record in franchise history in 1972. While the two were teammates in Seattle, Wilkens saw Spencer Haywood struggle as intertwined with his own.
Blacks and managerial positions were as rare as empowered black players. Like Haywood, Wilkens was a pioneer of post civil rights professional sports navigating the world of white elites with few roadmaps for doing so. This is a name that should be familiar to Seattleites of all generations. Just by show of hands, gonna see
If the name Jim Ellis rings a bell. Okay. So Jim Ellis was actually a resident of, or he was born in Oakland, somebody who moved to the Seattle area in the post World War II era. A urban planner and a Republican actually who was instrumental to the founding of the Metro Agency
To help clean up Lake Washington, which was at that point, well, it was filthy. There was a lot of huge boom in post World War II growth in the area. A lot of the city’s social services infrastructure was unprepared for that growth. The water, which we see as relatively pristine today,
Was not what it looked like certainly in the 1950s. Firsthand accounts describe it as looking rather like split piece soup. And so Jim Ellis’s effort to help clean up Lake Washington was really only the first of a number of schemes that he had to make Seattle a more progressive place.
A place that actually lived up to the environmental reputation that it would come to enjoy. I mean, I’m just trying to wrap my head around a Republican in the present saying this quote, “There are warning signs that urban conditions are engulfing in their potential trouble.”
Okay, maybe you can imagine a Republican saying that part. But, “The conflict between people and vehicles growing more deadly. The air we breathe changing its composition, segregation, exploding, and its charge of injustice.” In the late 1960s, Jim Ellis had an idea that in his mind, was gonna help prepare Seattle for the increased
Sort of spurt of growth that it was seeing even at that point in time. His idea was to come up with a slate of electoral initiatives called Forward Thrust. This was a slate of 13 ballot initiatives that included a plan for mass rail transit and a sports facility that eventually became the Kingdom.
In Jim Ellis’s mind, if you had sort of a, I wanna say civic sort of booster amenities that played to Seattle’s desire to become a big league city at the same time that you had sort of nuts and bolts funding for parks for transit and things of that sort.
That any given item on this electoral slate called Forward Thrust would be more likely to pass as a result. And so this went before voters in two separate elections, one in February of 1968, another couple of years later in February of 1970. You can probably guess how this story turned out.
I mean, the facility that we see at the top. That is the Kingdom, which for a quarter century 24 years, was home to the Seattle Seahawks and the Mariners when it was opened. I believe it was in 1975, the Seahawks followed a year or so later, the Mariners
Followed a couple of years later. And nonetheless, Jim Ellis was somebody who was very heartbroken by the result of those elections because that was not his ultimate goal, right? His ultimate goal was this. Would’ve been built in 1985 were it not for the fact that Seattle voters had rejected the Forward Thrust proposal.
I see a lot of shaking heads right now. This is the urbanist version of the Malcolm Butler play, right? Like you have people that were not alive in 1968 or 1970 people that had nothing to do with mid-century politics that when they see this map, they shake their heads and they cannot understand
How Pete Carroll did not run the ball, right? That’s what this image comes to mind. That’s the emotion that it evokes. That’s how it makes us feel. Nonetheless, Jim Ellis, I think very deserving of this spot, and so I decided to put him at number five.
I think he might actually be the highest ranked non-athlete on this list, which I think says a lot. All right, trivia break. You know, you weren’t supposed to get this right because I was supposed to do a big reveal with the answer with this here.
So we’re just gonna kinda race through the slide. Congrats again. Gertrude Peoples, look at that. All right, we’ll do another trivia break. The Seattle storm when the WNBA championship in 2004, it was the city’s first major sports championship since the Sonics won the title in 1979.
Which Seattle Storm Player won the 2004 WNBA final’s Most Valuable Player award. A hand is shot up. Sorry. Oh, one guess per participant. Not gonna just start naming names over here. I saw, I think your hand went up. -Lauren Jackson. -Nope. [Sora] Anybody else? I saw one over to the left.
This is supposed to be the easy one. The easier one. [Sora] Do you have one? Anybody? Anybody else? Well, this is awkward. Oh, we got one back here. -Is it Betty Lennox? -Ey! There we go. -Congratulations. -Yeah. Betty Lennox. We will save this for a little bit later.
I’m gonna go into this a little bit more, but congrats on getting this right and we’re gonna talk about Sue Bird a little bit later, I promise. These two guys look familiar? It’s kinda cheating. I lumped them into one but I feel like for anybody who watched this team,
It’s kinda difficult to not think of them as a tandem. I’m gonna say that the political impact that these two players, Gary Payton and Shawn Kemp had on the city of Seattle, where the other figures that we sort of looked at, it was a positive impact. It was measured in stadiums left behind
And in groups engaged. This is more about negative space. And I think the sense of loss that a lot of people still feel from the team that these two guys once played for. So I’m gonna take a second to read an excerpt from a chapter of the book called Loserville USA.
That kind of gets at the sense of why these two might be on this list. “Great thefts have not just robbers and motives, but also stolen objects of great value. What the Oklahoma City ownership group that pilfer the Sonics wanted was the Sonics. A team that had reached an impasse
With the NBA over a new basketball arena. The league wanted Seattle fans to shell out money for a new arena, tired after doling out arena subsidies for the Mariners and the Seahawks elected officials in city government and in the Washington state legislature refused. The Oklahoma City ownership group settled
With the City of Seattle to finalize the franchise move, consequently taking possession of the Sonic’s 1979 championship trophy, retired jerseys, and stadium banners commemorating conference titles and division wins. The Sonics would be relocated to Oklahoma at the start of the 2008 regular season. 2008, 2009 regular season. Their name changed to the Thunder.
On April 13th, 2008, they played their last game in Seattle, a 99-95 victory against the Dallas Mavericks.” But the Sonics removing was on unfathomable and the book “Hoops Heist,” Jon Finkel describes how the Sonics had an unusually deep connection with the city’s fan base.
Several future NBA players that came from Seattle had gone to basketball camps, put on by Sonic Stars, Jamal Crawford, Isaiah Thomas, Nate Robinson, Jason Terry, and Brandon Roy were all gifted scorers. Smaller men who played in a big man sport, the embodied Seattle struggle for national recognition, the Sonics were a basketball guild
That elevated local talent through basketball apprenticeships. And this connection between town and team was uncommon in the hyper materialistic world of professional sports. A rookie on the sonics roster, when the team relocated departed superstar, Kevin Durant later mourned the broken bond quote, “The energy for the sonics would’ve been unmatched in pro sports.
The fans would’ve had an up and coming team with me, Russell Westbrook, Serge Ibaka, and James Harden. Sometimes, I let myself think about what could have been,” end quote. While the Oklahoma ownership group planned the relocation, Nick Licata of the Seattle City Council said that the Sonics contributed quote,
“Zero cultural and economic value” end quote to the city. It’s difficult to imagine a similar statement made about the Washington Huskies, Seahawks and Mariners who generated tailgate parties attended by generations of fans and initiated enthused pedestrian and transit trips to and from public stadiums. Although the economic benefits of sports
To US cities are usually overstated, it was at least true that these teams created material excitement worth millions in sales taxes, parking fees, bar and restaurant tabs. Not to mention exceptional publicity for Seattle, a benefit identified by officials at the University of Washington way back in 1908.
A similar dismissal of the Seattle storm as the one levied by Licata against the Sonics, would’ve drawn blowback from women and LGBTQ+ fans who understood that fair cultural representation of marginalized populations strengthens the city’s social fabric. To his credit, Licata was at least smart enough to not go there. Under pressure from constituents,
The venerable council member later apologized for his inflammatory remarks. Many felt that what he had meant to say was that because the cultural value of the Sonic skewed disproportionately towards Black Seattleites, the team was worth relinquishing. Back when professional basketball first came to town in 1966, Seattle Sports Establishment
Was so to embrace the two Black NBA. Over the next four decades, however, the Sonics did as much to foster a feeling of belonging among still segregated Black Seattleites as all the minority economic empowerment studies, racial sensitivity curricula for homicidal cops and diversity task forces emerging from city hall.
To Black city dwellers enduring waves of gentrifiers in the central district. The relocation of the team may have seemed one more example of displacement at a time when city leaders let economic forces fritter away a central district community that was forged against all odds.
A mom and pop small business, the Supersonics were not. Before a people who had looked to sports as a symbol of resilience, the team’s departure was met with a feeling of real loss. Everywhere you looked, Seattle seemed like a less Black city. At any rate, the sonics were gone.
Now their sail was a proxy battle and the power struggle between blue coastal cities and America’s red state interior. Parallels to the city’s failed Railroad Rendezvous, the turn of the century, or perhaps too obvious to not make, the city was shafted again by regional rivals and by distant capitalists. For many years afterwards,
Heartbroken Seattle fans were reduced to rumor monkers, desperately parsing any morsel of gossip that hinted at the team’s return, reproducing the local railroad speculation craze of the Gilded Age. At parks and in coffee shops, on transit, and on social media, conversations about the departed franchise inspired defeated size and shaking heads.
I still can’t believe they let them get away. Because it was about politics, it wasn’t their fault. Because it was about politics, it was all their fault. I think pretty little introduction needed for number three on this list, right? Somebody who, I mean, the third one I think
Means the most to a lot of people in this room. But somebody who, you know, has remained involved and engaged, not just in sort of the national federal politics and helping Seattle earn some of the reputation that it has anyway is a very liberal city.
But somebody who has also been very, very visible in trying to make the US National Team, or US, sorry, Olympic sort of operation, a lot more inclusive than it would’ve been otherwise. And I think when you talk about Megan Rapinoe as an athlete that engaged sort of fan bases
That previously did not see themselves represented in the mainstream world of sport, that might be one of the most meaningful contributions that she left behind as well. So I think that Megan Rapinoe has a well-earned spot as the number three athlete on this list of the most politically impactful sports figures
In Seattle history. As we’re getting to the top two here, there are a few names that we haven’t seen just yet, right? It’s starting to feel almost inevitable who the last two were. I think we heard a little bit about who one of them might be,
But we don’t know which order they’re gonna be in just yet. Right? And before we get to number two, I wanted to read this quote that it’s probably one of my favorite pieces of literature as it were that I was able to run across in the process of researching this book.
And this is from Paul Goldberger’s “Ballpark: Baseball in the American City” where he says, “In the ballpark the two sides of the American character, the Jeffersonian impulse toward open space and rural expanse and the Hamiltonian belief in the city and industrial infrastructure are joined and cannot be a part, they must coexist.
The exquisite garden of the baseball field without the structure around it would be just a rural meadow bereft not only of the spectators themselves, but of the transformative energy that they bring. And the stands without the diamond in the outfield would be a pointless construction.”
A recurring theme throughout this book is sort of this idea of the great American ballpark is a vehicle for Seattle to compete with other cities, with the Clevelands and the Fresnos, Las Vegases of the world. And this idea that if we just pour enough money
Into the next stadium, this is going to be the thing that’s going to put Seattle on the map as it were. I mean, this is a phrase that shows up over and over and over and over again in the 170 years of history that this book covers.
The notion of putting Seattle on the map, right? And the ballpark being a way that that is going to happen. And it’s not just on the level of sentiment that that aspiration exists, it’s also something that’s backed up with tremendous financial and fiscal investment in our sports, in our sports facilities.
So that number two on this list really ought to be there because if you take Griffey off of the 1995 Seattle Mariners, a team that was at that point in time, really had its bag pa bags packed on the way out the door, probably was gonna be relocated to Tampa.
You know, Griffey had an amazing American lead divisional series against the Yankees. I think he was something like 5’11, three or four home runs. Was probably the, they don’t award most valuable player awards for ALDs. If they did, it probably would be Griffey.
As a result, the Mariners were winning a bunch of games. They find their way into the American League championship series where they take, I believe it was a two games to one or two games to none lead against the Cleveland Indians, forced the hand of the Washington State legislature
That did not, absolutely did not want to devote public funds toward the construction of a new sports facility. The kingdom had tiles at that point in time that were falling in. Four, I think it was 15 pound tiles fell. Luckily, it was earlier on in the day
Before there was a game in the 1995 season. The Mariners were actually would’ve been condemned to have played their entire season on the road, if not for the fact that there was a strike. When play resumes, Griffey, I believe, had suffered an injury at some point in time in the 1995,
The subsequent season. Comes back and is great inspires this deep playoff push. State legislators really have no option but to devote the funds because which one of them wanted to go down in history as the lawmaker that allowed the Mariners to relocate to Tampa Bay. So when Governor Mike Lowry at that time
Reconvenes a special session in October of 1995, some $700 million of public funds go towards the construction of a stadium that eventually becomes Safeco Field, that eventually becomes T-Mobile Park. And I think just for the sheer volume of political activity that the Mariners forced state and local lawmakers to take up.
He has to be pretty high up on this list. Probably my favorite question, this must have been probably the second or third book event that I’ve had the chance to do the third in person. And a question that has come up both times
Is sort of this idea of why is somebody who is interested in sort of sports as a receptacle for public collective passions, why would you pick sports as a topic to talk about this? I mean, and sports is really kind of the realm in a lot of ways of hyper individual exploits.
It’s an extremely ableist enterprise. Where we’re praising often is not, you know, amazing physical specimens for what they’re able to do individually. And my response to it is always that what I see when I look at these games is much more what’s going on collectively than individually.
It’s the fact that professional sports would not be possible were it not for organized labor. Everyone from the players to the concession stand workers are unionized. Often, it’s not the broadcasters of the games belong to photojournalist unions as well. We’re talking about games that are played
In sports facilities that would not be possible without huge gobs of public funds. So that when you look at the games that we play, I think you see a lot more collectivism than you do individualism. And you see a lot more people trying to figure out
How to solve problems collectively than you do the individualist part of it. It’s a long-winded way of saying that Ken Griffey Jr., he was really cool. I mean he was just fun to watch as a baseball player. And if for no other reason, I think
You put him high up on that list for the impact that he had on making baseball, seemed like a lot less of an establishment ki kind of sport at that point in time and maybe even to a certain extent still. Baseball was kind of the old boys network, right?
The Red Sox to take, you know, one prototypical example. Even though Jackie Robinson had integrated major league baseball some 40 or 50 years before the Red Sox had routinely started signing Black players. It was a lot easier for people to believe that the Red Sox were bad all those years
Because of some metaphysical curse of Babe Ruth. And it was to straightforwardly talk about the fact that they had no Black people on the team and so they were always gonna lose to teams that did not wall themselves off from that well of talent. And that was major League baseball
For all intention intents and purposes for many people. And then you have Griffey playing, you know, hip hop hooray as his walk-on music at the Kingdom with the backwards hat and somebody who’s getting shouted out by LL Cool J and Jay-Z on rap records.
So he was somebody who I think had the Tiger Woods effect, if you will, on baseball seven or eight years before the actual Tiger Woods effect in the sport of golf. Betty Lennox, we already sort of talked about that. The woman who won the 2004 Most Valuable Player Award in the WNBA finals.
I talk about her story very briefly as an athlete that frankly was not making enough money from her WNBA salary and almost two days after, it was two days after the 2004 parade, she was on a plane to get ready to go play professional basketball in Italy.
And that’s obviously a saga that has played out in many different iterations and generations of the WNBA, but Betty Lennox was actually one of the first athletes to bring that issue to the forefront when you go back and read the stories that were written about her in the Seattle PI
And the Seattle Times. So she’s somebody who’s covered in the 10th chapter of the book. And now let’s get to number one. We need a drum roll. Drum roll. Do you have any guesses? Any guesses? Sue Bird? Some Sue bird. All right, here we go. The number one most politically impactful sports figure
In Seattle history is the Mariner Moose. It’s the Mariner Moose. No, I’m just joking. It’s not the Mariner Moose. Sue Bird. Sue Bird. So Sue is somebody who I think combines so many aspects of the figures that we’ve seen previously on the list between, you know, activating
And really animating a fan base of women and LGBTQ+ basketball fans. I think that central to sort of her case as the number one is also an interesting thought experiment where what happens if she does not get drafted by the Seattle storm and I believe it was the 2002 or 2003 draft,
We probably win way fewer championships as far as the Seattle Storm are concerned. Meaning people are not really feeling like key arena is an arena that needs to stick around maybe for so much longer. Perhaps that is an arena that is never renovated. Maybe the storm relocate at a certain point.
It’s perfectly plausible to me that as a result of the storm not going on a tremendous run of excellence where they win, I think it’s four championships in 16 years. Key arena gets vacated, which probably might mean that there’s no Kraken. On top of that with the key arena being the arena
That eventually became climate pledge. And it’s also probably the case that Seattle would not be without climate pledge in talks for receiving another NBA franchise, which is starting to feel more and more inevitable as the days go by. So when you I think combine the structural institutional
Public investment in sport with the social impact, I think it’s a pretty clear cut case between Sue and Ken Griffey Jr. And I give Sue the nod for sure. All right, so why don’t we take some questions? [Sora] We got a couple more trivia. Oh we have trivia. We have more trivia.
-Two questions. -Two questions. All right, let’s do it. Let’s see if I can operate this. Is it here? Is it there? There we go. Crafting a new path through trial rides and unapologetic meetups, what was the name of the first Northwest’s Women’s motorcycle enthusiast group? [Sora] No bikers here? No bikers? Anybody?
All right. -Should I reveal it? -Yeah. The Motor Maids Chapter four. The fourth thinning, they’re covered in the fourth inning. And we got one more after this, right? [Audience Member] Are you gonna tell us about this? Yeah, where were they after? I was gonna wait till we got to the…
I was gonna improvise frankly and weave in an answer about them during Q&A ’cause that’s how my brain works. Very non-linear thinker. I’m gonna go to the next one. The Seattle PI hailed their powerful batting attack and smooth working defense after a 21-1 victory over a white women’s Bremerton teen.
What titles did the iconic Seattle Owls win? And they’re actually the team that graces the cover of the book as well and I talk about them in the fourth inning of the book as well. [Sora] You can guess too. Yeah, somebody can guess. [Audience Member] State championship.
-You got one right. -That’s one of them. One of them. You can have a consolation prize for one of them. Good job. Anybody else? Somebody else wanna get the next one? There’s two titles. Anybody? That one right here. [Audience Member] I’m gonna go counter-Cultural on you
And guess none because they were not eligible in any sort of a league or recognized organized sport. I would pull something like that. You’ve got me pegged almost perfectly. But I think, you know, sports are such a mirror of our politics just in the sense that there tends to be one winner.
So it was very important to me to highlight teams that were socially impactful but also one. No consolation prizes. I think the excellence of it is part of the story. So under any other circumstances, I think you probably would’ve been right and had that just right.
But they actually did one other title I believe. Can I reveal it? It was actually a city championship I think in 1939 if I’m not mistaken. Yeah, so great guess of state softball championship. That’s an awesome guess. Well done. All right, now let’s do some Q&A. I’m tired of hearing myself talk.
Right here. [Audience Member] Do you have a picture of Betty Lennox that you can put up? [Sora] Sorry, let me run the mic to you. Sorry about that. I think the question was whether or not there was a picture of Betty Lennox to put up. Not in this particular presentation,
But Benny Lennox was somebody who, while I wanna say Sue Bird was finding her footing as a, I think she was a second year guard at that point in time, did not play particularly well in that series, was going against her, the WNBA team from her, where she had gone to college,
They played the Connecticut Sun. So there’s some speculation in the papers that maybe she had been a little bit psyched out at that point in time. But Benny Lennox really was the reason where the Storm won that series when you go back and look at how the game’s played out.
So yeah, we definitely encourage everybody to read up a lot more about Betty but- [Audience Member] Was she black? She was, that’s right. Yeah. Some other questions. [Audience Member] This isn’t quite as much out from out of left field, let’s say it’s from deep shortstop. Here we go.
[Audience Member] Is there a place in your analysis, I haven’t gotten the copy of the book yet. For outdoor kinds of sports? I mean, you mentioned the motorcycle team. I’m thinking of Lou Whitaker in particular and REI, maybe before him, the Mountaineers and then it slides through Phil Mayer,
His brother and so on. And some of the kind of combination competition and recreational sports that the city sort of celebrates even though we’re an hour away from the ski hills. Yeah, I think to both the letter and the spirit of your question, I think Seattle
Being a western city, the fact that we are as far west as we are really puts the city sort of in the middle of a lot of narratives about settler grit and self-reliance that a lot of settlers and white Americans in specific have been sort of telling themselves
Since virtually the founding of the republic. So the establishment of a expansive park system, for example, at the turn of the 20th century was one of the first examples that we see in the city of massive collective mobilization to try to build up the city through sport. And the idea that the imagination
Of a lot of white settlers, if we just sort of re-resurrect the same settler spirit that the generation of original settlers in Seattle had, that’s gonna propel us as a city as a result. You see huge sums of… Actually, in election, I believe it was in 1902, Seattle voters elect
To tax themselves to devote money that would go towards the creation of a park system. The Olmsted brothers are contracted later on in that decade. Consequent to that, you see a lot of the effort to build great baseball parks in Robert Dugdale a real estate prospector who devotes a lot of funds
Towards the creation of Dugdale Park, which is one of the city’s first major baseball parks. So yeah, outdoor sports. And it also shows up as a story of regression too, right? The fact that in the 1920s, as you see people leading more car-dependent lifestyles, as cities become more exclusive with the enactment
Of exclusionary zoning, mountain sports skiing, mountain climbing really becomes kind of a leisure activity. There are some attempts to push against that trend. Anna Louise Strong, a socialist school board member actually gets her political start as an open, a public parks advocate and somebody who says that we need
To have deep accessibility to Mount Rainier, deep accessibility to area peaks. But she’s noteworthy ’cause she’s cutting against the trend. The trend at that point as Seattle’s establishing segregated neighborhoods as Seattle is becoming a city that is very bifurcated by class and by color. She’s cutting against the grain.
And the grain at that point was the creation of an exclusive city, I think of which mountain sports were definitely a part. Yeah. Here. [Audience Member] Hi. You alluded, excuse me. You alluded a number of times to the ongoing debate over how much as you put it, great gobs of public money
Should go to stadiums, which are after all private enterprises and most of those great gobs of public money go to private people. Right. What’s your take on when to say yes and when to say no? And has your line on that changed since you started doing your research for the book?
I come at it from, so the question is around whether or not I’m a hypocrite, right? Do you enjoy sports and does that sort of chip away or do anything to sort of mitigate what your political beliefs might be around the fact that there are probably better uses for public funds?
I think I come at it from an abundance perspective that says Seattle is one of the richest cities in human history in one of the richest states, in the richest country, at least as far as money is concerned. So that when you have, you know, corporations valued in the billions of dollars
And immensely wealthy individuals but no income tax, you’re gonna be forced into these kinds of questions about is it this or is it that? Do we get to enjoy bread or circuses? Can we have entertainment or do we need to focus on basic needs? My objection to the extent that exists
To devoting public funds to sports stadia has to do with the fact that there is not a commensurate level of passion and engagement around similar kinds of public projects with respect to housing the homeless, with respect to funding special education, with respect to building social housing and building out bike lanes,
Building out everyday amenities that everybody can enjoy, not just the billionaire sports leagues that you call attention to. So that we really shouldn’t be in a position where we have to be picking either or. And I think Seattle voters historically have felt more or less the same way.
I mean, in the 1990s, voters voted down the initial measure that would’ve funded the stadium that became Safeco Field. Only reason why that ended up getting built was because the state legislature really overruled the will of the people in a narrow election that took place in September of 1995, voters said,
“We don’t wanna pay for pay for a corporate boondoggle and a corporate giveaway in the stadium.” A couple of years later, they said, by a narrow, an equally slim margin, said in September of 1997, we’re actually gonna approve a football stadium that Paul Allen placed on the ballot.
Because this stadium does a little bit more to pay its own way. It raises its own taxes. It’s not a straightforward giveaway. So the way I feel about it, I think is the way that Seattle voters have generally, historically felt about it. And we have these stadiums that have been built,
Not because we necessarily wanted them, but because elected officials had some other designs, and those designs did not include installing a permanent income tax so that we didn’t have to make these kinds of decisions choosing one or the other again. [Sora] Do we have a question up here? Thank you. Thank you.
First of all, I wanted to say thank you, Shaun, for writing this book. Appreciate you. I read it, I don’t know much about sports, and I was absolutely enriched by your insights and amazing research. I love the structure of the book also. In your research,
I heard you say that there were some commonalities about sports on the West Coast. Were there themes that you saw that were specific and unique to Seattle? So the question is around, I think, do you have, is it possible to have sort of an exceptionalist reading of Seattle and its history
And its connection to its teams and to its sports? I tried pretty deliberately to steer away from that because I think, you know, it goes into a couple of things. The first thing I think about is I think the exceptionalist sort of narrative is really core
To how the United States likes to think of itself generally. And I think that a lot of American cities, West Coast cities in particular, have sort of adapted that. There’s no way that we can be anything like Portland. I mean, we would never make the same mistakes that Houston made.
Can you believe, you know, the Denver Parks Levy decision? I mean the commonality aspect of it for me was way more important because you’re getting to this idea that you know, there’s no sort of primordial Seattleness that we can tap into that’s gonna fix our problems.
We can screw up our urban planning decisions the same way that Denver screwed them up. We can make the same mistakes that Los Angeles makes. We actually sprawl more than Los Angeles does, more than Miami does. We could be a city that does not actually earn the green reputation that we have.
So there’s no, to me, kind of manifest Seattleness that we’re ever gonna be able to dig up and rediscover. To the extent that there is. I think it’s when Seattleites decide, we’re gonna try to make decisions in the present that are not necessarily going to benefit us in the present.
So we’re gonna make this mot lake cut and it’s gonna take a bunch of years for that to happen. We might not necessarily see the impact of it, but when it does happen, people are gonna be boating The Husky Games. You know, I might be a 65-year-old voter in November of 1996
Who’s voting for the establishment of sound transit. I don’t know how long this train is gonna take. You know, it’s probably gonna take a really long time knowing how Seattle goes about its business, but I’m gonna cast this ballot for it because I know that there are people
Who are gonna be coming after me, who are gonna be able to enjoy it. And maybe that’s similar to other cities, or maybe it’s not, but I think that’s the first thing that I think about is when collectively, the decision is made to put something in the ground
That you might not be able to see grow. We do a lot better as a city that way than versus when I think we’re get into a very self-interested mode where if we don’t see a solution to this, you know, conceptualized problem in 18 months, then the city be damned.
I mean, I think that that’s kind of the mode that we’ve been stuck in for longer than I think a lot of us would care to care to admit. [Audience Member] Thank you. A couple more. [Sora] Raise your hands, yay, thank you. [Audience Member] Hi.
I just had this question pop in my head, if you would be a fan of, I guess, municipally owned teams or arenas and then as I thought that is there not a major team that is collectively owned? Yeah, so many great questions tonight. I mean, the question of municipally owned
And publicly owned sports franchises. In all of our four major sports leagues, with the exception of the NHL, it’s actually forbidden in the league charters. I checked NBA can’t do it. Major league baseball, you can’t do it. The Green Bay Packers, which I think the closest thing
That we have to a publicly owned franchise, they’re kind of grandfathered into this law. That didn’t prevent them from publicly owning the Cowboys on Sunday. I think it was when that game took place. But as best as I understand it, their team ownership structure is more nominal than, than anything.
So it’s kind of like titular public ownership, but the spirit of it still persists. What I think of as kind of the next best thing is the arrangement that we have right now with both major sports leagues or teams that play their games within city limits
So people can actually bike or take the trains to the games. As it turns out, cities that have that generally have higher levels of fan engagement. They tend to be noisier stadiums. People don’t have to worry about parking so they can focus on what really matters.
Drinking and making a lot of noise at the games. You see something really similar with the University of Washington as well, which I think is straightforward. In the UDub football and UDub sports teams are straightforward state property, right? We tend not to think of them that way, but that’s what they are.
I mean, the head coaches are generally the highest paid public employees in that given state. We’re the players to actually be paid. They would be public employees as well. So I think the closest thing that we have in a lot of ways to the spirit of collectivism,
I think is in our college sports. And I guess we can, you know, do our best to make sure the revolution comes really, really soon so that we can see publicly owned teams. I mean, that’s the first thing that I would like to see. Yeah, so that’s an awesome question.
Yeah, I mean we’ll do it. -Cue Jeopardy music -Cue the Jeopardy music. A couple more. -Hi Shaun. -How you doing? [Audience Member] Good. I just wanted to echo Taha’s commendation for the book. It’s really, really a fantastic read, especially for someone growing up locally and how illuminating it is
On many levels, your awesome alliterations as well. And just kind of the prose and poetic way in which you told the story these stories. Thank you for noticing. [Audience Member] So one thing that I was very interested in was just the sense of place and how that plays in into your book.
You know, thinking about the kingdom and how that as a contested set of interactions, thinking of protests within the international district community. Thinking of community choosing spaces, what is today, Anderson Park and you know, your telling of the children that were there at what is today, Anderson Park,
And how that was also contested. So just kind of love to hear more about the choosing of spaces for sports to occur and just some how history is an important component of really understanding where this play is occurring. Yeah, the one other example that leaps to mind
That is talked about in the third inning of the book is the fact that the Shell House where the UDub rowing team practiced, rehearsed, sort of did their, you know, cut their teeth before going on to compete nationally in the Olympic Games in 1936. That area in Mott Lake actually was an indigenous
Canoeing location where you’d have racing competitions that would take place among coastal nations at that point, way before settlement. For me, I think the more specific a story that you tell is the broader the story actually becomes. You can run into problems as a storyteller
When you’re trying to make the story appealing to everybody by not making it specific enough. And there are people that are never gonna visit Seattle that know about Husky Stadium because they see it referred to as the greatest setting in college sports by broadcasters on FS1 or whatever.
There are people who are never gonna visit Seattle that know, have a sense of what it must be like to go to a Seahawk game around Pioneer Square. And certainly, you know, from 2024 where there are a lot of people who know where and what Anderson Park is
That would not have known about it, were it not for the fact that it were occupied briefly or that an area around it was occupied briefly. So I wanted to try to focus on areas that definitely somebody who’s from and around and of Seattle would know about.
But also looking at it from even more of a remove and saying, this is something that somebody may have heard about, but they did not know that there was kind of this deep history and that this area may have been the site for a tremendous competition over whether or not
There should even be a police precinct anywhere around Kelly Anderson Park. People who might not have known that at one point in time. I mean, Husky Stadium did not exist at one point, right? There was a decision to make it exist. People had to build it, shovels had to go on the ground.
And what was that process like? So I think slowing the story down and making it as methodical as possible with locations that people felt like maybe they knew well, but you find out something new in the retelling of how it actually came to be established was a really big part of the story.
So I appreciate that question. Yeah. Yeah. One more? Somebody wanna close this out? We’re signing books, right? -Yeah. -Awesome. [Sora] All right. This has been really fun. [Sora] Yay. Thank you so much.
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