As a Seattle native who remembers the old stadium, this was both entertaining and a bit painful to watch. It was already certainly not up to MLB standards the Pilots moved into it: Too few seats, too few restrooms, too few concession stands and amenities. But everyone knew, including the MLB Commissioner and AL President and Board of Govenors that it was supposed to be a very temporary home. The city and county were pushing forward on plans to build a modern multi-purpose stadium. It turned out to be the very ugly and quickly obsolete Kingdome. Thank goodness it's been replaced by Lumen Field (Seahawks, Sounders) and T-Mobile Park (Mariners). But the description of Emil Sick was a bit slanted and unfair. Sick was a tireless civic promoter who loved this town. He served on the Chamber of Commerce and worked to further numerous philanthropic causes. His enthusiatic leadership helped Seattle put on the highly successful worlds fair of 1962, save the landmark St. Marks Cathedral, and build the Museum of History and Industry. He also served as state chairman for the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis and helped found the King County Central Blood Banks. He saw his purchase of the Seattle Rainiers as a civic duty to thank a community that had already made him the richest man in Seattle. Without him, the financially ailing Seattle Indians would have been disbanded leaving the city without a team. Of course he got a lot of promotional mileage out of owning the team! Changing the name to Rainiers gave it a regional ring that resonated with the fans (We have that big, imposing mountain of the same name towering over the local landscape). But saying he bought it only for the promotional value belies his undeniable stature as a man who loved the city and was beloved in return. As for the construction cost, this story made it sound like Sick was a tight wad who built the stadium on the cheap. To the contrary, his expenditures were in line with other projects of that era. The Los Angeles Angel's home, Wrigley Field was built for $1.25 million but they had to buy and clear the land. In comparison, Gilmore Field, home of the Hollywood Stars was built for $250,000. The reason they built it for so little is that they already owned the land. Same goes for Sicks Stadium: When Sick bought the financially ailing Seattle Indians he bought the lot on which team's former home Dugdale Park (destroyed by fire) had once sat. That site became the site of Sicks Stadium. His prior ownership of the land saved him hundreds of thousands of dollars in construction costs. It's important to note that he did in fact, pay an inflated price to purchase the team, in part because he was acquiring the site. But because that cost wasn't directly tied to the actual construction, it wasn't part of the construction cost. As for using wood as the primary material: To a large degree Seattle was a town that was built on logging and fishing. In the 1930s it was still very much a timber town and Sick saw it as a civic duty to support the local mills by using a lot of wood. When it was completed the stadium was considered one of the finest in all the minor leagues for its sightlines and airyness. Could and should Sick have used more metal and concrete in place of wood? Maybe, but there are a lot of wooden houses, hundreds of years old still standing. The photos used in this video, of warping steps etc. weren't from the era in which Sick owned it, but rather from the late '70s just before the old stadium was demolished. It had been the victim of 12 or 15 years of neglect by then.
One story I've heard about Mr Sick which tells me had a good sense of humor. Apparently he liked to introduce himself by saying, "Hi I'm Sick of Seattle." :p
If it weren’t for Jim Bouton’s book “Ball Four” and later on, RU-vid videos, I’m not sure I’d have ever heard about this place. Thanks for an interesting vid. The Secret Base series regarding the Mariners was great, by the way.
I was 10 years old when the Pilots played their only season in the bigs. For some reason even though I lived on the East coast they were my favorite team. My Mom bought me the book Ball Four probably thinking it was a wholesome book about baseball. I never told her what I learned from the book though with the exception of learning what greenies were, she might have found it funny.
Two ironies: 1) The MLB team that played in the stadium built by a brewer would end up becoming the Brewers. And 2) Eagle Hardware, that built a location on the Sicks' Stadium site, was a major sponsor of the Mariners during the 90's.
Actually, when Sicks' was demolished, the newspaper announced that they were building an "industrial park." That sounded cool, but it was really a fancy word for "warehouse." The first tenant to move in was PX, the place that processes film for Pay 'n' Save customers. Later it became an Eagle.
As a kid my mom used to take my twin and I to watch the Rainiers play. We lived in Mount Baker the neighborhood the stadium was built. What you failed to mention was that before it became Lowes It was a photographic development plant called CX Corporation Lowes came along after and occupied the space that CX corporation built. As I recall Tacoma's Cheney Stadium was also a Sick's owned stadium called Sick's Tacoma Stadium. Am I correct on that?
As a lifelong Brewers fan I'm well informed of the brief history of the Seattle Pilots. Here's one some may not know...Selig had tried to bring baseball back to Milwaukee since the Braves left after the 1965 season, forming an ownership group called Milwaukee Brewers, Inc., named after the former Boston Braves minor league affiliate. In preparation for landing a team, which took longer than planned, the team's colors were supposed to be black and red. Bud's group bought the Pilots 6 days before opening day in 1970. With no time to get new uniforms they simply removed "Pilots", replacing it with "Brewers" in the old Pilots blue and gold. Go Brewers!
Interesting regarding the original red & black colors idea. The minor league Brewers colors? I recall a photo in the local newspaper showing a model wearing the (planned) jersey; it looked nothing like what they wound up wearing due I assume, as you pointed out, to lack of time. I believe the organization Selig formed was called Teams, inc.
@@bemore1134 Forgot I even commented on this! You are correct, the first effort Selig spearheaded was Teams, Inc. with the purpose of preventing the Braves from leaving Milwaukee. When the Braves successfully relocated to Atlanta after the 1965 season the organization was renamed Milwaukee Brewers Baseball Club, Inc., with the purpose of returning Major League Baseball to Milwaukee.
I believe Emil's surname was Sicks, not Sick, hence the facade's s-apostrophe spelling instead of the reverse. I agree with the 13 year old down below (the adult who was there at 13 in '69): This place has to have been total magic in spite of its glaring shortfalls, many, to most, if not all of which were enumerated by Jim Bouton in the book. The book. No name needed. A Pilots' (s-apostrophe) guarantee of eternal and beautiful notoriety... Go you Pilots!
In the uk most of our old football stadium get turned into housing developments or flats with street names named after famous players or the name of the the old stands
There's literally 2 big signs on the sides of the lot that say "Historic Site of Sick's Stadium", not just the silhouette of a batter in front of the store. Not sure what you're talking about 🙄
Ah the rainiers. They exist still today Tacoma was home to the triple A clubs of the giants the Cubs ttwins the Yankees the tigers and now the Mariners, they went with the rainiers in the 90s to honor the seattle rainiers even brought back the old logo, we love the team great team for people that don't want to pay out the ass for a mediocre major league team lol
@@supersasukemaniac No, the plaque outside where the picture was taken says that is the place of the home plate in 1942. Also, what sign says, this might look like where home plate was, but its really over there.
@@gabrspanksmen That season was so maddening. How could a team win that many games and not capitalize in the playoffs? One of the great Seattle sports questions and/or disasters!
@@OMGitsTerasu football stadiums aren’t unique with intricate detail usually. I’ve been to lambeau and Miller park and I’d say Miller park is prettier and more intricate.
@@samwatters1652 football staduims are becoming more elaborate and less of an eye sore. Allegiant stadium, levi stadium just to name two of them. Even basketball arenas are on the come up
@@thedistantprinceinyouremai6345 lets get real, as a browns fan, browns have to do much more than that to prove that 2020 wasnt a fluke.....it was one season, now expectations are up again
@@rockvilleraven Milwaukee was in the running for one of the '69 expansion teams as well. I think their primary competition for a franchise was with Montreal, though. Losing out to a city that was planning to play in Jarry Park was no feather in a cap, either.
Okay, two singers died shortly after playing at the venue, the Pilots became the Brewers and haven’t won a World Series, and neither have the Mariners. Sounds like a cursed stadium to me.
Dad took us kids to a Pilots game in '69 at Sicks. We didn't know how pitiful it was at the time. To us, it was pure joy, the green grass, the pro players, etc. We sat in the right bleachers. Will never forget it. As a media member in the early 80's I returned the favor taking my late father to the Kingdome where I had access to a Mariner media booth. So glad he enjoyed it! The little things become greater as the years go by.
It seems fitting that a stadium remembered mainly for serious plumbing issues has its little monument in front of bags of fertilizer at a hardware store.
My grandpa had season tickets here so my dad went to a lot of games. He (my dad) has a huge pilot collection, almost every piece of merch. He and his collection were even featured on a tv show in the '90s
As a 13 year old who went to several of the games at Sick it was magic (despite what others have commented). To see and cheer for MLB players like Tommy Harper as well as others from other major league teams was all that was needed in the eyes of a young baseball fan. Back then when double headers were common you would show up on a Saturday around 1pm and not leave till way after 7 or 8pm. Yes, the Pilots had their problems as did the stadium, but in truth they were never given a chance to make it work because of the opening scheduling placed on them and the big money from other cities dogging them. They certainly were no worse that the Mariners (who haven't made it to the World Series in how many years of existence?)
You need to cover the history of Olympic stadium, built in Hoquiam, Washington that is a dual purpose facility for both baseball and football. Built by the Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression and is the last wooden stadium built of this type still in existence. It the home field for the High School Grizzlies, which has the longest high school football rivalry with neighboring Aberdeen High School, west of the Mississippi River. Add the fact that an original SNL cast member played semipro baseball in the facility. The huge wooden behemoth is a old wooden temple built to celebrate small town athletics
I grew up in Washington state. The Pilots were long gone by the time that I started to watch baseball. I remember the old timers talking about Bud Selig and the Milwaukee Brewers. Man, they hated Bud. Those old timers also talked about how terrible that stadium was. They used to make jokes about the bathrooms. I guess it was dangerous to go to the bathroom after the first or second inning.
They hated Bud? I mean, I guess Selig could've left the Pilots alone & not bought them. How long would they have survived, awash in all the red ink? Selig wanted to find a team for Milwaukee, it was his passion ever since the Braves left. The White Sox, who played limited games in Milwaukee at the time, were courted but stayed put. Buying the Pilots was a no-brainer. Had they been able to delay the franchise two or three years & get a ballpark built, maybe a different story.
My dad vaguely remembers Sicks' Stadium. He was 9 years old when the Pilots came and went. I also just recently finished a book called Rain Check about Pacific Northwest Baseball so I was thrilled to see this video and also that you made reference to Dugdale Park. I am passionate about sports and history and I love my local teams even when I get disappointed by them. Also although I'm a Washingtonian I'd love for you to do a video on the Portland Mavericks minor league team. Kurt Russell played on that team
Several things came together to doom the first and ill-fated attempt at MLB in Seattle...Charlie O'FInley, after attempting to turn the Kansas City A's from a de facto major league farm club of the Yankees into a bona fide contender, and failing miserably, and get a better ballpark built in KC, MO, moved his club to Oakland for the '68, to play in the now-dilapidated Oakland "Masoleum" (Coliseum), but it was new at the time. MO Sen. Stuart Symington was miffed that FInley hadn't literally "played ball" with the KC PTB, and threatened to revoke baseball anti-trust exemption in the Congress. Concerned he might be able to pull it off, KC was awarded one of the four new expansion franchises contemplated originally for '71 two years early, at least by then they had a stadium to play in, and, with the loss of the As and threats from the AFL's Chiefs (themselves relocated from Dallas in '62) to likewise leave KC, the new Harry S Truman complex was funded and in process of being built. And another franchise to be awarded, the San Diego Padres, at least had the new stadium (now being demolished) to play in as well. But what of the two other new franchises? The problem lay in having only ramshackle AAA-level parks available, although both Seattle and Montreal did have serious plans to build new facilities. Montreal's was further complicated by secessionist politics in Quebec and the bureaucratic bungling over the upcoming '76 Olympics, but that's for another discussion. Seattle's economy was heavily dependent on the aerospace industry, particularly Boeing, indeed, WA's senior senator, Henry "Scoop" Jackson, was often jokingly called "The Senator from Boeing". But the late 60s was the winding down of the Vietnam War, and no new large US Air Force or Navy contracts were in the wings, pun intended, and the relatively few newer airframes, like the F-14 Tomcat, the F-111 Aardvark, and the A-10 Thunderbolt II, all went elsewhere. Furthermore, in the civilian sector, the 707 production was winding down as more efficient airframes like the 727 and the 737 replaced it, and the 747 was just getting going, but there was a glut of airliners, so Boeing's sale were quite slow. It was not unheard of for the new Jumbo Jets to be flying half-empty, an economic disaster as more massed travel wasn't materializing...yet. So the layoffs hit the Puget Sound area hard. It got so bad that some wag put up a billboard, "Will the last person to leave Seattle please turn out the lights?". Obviously the enthusiasm to finance and build a new stadium had cooled. That, along with the NFL deciding, with teething problems with the upcoming merger with the AFL, and fearing that some teams might have to move to survive, to postpone expansion. Sick's Stadium would just have to do, but it simply couldn't, and the Pilots were a huge flop, as somewhat documented in the late Jim Bouton's book, "Ball Four". It got to the point where the club had to file bankruptcy (a move to get out of the stadium lease) and trucks with the club's equipment stayed for several days in Ogden, Utah, waiting for word as to whether to go to Seattle or to one of a few proposed relocation places. The Pilots did almost go to Dallas, TX for the 1970 season, but Bud Selig, a Milwaukee-area car dealer, put together a group that had local backing to move the sad sack club there and make use of County Stadium, unused by MLB since the Braves had left after the 1965 season. This, in turn, led to a new threat by jilted Seattle interests to sue MLB, which was settled by the award of the Mariners franchise that started play in 1977. By then, the Kingdome was built, and the Puget Sound economy had more than rebounded.
Considering the Barca got beat 4-1 by a PSG team without Neymar, do a video on the most shocking Champions League moments (think La Remontada, the ‘99 final, etc)
Bud Selig did a great favor to Seattle and the future Mariners -- when he bought the Pilots, Selig, along with moving them to his hometown and changing their name to the Brewers, immediately paid off all the Pilots' many debts, getting the team instantly out of bankruptcy. With that b-word not hovering over Seattle's baseball resume for years to come, the way was opened for the Mariners.
I've read some of the comments regarding Sick's Stadium and most of them aren't positive. As for myself, the Stadium has very fond memories. It was the summer of '72 and I was 14yrs of age and a very big baseball fan, the BIG Red Machine was steam rolling in the NL West and minor baseball had made a comeback. The Seattle Rainiers had returned to Seattle and they were affiliated with the SF Giants of the NL. My younger brother and I would attend several games that summer, especially on Sunday afternoon to watch a double header, back then you could bring your own food into the stadium, so we would stop at Mickey D's and buy burgers & fries and we had a GOOD time. I loved how the ground crew maintained the playing field, it was breath taking for me when I would walk inside the stadium and go up the stairs to the first level of seating and see the luscious green field waiting for the players to "take the field" and shortly thereafter the Umpire would yell "Play ball." Those are my memories of Seattle Sick's Stadium.
My dad and I went to a game there in 69 the Pilots hosted the Yankees. What I remember of the stadium was the right field bleachers were still under construction and the toilets wouldn't flush because of low water pressure. Years later I learned that if attendance was over 10k the plumbing failed to work,try making money with low attendance.
So true. Not a baseball fan, but the weird thing about this is when opening day started, the Brewers kept the Pilots old colors(and uniforms), but simply replaced the Pilots' name and logos.
I remember as a kid, waiting for all the litigation, suits & counter suits to run their course. IIRC they weren't officially rewarded to Milwaukee until March 30 or thereabouts.
Former Reds skipper David Bristol had already been hired as the Pilots' pilot and is the first Milwaukee Brewers manager. He led the club at a spring training where they honestly didn't know where they would play the season until about the time camp ended.
4:16 the Royals were also fast tracked into existence. Both KC and Seattle were to begin play in 1971 but the congressional delegates from Missouri threatened to start the process of revoking MLB’s antitrust exemption after Charlie O. Finley moved the A’s to Oakland if baseball wasn’t immediately returned to KC.
Sick's Stadium was referred to as sick, lower case s, by then A's owner Charlie Finley, who had considered a move to Seattle. He moved to Oakland instead. Also, I am seeing that Senatot Symington brought pressure to resume baseball in Kansas City, so Seattle, with its stadium trouble, also had to start play in 1969 so the schedule could stay balanced,
It's not "the MLB" just MLB... Wasn't JUST the building that killed the franchise, the Siranio brothers were woefully under capitalized AND when Mr. Dailey from Cleveland backed out the end was inevitable.
So interesting that MLB approved a major league franchise with a stadium that had such a low seating capacity. Sounded like they were rushed into and then when they couldn't meet the expectations, MLB let them bail out.
As someone who lives in Seattle, I've actually been to this place, whenever I need some pool salt or a new grill, I will always remember the earliest days of baseball in the Emerald City
"The team had already lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in just a single season"... how quaint. But MLB moving the expansion two years and not helping/subsidizing the Pilots deal with the terrible handicap was a hugely dickish move that doomed the team before it even started. That's Bowie Kuhn for ya, the first in an ignoble line that produced Selig and Manfred. Also: did stadium concession stands even have chili dogs back in those days? Also also: when you say "emergency fund", my mind automatically goes to Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and assimilates it as "reptile fund".
The ‘69 Pilots 64-98 record was still better than the ‘62 Mets godawful 40-120. May I recommend a video about the teams with the worst first season records, if you haven’t done one already?
The M's keep this connection alive to this day. Eagle Hardware was the official hardware store of the M's in the 80s and 90s including when the kid was king of seattle(although Edgar Martinez did the commercials for them) and since 2004 when eagle hardware was bought by lowes they've held a sponsorship
the Sick Stadium curse had followed the Brewers to Milwaukee. So much irony in the franchise history. Seattle Pilots was founded by a brewing company, then renamed themselves the Brewers in a city that makes breweries a lifestyle. You would htink Homer Simpson would be a longtime Pilots/Brewers fan.
