Former Seattle Times reporter Don Duncan relives 83 years of baseball memories to explain why he'll celebrate his 90th birthday watching the Mariners at spring training.
When I told friends I’d be celebrating my 90th birthday at a Mariners spring-training game in Arizona this March, more than a few rolled their eyes as if to say, “Why on earth would you do that?”
Why indeed?
Because baseball – certainly not football – was the only professional sport worth talking about when I grew up on Seattle’s Beacon Hill in the depths of the Great Depression.
Because when I went out on a warm summer’s night to collect 75 cents from my Seattle Star customers I’d hear two sounds from virtually every house – the soothing hiss of a sprinkler on the front lawn and, through the screen door, the unmistakable, high-pitched voice of Leo H. Lassen, broadcaster for our beloved Seattle Rainiers of the Class AAA Pacific Coast League.
Because on the back of my Social Security card, issued in 1940, are the words “Sick’s Stadium.” I’d been hired as a peanut-sacker that summer. What more could a boy ask?
Because 69 years ago – the first time I called at the home of the girl I would marry – her father had hardly finished shaking my hand when he asked the question on everyone’s mind, “What do you think of the Rainiers’ chances this year, young man?”
Because when I was in the fourth grade virtually all the pupils at Beacon Hill Elementary School rooted noisily for the St. Louis Cardinals to defeat the Detroit Tigers in the World Series, because the Cardinals’ star pitcher Jerome Dean was nicknamed “Dizzy” and he had won 30 games and his teammates, led by Pepper Martin, were called “The Gashouse Gang.”
As I recall, the Cardinals won in seven. What more proof did anyone need that “wishing would, indeed, make anything so.”
Because even though we’ve been wishing since ’77 for the Mariners to win the World Series, Chicago Cubs fans have been “wishing” the same thing with all their hearts for 108 years. And they show no signs of giving up.
Enough with the “becauses.” Baseball fans shouldn’t have to justify their existence. We are molded in our youth. Back when I was small enough to sit on the board the barber put across the arms of the chair, I’d listen as grown men seriously said things like: “Why Leo Lassen could manage the Rainier’s right now, if they’d ask him.” Or, “Leo explained the infield-fly rule so even my wife understands it.” Or, “With Jack Lelivelt as manager, the Rainiers have won two pennants in just three years, think of that.”
There’s a comforting pace to baseball. It gives one time to talk between plays, which I dearly love to do. And there’s the distinctive click or pop when a bat connects with a baseball traveling 95 mph and soars off toward a distant fence. Not to overlook umpires snarling “ste-rike” and “yer out.” And, of course, watching managers like Lou Piniella go jaw-to-jaw and saliva-to-saliva with those same umpires and never once win the argument. Today’s replay-technology doesn’t count.
All that, plus hotdogs and interminable statistics. For all I know there’s one for left-handed pitchers who pick off a runner at each base in a game played on a cloudy Sunday. As for records, my wife and I secretly rooted for Tino Martinez, an ex-Mariner who’d moved on to the Yankees, to hit his fifth home run in a game at Safeco Field on a night when we were far behind. Tino settled for four.
An aside here, there would be a lot fewer broken bats in the big leagues today if batters held “the Spalding (trademark) up,” a truth every kid learned as part of his birthright back in my day. There also was the certainty that one would find only one usable bat in each neighborhood, so be nice to the kid who owned it. And since every baseball would lose its cover after three or four years of hard use, someone had to have some friction tape handy to keep the string from unraveling.
Another suggestion: There’s way too much over-amped noise blasting from loudspeakers at ballgames these days. It interferes with conversation. All that’s needed is a recording of Kate Smith singing “God Bless America” as we leave the ballpark.
My fascination with the sport began 83 years ago when my favorite uncle in all the world took me to lumpy old Civic Field (now a football field at Seattle Center) to watch the Seattle Indians, who’d moved there in ’32 after an arsonist torched Dugdale Park, at the foot of McClellan Street and Rainier Avenue South.
Leo Lassen did his broadcasts from an open-air seat behind home plate, Levi McCormack, a real Indian, patrolled right field, and a couple of rookies, Joe DiMaggio (San Francisco Seals) and Ted Williams (San Diego Padres) showed their stuff on a few occasions.
Perhaps the most enduring anecdote of those years concerns Indians ace “Kewpie” Dick Barrett, who was allowed by manager-catcher Johnny Bassler to pitch both ends of a Sunday doubleheader in order to win his 20th game and collect a $250 bonus from the team’s tight-fisted owner, Bill Klepper.
Bassler was, of course, fired as manager after the game, but Klepper generously allowed him to stay on as the team’s catcher.
Emil Sick, who brewed Rainier beer, bought the team for $100,000 in ’37 and spent another $150,000 to build a beautiful 12,000-seat stadium on the site of old Dugdale Park. Sick also changed the team’s name from Indians to Rainiers.
My grandfather, who lost everything but his dignity in the Great Depression, took me to a game in the new stadium in ’38. He must have skimped and saved, because he also spent 15 cents for a bag of peanuts.
Even though we sat in the right-field bleachers, the cheapest seats in the house, grandpa dressed as most men did back then – in a suit, white shirt, tie, vest, polished shoes and hat. They even showed up for prizefights that way.
After shelling a few peanuts, I – a very small 12-year-old – decided to drop the shells in the hat brim of the gentleman seated in front of me. Grandpa watched, but said nothing. Soon other fans watched too, wondering what would happen when the man stood up.
They found out about an hour into the game. Mike Hunt, the Rainier’s power-hitting left fielder, launched a ball over the right-field fence. As the man seated in front of me rose to cheer, along with everyone else, he was showered with peanut shells.
High drama ensued. The man doubled his fists menacingly and turned around slowly, red-faced and with clenched teeth. The crowd grew very quiet as the man looked menacingly at a skinny little boy, with a smile on his face, and a white-haired old man calmly observing one of life’s defining moments.
After a time, the man who’d been showered with peanut shells shrugged and growled, “Aw, what the hell!” As he turned to sit down, he was showered again – this time with smiles, laughter and applause from those around us.
Later that year, I was on hand when seemingly “half of Seattle” turned out to see if Fred Hutchinson, a product of nearby Franklin High School, could win his 19th victory on his 19th birthday. He not only won, but would go on to post a 24-7 record that season and sign with the Detroit Tigers the next season. He would return years later to manage the Rainiers before dying of cancer much too young.
Other memorable “baseball moments”:
– Seeing a couple of very young future big-leaguers – a teenage catcher named Joe Garagiola and a pitcher named Early Wynn play for the Manila Dodgers, a post-World War II baseball team Gen. MacArthur approved to keep up the morale of GIs waiting to catch a troop ship home from the Philippines.
– Writing a “fan letter” back in ’51 to Leo Lassen, then nearing the end of his long broadcasting career, telling him I was working as the sole reporter-photographer of The South Bend Journal in Pacific County and would like to interview him. Leo invited me to sit with him in the press box for a game, which I recorded for posterity with a bulky Speed Graphic camera and a notebook filled with penciled impressions.
– Many years later, while writing a daily column for this newspaper, I spent a happy afternoon with Leo as he tended the roses in his extensive garden in the U District and later sat down at his grand piano to play a couple of classics. Watching him play, I noticed for the first time that his left arm seemed to be permanently bent. I asked about it and he said he’d broken it while roller skating as a boy and “it wasn’t set properly.”
The man who had entertained us for so many years with “hang on to your rocking chairs” and “Mount Rainier is a big strawberry sundae over Franklin High this evening, folks; we give you all the news” had never been able to play the game he loved and helped us to love.
All that, plus opening night with the Seattle Pilots, interviewing Dave Winfield when the All-Star Game was played in Seattle and watching in awe the exploits of Randy Johnson, Ken Griffey Jr. and my all-time favorite, Edgar Martinez – are just some of the reasons I’ll be in Peoria on my 90th birthday.
As Leo always said at the end of his broadcast, “Thanks for listening.”
Don Duncan, who will turn 90 on March 11, was a longtime reporter, editor and columnist for The Seattle Times who describes himself as the “world’s oldest general-assignment reporter.” He still lives in the Seattle area.
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