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Sicks' Stadium / Seattle Pilots / 1969
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Seating: 18,000 (start of the season),
25,000 (June 1969) Original cost: $350,000 |
Perhaps nothing more represented the Seattle Pilots' short and doomed history in the Emerald City than their home, Sicks' Stadium (also known as Sicks Seattle Stadium). Built in 1938 to house the Seattle Rainiers of the Pacific Coast League, Sicks' Stadium had clearly seen better days by the time the American League expanded to Seattle. It was originally envisioned as a temporary home for major-league baseball: when Dewey and Max Soriano were awarded the rights to an American League franchise in 1967, league officials made it clear that they expected to see a new domed stadium in Seattle to someday house the Pilots.
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| This photograph from Opening Day shows the left-field bleachers under construction. |
Initially, Sicks' Stadium was a showcase of the Pacific Coast League Because a previous ballpark (Dugdale Park) located on the site had burned down due to the work of an industrious arsonist, Sicks' Stadium, with its steel-and-concrete construction, was designed to be a more permanent home for baseball. The ballpark was built and funded by Emil Sick, a German-born brewer who learned the trade at his fathers' Canadian brewery. When the Eighteenth Amendment was repealed -- ending Prohibition in the United States -- Sicks came to Washington State to pursue the family trade. His original brewery, Sick's Century Brewery, ended up being a success, even more so when he merged operations with the Rainier Brewery, whose roots in the Pacific Northwest went back to 1883.
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| Emil Sick promoting the Rainiers. |
Sick followed up with a $350,000 investment in a new ballpark in Rainier Valley, at the intersection of Rainier Avenue and McClelland Street. The team and the ballpark were an instant hit. On the field, the team was a consistent winner, as Sicks did not hesitate to buy the best talent and management he could find. And there certainly were spectacles at the ballpark. Announcer Leo Lassen, also known as “The Great Gabbo," became a legendary fixture in Seattle thanks to his colorful descriptions and astute ways of working product promotions into his between-inning and between-pitch patter. Between 1938 to 1952, the Seattle Rainiers were the best-drawing team in minor-league baseball.
By 1960, however, minor-league baseball was losing its allure as televised games impacted attendance, even in such a faraway outpost as Seattle. Sicks sold the Rainiers to the Boston Red Sox in 1961 (but kept the ballpark) and died in 1964. The California Angels bought the team in 1965 and renamed it the Seattle Angels, ending the long and triumphant reign of the Rainiers.
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| Sick' Stadium in the 1950s. |
But what to do until the Kingdome was constructed? Play in Sicks' Stadium. The original plan was to expand seating to 28,000, but the construction bids came in too high and the project was scaled back to 25,000 seats. Meanwhile, the winter of 1969 was one of the nastiest ever experienced in Seattle, delaying the expansion -- which was not completed until well into the launch of the season. The first Pilots game was played April 11, 1969, with the final game occurring October 2, 1969. In the offseason the Pilots went bankrupt, and it was in bankruptcy court than an aggressive car dealer from Milwaukee named Allan "Bud" Selig swooped in on March 30, 1970, to buy the team assets -- which consistent of the franchise and some uniforms, and little else -- and moved the team to Milwaukee, where they started play in 1970 in County Stadium as the Milwaukee Brewers. After the Pilots left town, Sicks' Stadium reverted to its more appropriate use as a minor-league ballpark before finally being torn down in 1979. A Lowe's store currently exists at the former site of the ballpark.
STATS
| Dimensions | |||||
| Year | LF | LC | C | RC | RF |
| 1969 | 305 | 345 | 402 | 345 | 320 |
ATTENDANCE
| Year | Attendance | Average | Rank in League | Record | Standing | |
| 1969 | 677,944 | 8,370 | 10th out of 12 | 64-98 | 6th (last in division) |
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Discuss Sicks' Stadium at Ballpark Digest Discussions
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