For the past few months, I've wanted to share a few thoughts about the passing of the Kingdome. Baseball fans who didn't grow up in the Northwest during the 1960s and 1970s might be surprised to learn that the Dome was not originally intended to be the home of the Mariners, but that of the Seattle Pilots.
In 1967, Major League Baseball agreed to put a team in Seattle if the voters approved the construction of a domed stadium. A year later, the voters did just that, in 1969, the Pilots moved into their temporary home at Sick's Stadium. Work on the domed stadium began in spite of a flurry of lawsuits and the Pilots' eventual move. Another lawsuit and uncertainty about whether the Pilots were staying. The lawsuits were resolved, but
I have no idea how many hours I spent at the Kingdome, but if the pile of ticket stubs on my desk is any indication, it was a lot. Truth is, the Dome was a rotten place to see a baseball game. The seats were all angled the wrong way, the grey concrete roof was a constant reminder that we were not out enjoying a beautiful blue Northwest sky (okay, the Seattle sky is often grey, too, but at least there are clouds), and there was something else not right. I think it was because we were watching some team called the Mariners and not the team the ballpark was meant for, the Seattle Pilots. Seattleites have a long memory and eight years was not enough to erase the anger of a community at a baseball establishment that yanked us from the game before we were even warmed up.
Don't get me wrong, we rooted for Bruce Bochte, Dan Meyer, Ruppert Jones, Mike Parrott (remember the night he paid the price for not wearing his cup?), Willie Horton, and a kid called Griffey. And I'm not saying that the Pilots' move was the only reason the fans stayed away in the Mariners' early years. It's just that, at some level, we had the same kind of mis-trust you have when you find out your boyfriend or girlfriend has been cheating on you. Every time ownership made one of their continual threats to move the team, we thought about the Pilots and the old hurt came back.
I'm not the most spiritual person, but I do think that the Pilots, the Mariners and the Kingdome were inextricably linked. Call it kharma, call it a haunting, but the Mariners never fully escaped the legacy of the Pilots until they escaped the Kingdome.
If you walk south toward Safeco Field, you'll notice that not even the mounds of broken concrete and twisted steel seen here remain. The Pilots' real home and their future home are now both gone. Rather than making me sad, it makes me more determined that there is one home the Seattle Pilots will never lose and that is right here. Thanks for staying with me.
—Mike Fuller
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