TODAY IN BASEBALL HISTORY

April 11, 1969 Seattle Pilots Play First Home Game in Sicks Stadium.

As part of a four-team expansion that also saw the debuts of the Montreal Expos, Kansas City Royals and San Diego Padres, the Pilots began in Seattle in 1969. But just a year later they were gone, relocated to Milwaukee after going bankrupt and being bought by Bud Selig.

"You go back a couple generations in baseball history and we had professional baseball from 1901 to 1969, through two world wars and a depression, and then -- poof! -- it's gone," Seattle sports historian David Eskenazi said. "The first year we didn't have pro baseball was 1970."

The Pilots might be remembered even less had it not been for the finest baseball book ever written: "Ball Four," Jim Bouton's diary of that 1969 season. Bouton wrote in his Opening Day entry after beating the Angels 4-3, "Already we're better than the Mets." The Pilots did not remain so.

The Mets went on to win their first World Series that year, but Seattle went 64-98 and finished last in the six-team AL West.

The aptly named Sicks' Stadium was a tiny and old minor league ballpark with plumbing issues that resulted in players sometimes taking cold showers or just going home without showering. Sicks Stadium was not ready for the start of the season, seats were being installed right up until game time.

Those Pilots drew only 677,944 fans, though that still was more than the Phillies, White Sox, Padres, or Indians drew that year (the major league average was 1,134,569). They drew 14,993 for the April 11, home opener, a 7-0 win over the White Sox. Check out the highlights!

A few years ago when I was in Seattle I spent hours looking for something that showed a MLB stadium was once where a Lowes now stands. I did find the sign.

"I don't think this is a town that will ever draw 25,000 or 30,000 regularly," Bouton wrote. "It's a town much more concerned with culture than athletics." (This one didn't age well)

The Seattle owners, Dewey and Max Soriano, were not rich enough to support the Pilots. Seattle was about to begin staggering layoffs that would lead to an early '70s billboard that infamously read: "Will the last person leaving Seattle turn out the lights."

One week before the 1970 season began and with the team's finances in ruins, the Pilots' fate was still so much up in the air that they sent their equipment truck from spring training in Arizona to Provo, Utah. There, the drivers stopped and waited for word on whether to continue to Seattle or veer northeast to Milwaukee. On March 31, eight days before the team's season opener, word was sent: Go to Wisconsin. The Pilots were moving to Milwaukee.

The Seattle Pilots did have an official theme song that included the lyrics: "You brought the majors to the evergreen Northwest; now, go, go you Pilots, you're going to be the best!"

April 11, 1912 — at Washington Park III, Rube Marquard of the New York Giants begins a nineteen-game consecutive winning streak by beating the Brooklyn Dodgers, 18-3, in a game which features 13 ground rule doubles hit by the visitors because of the overflow crowd being placed in the outfield and along the foul lines.

April 11, 1928 Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker both start on Opening Day for the A’s. The 8-3 loss to New York at Shibe Park marks the first time the future Hall of Famers have played as teammates in a game.

April 11, 1954 — The New York Yankees trade two minor leaguers along with rookie right-hander Mel Wright to the Cardinals in exchange for 38 year-old right-fielder Enos Slaughter. The future Hall of Fame outfielder will hit only .239 in 79 games during his first tenure with the Bronx Bombers, but Bill Virdon, one of the prospects dealt to the Cardinals, will be named the National League’s Rookie of the Year in 1956.

April 11, 1961 –Boston Red Sox rookie Carl Yastrzemski, in his major league debut, singles off Kansas City’s A’s Ray Herbert in the team’s 5-2 Opening Day loss at Fenway Park. The 21 year-old left fielder from Bridgehampton, New York, will amass 3,419 hits during his 23-year Hall of Fame career with Boston.

April 11, 1963, At County Stadium, 26,000 fans witnessed, Warren Spahn of the Milwaukee Braves becoming the all-time winningest left-hander in major league history. Spahn’s 6-1 victory over the New York Mets gives him 328 career wins, moving him ahead of Eddie Plank on the all-time list. Fellow future Hall of Famer Hank Aaron homered and drove in 3 runs.

April 11, 1975, Hank Aaron returns to Milwaukee as a member of the Brewers. A crowd of 48,160 fans watches Aaron drive in a run in the Brewers’ 6-2 win over the Cleveland Indians. Aaron had starred for the Milwaukee Braves before the franchise moved to Atlanta in 1966.

April 11, 1985 Cal Ripken, nursing a sprained left ankle suffered while covering second base on a pickoff play in yesterday’s game against the Rangers, is ordered by the doctor not to play in today’s game against the Midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy. The Orioles shortstop’s streak of consecutive games, which would have ended if not for the team’s exhibition contest in Annapolis, is in its infancy at 444 games.
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TRIVIA

TRIVIA: Who was the first draft pick in 1968 of the Seattle Pilots?

IF you think you know the answer and bonus points for how many respond with details and if you are right I will give you a shut out! No Googling!

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 ANSWER TO YESTERDAY’S TRIVIA

YESTERDAY'S TRIVIA: When Fisk retired he set the record for games caught. Who’s record did he break?

Answer: Al Lopez. He set the major league record for games caught (2,226, broken by Ivan Rodriguez in 2009) and home runs by a catcher (351, since broken). He set a slew of age-related records, including home runs by a player over age 40 (72) and oldest player to get a hit in an All-Star Game (43 years old in 1991). In 1990, he became one of only a handful of players to play in the major leagues in four different decades. When he hit a grand slam on October 3, 1991, he became the oldest player to slug one. He caught his last game at age 45 - when he was rudely dumped by the White Sox in midseason, six days after he broke the record for games caught (in what turned out to be his final game).

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