Sick's is now the Lowe's between MLK and Rainier near Mt. Baker.

Fuck Bud Selig.

Here you go:
http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?Dis…

"Sicks' Stadium, built in 1938, was a Seattle landmark for more than four decades. Located in Rainier Valley at the intersection of Rainier Avenue and McClelland Street, the baseball stadium was home to both the Seattle Rainiers and the Seattle Pilots. After its heyday, the ballpark served as a shaky bridge as Seattle crossed over from the Minor Leagues into the Majors."

Also this:

http://clerk.seattle.gov/~archives/photo…

from 1967

I remember reading about this place about a year ago. I had no idea Rainier Valley ever had a stadium. It must have been a small park. Apparently there's some kind of marker inside that Lowe's - maybe the spot where home plate used to be.

The first pro ball game I ever went to was Pilots-Mets at Shea Stadium.

Aw, I remember Sicks so fondly - its parking lot is where all us kids got dropped off to catch the bus to Camp Orkila.

@5
yeah there is a bronze home plate and batter outside the entrance to Lowe's. It's always annoyed me because the batter is turned 45 degrees away from the position a normal batter would stand.

#6

Hmm...according to this they would never have played together...would have been the Yankees then.

I was 9 and in the Cub Scouts.

I really remember it being Shea though...have to research the memory banks...load some old tape carts...DASD...

http://www.baseball-almanac.com/teamstat…

@6 I didn't know the Pilots were in the National League, or that there was interleague play in 1969.
But then again, neither do you, you compulsive liar.
Do a little more research before you make up shit.

#10

Great...always nice to start the morning conversing with the mentally ill.

Don't you have someone on bus you have to knife?

Fucking Slog. Ate my comment.

In addition to the home plate at Lowe's there's a memorabilia case which includes a Don Mincher picture. Oh, yeah.

I saw a Rainiers game there with my dad, about which I remember nothing except that he knew one of the players from high school, who had a huge boil on his neck, which fascinated me at the time. It's rude to stare, but stare I did.

I also saw the Pilots play the Orioles there. I could probably look up the date. Brooks Robinson, Frank Robinson. Did Jim Palmer pitch, or was it Cuellar or McNally? What a team. I remember how rickety the stadium seemed, and how it seemed so ancient. No rock music over the PA -- no music of any kind, in fact; there barely WAS a PA. A live organist, though.

I got a giveway Tommy Harper bat that day, later destroyed by hitting pieces of gravel out of a parking lot, and a Pilots pennant, which I kept up at work for many years until a coworker stole it (I know who you are, asshole).

The neighborhood, known as "Garlic Gulch" because all twelve of Seattle's Italian-Americans lived there, also featured a hillside from which you could watch the action without paying.

Famously, a young Jimi Hendrix watched Elvis play a concert there in 1957. He returned to Sicks' in 1970, the year after the Pilots were stolen, to play a concert there himself, in the pouring rain (opening bands Cactus, Rube Tuben, and the Rhondonnas, or maybe Cat Mother and the All Night Newsboys, depending on who you ask), where a young fellow named Paul Allen was in the audience.

@12, that's precisely his point. The Pilots (and the Brewers after) were in the AL, while the Mets were in the NL, which means that Bailo could not possibly have seen the Pilots play at Shea. Unless it was a pre-season exhibition of some kind, which I very much doubt. My guess is, it was the Padres, who also entered the league that year, and he conflated the two.

I'll cut him a little slack on 43 years ago. The internet suggests that my Tommy Harper Bat Day was either May 27, May 28, or I'm completely misremembering and it was the Yankees on August 3, 1969.

I have confirmed that the two Bat Days in 1969 were May 11 (Washington Senators) and August 3 (New York Yankees), so my memory too is faulty. Damn. I know I got a bat. My dad would have taken me to the Yankees, I'm guessing, though he was a (yuck) Dodgers fan. Thought it was the Orioles. They went to the World Series that year, so maybe it was wishful thinking, remembering the good team instead of the bad.

As a history nerd, the only people I find geekier than me are baseball nerds. And the only people geekier than baseball nerds are baseball history nerds. I doff my cap to you, sirs.

@11 Compulsive lying is a form of mental illness. Calling liars out for their lies helps the rest of us maintain reality.

If you knew even the most basic baseball history, you would have known that your statement was bogus. But it wasn't about being correct or informative. It was about calling attention to yourself when you felt you weren't getting enough of it. That is one of the roots of compulsive lying.

I stopped carrying my knife on the bus a while ago. Too many worthy recipients.

Must be time to read Ball Four again.

In many ways, the rich 120-year history of the Louisville Slugger baseball bat began in the talented hands of 17-year-old John A."Bud" Hillerich.Bud's father, J.F.Hillerich, owned a woodworking shop in Louisville in the 1880s when Bud began working for him.Legend has it that Bud slipped away from work one afternoon in 1884 to watch the Louisville Eclipse, the town's major league team.After Pete Browning--the Eclipse's star who was mired in a hitting slump--broke his bat, Bud invited him to his father's shop to make a new one.With Browning at his side giving advice, Bud handcrafted a new bat from a long slab of wood.Browning got three hits using the bat the next day.
Browning told his teammates, which began a surge of professional ballplayers visiting the Hillerich shop.Although J.F.Hillerich had little interest in making bats, Bud persisted, eventually registering the name Louisville Slugger with the U.S.patent office in 1894.In the early 1900s, the company was one of the first to use a sports endorsement as a marketing strategy, paying Hall of Famer Honus Wagner to use his name on a bat.By 1923, Louisville Slugger was the selling more bats than any other bat maker in the country, with such famed clients as Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, and Lou Gehrig.In the ensuing years, the company has sold more than 100 million bats, and 60 percent of all Major League players currently use Louisville Sluggers.The company now sells far more than bats, including fielding and batting gloves, helmets, catchers' gear, equipment bags, training aids, and accessories. For More Info: http://tinyurl.com/8854zrk

The first bat day was May 22. They beat the Senators on a bottom of the 9th HR by Don Mincher. 7 to 6 was the final. They also had Helmet night later in the season and we got thumped by Baltimore 14 to 3. I went to both games and that bat and helmet were my favorite things in the world. 4th grade and first year of little league. I cried when they took my team !