The Mariners debuted . . . from National Pastime.com’s invaluable Today in Baseball History
1977 For the second time in nine years, a new franchise makes its major league debut in Seattle. The Mariners lose their first regular-season game at Kingdome to Frank Tanana and the Angels, 7-0.
Ah, the Kingdome. Made Wrigley seem like the Taj Mahal. . .
the best thing the kingdome ever did was blow up.
if it had been built where it was intendend – where the gates foundation is going up – and the way it was intended – buried to the dome, then it might have been different.
but probably not. it was fugly.
Ah. I wasn’t there that day, but I saw a game that year. I loved the Kingdome in all its craptastic concrete glory. I never loved it more than at some meaningless game against the Brewers late in the season when there’d be 3,000 people there and you could hear the shouts of individual fans echoing all across the stadium. And the bilious green of the Astroturf. And our shitty uniforms. And our shitty, hopeless, loser club that couldn’t beat a Triple-A team — Bob Stinson! Glenn Abbott! Juan Bernhardt! Skip Jutze! Kevin Pasley! Dick Pole!
Yes, folks, we had a pitcher named Dick Pole.
I have Dick Pole’s baseball card.
It was fun seeing the Kingdome go boom.
You’re an asshole, Will.
I heard the boom that morning, and I cried.
We still owe money on it, you know.
I was there that day. My parents got into a huge fight about something entirely inconsequential and didn’t speak to each other the entire game. A good time was had by all. But I still know the answer to this important trivia question, without looking it up: Who got the first Mariner hit?
One of my oldest memories is the smell of spilled beer on the Kingdome’s concrete floor. It was my first ever sporting event, a Mariners game back around ’85-’86. I don’t remember who we played or who I was there with (except for my dad), just the smell and the sticky floors with peanut shells.
Nothing like sitting in a concrete bunker on a beautiful July day, eating a gut-busting kingdog and drinking beer-water while watching Jimmy Presley get thrown out at home, trying to score from second on a Rey Quinones single.
Nope, nothing like that in the world…
Allright, older fan — I don’t even have a guess to wager. I’d guess “Dick Pole”, but I guess ol’ Dick wouldn’t have been hitting, owing to the DH. So… who had the M’s first hit???
Oh how I miss the Kingdome. It was my playground as a child. I cried watching it implode while in exile in Fresno.
My dad would take us to every event that came through the stadium. I remember enjoying the baseball games more than football, but the Truck Rallies were the best!
Will, I think I have to un-choose you on my StrangerFace profile just for that.
My dad dragged me to that game. To get me to go he promised I’d catch a glimpse of one of the Angels owners: Danny Kaye. Having just stumbled across “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” on Channel 11’s Saturday-afternoon matinee, I was quite excited at the prospect. I hoped he’d sing the National Anthem, maybe as a patter song. He didn’t, so the rest was a blur to me.
Answer: Jose Baez. No relation to Joan and a career that didn’t quite make it to the Hall of Fame.
Fnarf, I’m pretty sure I was one of those 3,000 fans in the late eighties, cheering on the Mariners against the Brewers. Or maybe the Tigers. And I’m glad someone pointed out that you’re still paying for the damn thing.
I loved the Kingdome. I can still hear the vibration from the trains passing outside, and I caught two foul balls there. I even got one of them autographed by the guy who hit it – Al Pedrique from the Tigers. It was the year the Tigers were the only team with a worse record than the Mariners, and there was a sum total of five fans (counting my father and me) waiting for autographs outside the dome.
Bless it. I have a piece of it sitting right here on my desk.
The Kingdome made the Comet’s men’s room seem like the Taj Mahal. Missing that place is like missing genital warts.
@4 – no, we paid it off. You’re thinking the new stadiums.
@12, there was usually one team that was worse than us, most years. Unfortunately, they’d be off winning the World Series a few years later, while we’d still be second-worst. Or occasionally worst. Tigers, Blue Jays — lots of teams sucked, but no one could suck consistently year in and year out like us. That’s because few teams made announcements like “our new first baseman is Pat Putnam” (or Pete O’Brien, or whoever the hell.)
@10, Danny Kaye was part-owner of the M’s, not the A’s. I’m sure that’s what you meant.
I remember driving (well, riding I guess) past the Kingdome as construction was just being finished. I’m not sure when my parents first took me there, I think it was actually a Sonic’s game.
I was sad to hear people cheer when they blew it up. To me, it sounded like a chorus of people yelling for free lattes and Chihuly glass.
Thanks, Fnarf. That’s it, of course. And how funny that we’re still paying off the bonds on it, about as much fun as making payments on a student loan cosigned for somebody who died long ago.
After watching games outdoors all my life, I couldn’t believe going to a game at the Kingdome. I went to one game and swore I’d never go back. Blowing up the Kingdome allowed me to attend Mariner games.
The ironic thing is that we probably could have paid if off sooner except the government in all its infinite wisdom decided to use the surplus money collected off of the tax to pay for arts funding instead of using it to pay off the debt early.
Oh, and the lights. The lights in the Kingdome made everyone look like they were dead.
At least at the Dome, people were there to watch the game, not to pretend they were having a picnic. Or even worse, just there to have a drunken frat party in the beer garden.
It smelled better than Wrigley, too.
I miss the kingdome…Fireworks inside!
The first M’s game I remember attending as a kid was them getting their asses handed to them by the Tigers around 1990.
The last game I went to with a friend as a teenager was so empty we sat all over the place-snagged an A-rod (boo) foul ball down by one of the dugouts then wandered around in the upper decks.
Wrigley Field IS the motherfucking Taj Mahal.