The logo that is pictured above becomes relevant 10 years earlier as I created a test model for the 2008 Around the Valley in 60 Days promotion. This involved the Northwest League and we will get to that shortly.
Trying to replay events from 30 years ago can be a challenge all to itself. But then you have to go to the next step by dwindling the list down to a handful of topics.
The locations alone would be a story as the path included Jacksonville, Roanoke, Charlotte, St.Louis and the Pacific Northwest for the first time. Once we made the first of our two trips to the Evergreen 🌲 State, we had a solid run in which we finally became house owners for the first time ( Lake Stevens, WA).
Dennis Cerrie joined the circus 🎪 during the brief time in Charlotte and has remained part of the story for 30+ years now. One of the jobs I had in the Queen City was the closing manager at a pizza place near the Coliseum where the Charlotte Hornets played. There were a number of times when we would get a late night phone call from an NBA player who had just arrived, and we were his only food option.
It happened a few times and if it timed out perfectly, I could lock the door to the shop and deliver it myself. I have a number of autographed Domino’s Pizza boxes stashed somewhere.
During the 90s, I did the least amount of writing in my life, but I made up for it by learning more about the marketing aspect of the sports world.
The stories from my time in Aiken, South Carolina make me smile. I started working with USC-Aiken through another Domino’s Pizza franchise, and we started by just bringing our Noid costume out for the college basketball games.
The Noid, with his or hers arms extended, flirted with seven feet tall so the next step was to give a free pizza to anyone who could make a free throw over top of him. I was creating this stuff myself and having a blast.
For the grand finale, I teamed up with a local high school coach, and the two of us stood on opposite ends of the court. We told the athletic director that we were going to shoot 3-pointers non-stop for the entire 10-minute halftime. He just laughed at us because he said nobody could shoot non-stop for 10 minutes, thinking ones arms would fall off.
The offer was that we could give away a free slice of pizza for every point on the scoreboard. I was edged out that night by a score of something like 183 – 168. While my arms remained attached, they did ache for a long time. We had a great post game pizza party, and later on, I would find out that one of the USC-A players had the last name of Walters. A decade later our paths would cross again when I met the legendary Jerry Walters of Central High School.
Have to sneak in a laugh about Roanoke, Virginia, and the seven times in which I moved there. All I wanted to be when I grew up was to be a resident of Roanoke, but it never worked out. For the eighth try, I went with a suburb [ insert laughter about Laurel Fork being a suburban area of the Star City], and this time, we are finishing up our sixth year…
June 2, 1990 :
Still broke beyond broke and awaiting the birth of my fifth and final child ( Rebecca), I was working for the Roanoke Times and World News. Linda was back in Missouri, and I was in possession of an expiring voucher from Northwest Airlines. I had roughly 36 hours of a window to leave and get back without missing a work shift.
I jumped in my car, drove up to Dulles Airport, and boarded a non-stop flight to SeaTac Airport. I rented an economy car and drove out to Bellevue in hopes of visiting the one person who I knew out there. Sadly, Pat Weston had flown out that morning, so yeah, that happened.
I had just flown 2,758 miles one way and had nothing to show for it. I was taking the red-eye flight back, and I’m not sure what made me think to see if the Seattle Mariners were playing at home that night, but they were ! The crowd that night was 20,014 as the Mariners were still struggling back then, and we were playing the Detroit Tigers.
What are the odds that my very first game in the Kingdome was the first No-No for both Randy Johnson and the Seattle Mariners ?
Later on, the Big Unit would throw a perfect game, but this one was far from that. Still, I had just witnessed my first No-No, and I celebrated by driving my wannabe rental car back to the airport, flying back across country, driving back down to Roanoke and then going straight to work.
That story in itself is borderline goofy, but it is just one-third of the trilogy of Goofy.
We fast forward to April of 1993, and I just moved to Seattle for the very first time. I just got out of work from one of my three jobs, and I bolted down to the Kingdome for what would be my second game ever there. I was a few minutes late leaving, and my boss questioned why still go ? My answer was, you just never know what might happen at a ball field.
April 22, 1993
Yes, you guessed it, Chris Bosio pitched the second No-No in the history of the Seattle Mariners !!!!! 13,604 was the official attendance because we had gotten worse but were close to getting better.
Now, let’s talk about the odds that I had witnessed back 2 back No-Hitters that were separated by over 1,000 days and they were the two times I had ever entered the now-destroyed facility.
I now possess a once in a lifetime experience, but I don’t have a way to share the story with others. That was until the third part took place, and I regret the fact that I don’t know the date right now.
I was doing freelance circulation work for a number of newspapers in the area, and I was delivering papers for USA-Today on Mercer Island. Someone far up the food chain had ordered them to create a test market for home delivery and I suggested using Mercer Island.
KJR ( ESPN-950) was leading the way in Sports Talk Radio back then, and please note that it was still user-friendly back then. Not the version that we have today, where it is all designed to have someone call someone else, stupid.
Mitch and Fish did the morning show, and it ran from 5am to 9am. They had a great ping-pong way to entertain their fans. Just great back and forth between the pair and on this morning, Mitchell arrives to find out that Fish is going to miss the day due to an illness.
Mitch is beside himself and starts talking about needing a co-host for the rest of the show. The next thing I hear him say is, ” The first person who can call in with a great story is going to do the show with me.
I called Mitch, and three minutes later, I had been invited down to the studio. He laughed again about the fact that I had to finish my paper route first. It was a great morning !!!
Bob Bender, Slick Watts, Mark Pope, Ed Pebble, Quinn Snyder, and George Karl are some of the characters still to come here in the 90s!
