By Tim Clinton
In the summer of '69, Seattle's expanded Sicks Stadium was alive with the presence of the Major League Baseball expansion franchise known as the Seattle Pilots.
The team lasted only one season before bolting for Milwaukee to be renamed as the Brewers and the Pilots became the stuff of legends.
The Pilots were immortalized in pitcher Jim Bouton's baseball book called "Ball Four."
All this reporter remembers as a 7-year-old boy going to his first Major League Baseball action that summer is that it was a "twi-night" doubleheader against the Chicago White Sox, the view from our seats on the first base side of Sicks Stadium and the contest we held between us as a family.
We decided to each pick the player who would hit the next home run for the Pilots.
My father Mel chose Tommy Davis, my mother Lorraine chose Ray Oyler, my brother Dave chose Wayne Comer, my sister Lynne chose Jerry McNertney and I had Tommy Harper.
I can't tell you which of us won, if anybody, nor if the Pilots managed to win either game. I do remember it being one of my first adventures in being out past midnight and how dark Federal Way looked when we were running around at that hour after we came back from Seattle.
As for the Pilots, they struggled to 64 wins that season and left for Milwaukee at the end of spring training down in Tempe, Ariz. in 1970 instead of coming back to Seattle, breaking this young fan and many others' hearts.
The hearts were not healed until 1977, when the Seattle Mariners arrived for their first season -- and also won 64 games.
That history repeated itself, as did the presence of pitcher Diego Segui and a second spring training in Tempe, Ariz.
But this time the team came back to Seattle and stayed.