Article: From Planes to Pints - How the Seattle Pilots Became the Milwaukee Brewers

[Jason Wang]

Everyone knows that the Brewers’ first year in the major leagues was 1970. However, not everyone knows that the team actually started in 1969, in Seattle. After what Lemony Snicket would call a series of unfortunate events, the team packed its bags and became the Brew Crew we know and love today. How did Seattle call it quits after just one hilariously catastrophic season?

 

After the Kansas City Athletics moved to Oakland, Missouri senator Stuart Symington demanded that Major League Baseball create another team to replace the baseball diamond-shaped void in his life, threatening to pass legislation to weaken the special antitrust exemption held by the league that essentially allowed them to operate as a monopoly. This power move birthed the Kansas City Royals, and since MLB tended to grant expansion in pairs to keep numbers even, they also created a team in the Pacific Northwest that would come to be known as the Seattle Pilots.

Seattle was a bustling metropolitan city in the 1960’s, becoming the third-largest city on the West Coast and serving as the home of the Seattle Rainiers, a popular minor-league team and member of the Pacific Coast League. Even before senator Symington’s fit, many teams, including those in Cleveland and Oakland, considered migrating to the Emerald City, but were ultimately held back by the limited seating capacity of the Rainiers’ home, Sick’s Stadium.

Born out of an arson attack in 1932, Sick’s Stadium was a great minor-league field when it accommodated a capacity crowd of around 10,000 fans. With expansion coming on extremely short notice, Sick’s Stadium went from a community gathering place to a potential human rights violation. Renovation fell behind schedule, and on Opening Day, there weren’t even enough seats. Some fans were forced to wait outside of the stadium until their bleachers had been finished. Once more bleachers had been built, a few more fans were let in. 

Announcers in the press box were completely unable to see left field due to an obstructed view, so when balls were hit in that direction, they had to view the game through a carefully-angled mirror. There was no space for camera equipment nearer to the field, so photographers were stationed on the roof.

But worst of all, in a cruelly ironic twist for a ballpark known as Sick’s Stadium, the plumbing was completely unable to handle the added stress of 14,000 additional spectators. Showers, toilets, and sinks all failed, unable to sustain the water pressure necessary to provide luxuries such as washing your hands for food service or relieving yourself during the seventh-inning stretch. To rectify this, portable toilets were brought in and were a somewhat satisfactory solution until a fan passed out inside one of them and was accidentally locked inside all night by a staff member. 

Inadequacies of the stadium were well-known and MLB explicitly outlined in the expansion agreement that it was to be used solely in the interim, while a new, domed stadium was being built. Furthermore, the Pilots’ debut was originally slated to be in the 1971 season, but Senator Symington, sitting atop his throne on Mount Olympus, demanded that the Royals start their season as soon as possible. Like a child on Christmas Eve, he simply couldn’t bear to wait any longer. While Kansas City already had the infrastructure needed to support a professional baseball team, it forced the Pilots to make do with what they had.

Such putrid conditions led to poor fan reception, ranking it 20th out of 24 teams in terms of attendance (a 64-98 record and last-place finish in the newly created AL West didn’t help either). Poor attendance led to poor ticket sales, and to the eventual bankruptcy of the team after just one year. In a desperate attempt to offload the team, majority owner Dewey Soriano met with Bud Selig, former minority owner of the Milwaukee Braves, who was also trying to replace the baseball-sized void in his life by bringing a major-league team back to Milwaukee. Following other offers and further political strong-arming by the two Washington Senators and state attorney general, the Seattle Pilots were finally declared bankrupt six days before the start of the 1970 season and given the green light to head to Milwaukee.

Milwaukee mostly let go of the dark past of its predecessor, but one thing that remains is the blue and yellow color scheme for jerseys and branding. In fact, currently sitting peacefully in what is now a Lowe's warehouse is almost all that’s left of the Pilots’ legacy. A small sculpted figure of a baseball player commemorates the former location of home plate in Sick’s Stadium before it was torn down.  



The Pilots' brief history is a somewhat sad but absolutely entertaining piece of Brewers trivia that I hope you will pull out the next time you’re at Thanksgiving dinner.

 

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