Pugetopolis' first year in the big leagues

This summer I've been working on a project for the Museum of History and Industry taking a look at Seattle's modern history, that is the events and trends of the past 30-40 years. One of the themes that keeps coming up is Seattle's yearning to be a "big league" city, a phrase used before "world class" city came into vogue during the '90s and '00s.

Our big league status has been in flux of late: We lost our NBA franchise, the Seattle Supersonics, to Oklahoma City, but we gained a major soccer team with the popular Sounders. Turns out that part of major-leagueness is flux: Look at cities like New York and Los Angeles and you see that teams come and go. There's nothing permanent in the changing world of sports, where careers can be over in an instant, where teams can appear and vanish within a heartbeat.

An example of the latter is the Seattle Pilots, our one-year wonders and first major league baseball franchise that played here in 1969, only to go belly up and find themselves reincarnated at the Milwaukee Brewers. I wrote about this for Crosscut this week because on August 29, there will be a Pilots reunion of sorts in Bellevue, Seattle and at Safeco Field. Those of us who are old enough have been remembering Woodstock and the moon landing this summer, but for me, the big event was the coming of the Pilots. My dad and I went to the opening game against the Chicago White Sox at Sick's Stadium and it was a big deal for father-son relations.

Pilots (and former Yankees) pitcher Jim Bouton wrote a classic baseball memoir about his year with the team, and in it he captured some of the difficulties a sports franchise in Seattle would have, one being that it is so beautiful and so ideal as a jumping off place for outdoor activities, that sports might have a hard time getting a grip here. In his book, Ball Four, he describes how Seattle's natural setting could be both a distraction and a consolation to Pilots players.

"That's the great thing about our ballpark," he writes of Sick's Stadium. "When a home run hit off of you disappears over the fence your eye catches a glimpse of the majesty of Mt. Rainier and some of that bad feeling goes away," he says of dealing with the pressures of baseball. In Seattle, nature itself is Big League, and it's tough for anything to compete with it.

Summer Pugetopolis update

Not much to report on the book front. I've taken the summer off from readings and events, but the fall calendar is starting to fill in a bit. A couple of things of note:

I'll be part of the Northwest Authors Lecture Series at the Seward Park Audubon Center in November, which will include a reception, reading, discussion and signing. As readers know, Seward Park has been a hang out of mine since I was a toddler and experiences there form the basis of a few chapters in the book. I'm thrilled to be part of the program.

In October, I'll be appearing at the Rainier Club's "Hospitality Hour" to talk about Pugetopolis and wander the halls of a club that my grandfather belonged to. It's been all downhill since.

There's also some talk of an appearance at my alma mater, The Evergreen State College, in the fall. No date set yet.

I have done a few pretty cool things this summer. I served on the citizen's panel for AIA Seattle's Future Shack awards, selecting projects that represent the best ideas and practices Washington architecture. The results will be published in the Seattle Times in September. You can see my story about the process here.

I also had a chance to speak to the Museum of History and Industry's Summer Teacher's Institute, where I did a presentation called "Googie, globes and atomic power," a look at what can be learned about local history from three, modern architecture preservation projects. It was an honor to get to talk to teachers and share what I've learned from reporting on the Ballard Denny's, the P-I Globe and the UW's Nuclear Reactor Building.

Another project: Getting on Facebook. I've been warned that it's "the world's biggest time suck," but if you want to find me there, I am ready to receive friends.