Baseball Disgust at Madison Street Park
Seattle's home team suffers a humiliating loss to Portland, with local fans calling for the benching of star players.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
It was a disgusted audience that saw the home team make a holy show of themselves yesterday afternoon at Madison Street Park. The Seattle team didn't make a showing that would have been creditable to schoolboys, and they couldn't have hit anything if they had swung a scoop shovel at a bale of hay. Lew Gilliland's pitching was erratic, and the fielding was marked by wild throws. The bleachers, once supportive, eventually gave way to gloomy silence, with one youth shouting to put in Lohbeck. Portland played a clean, professional game, easily outpacing the locals 7-1.
“Aw, go an' play wid de Maroons.”
Long before the Mariners, Seattle baseball was defined by local amateur and semi-pro leagues. This account of the 'Madison Street Park' game highlights the enduring tradition of fans expressing deep frustration with 'wretched battery work'—a sentiment that resonates through the decades of Seattle sports history.
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