The Kids vs. Tacoma: A Sunday Slugfest
Before the Mariners or the Sounders, Seattle's local baseball rivalry with Tacoma defined civic pride, complete with marathon banquets and high-stakes amateur play.
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.
The visiting Tacoma team arrived on the 8:30 a.m. train and was escorted to the grounds, where about 250 persons awaited the start of the game. The Seattle 'Kids' were the hosts. The game was played rapidly, and no dispute worthy of note occurred. The team was in waiting to bring the visitors to town, where they were banqueted at the hotels. After spending the day sightseeing about the city, the Tacoma team and friends who accompanied them left by their steamer at 8 o'clock. The game throughout was pleasant. The score: Kids 20, Tacoma 4.
“The game throughout was pleasant, and was played quite rapidly. No dispute worthy of note occurred.”
Long before professional stadiums, Seattle's civic identity was forged in these scrappy, inter-city amateur games. The 1884 rivalry with Tacoma mirrors the deep-seated cultural and economic competition that persists between the two cities today, showing that some traditions, like baseball trash-talk and city-wide bragging rights, are built into the bedrock of the Puget Sound.
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