My Kingdome for a Roof!
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a team playing in a indoor stadium, must be in want of a roof. The 2025 Tampa Bay Rays, meet the 1994 Seattle Mariners.
Before we begin today, I joined the To Love a Mariner podcast to talk about baseball history, and discuss the cinematic classic Little Big League. I had a lot of fun talking with them and I’m a big fan of their podcast, so I encourage you all to give it a listen! You can find them on all the typical podcast apps.
I had planned to dive into this story last July, but I never got to it. Now that we have two major league teams playing in minor league/spring training stadiums next year it felt topical, particularly because the Rays’ predicament is due to damage to their roof.
As you’ve probably heard, the A’s will play in a AAA ballpark in Sacramento because their owner sucks. And the Rays will play at Steinbrenner Field, Spring Training home of the Yankees, because Hurricane Milton destroyed their roof.
In 1994, the Mariners had a situation somewhat like the Rays, where their poorly designed and maintained roof made their stadium unusable. Except, for the Mariners, it happened in the middle of the season and they were denied the chance to set up a home at another stadium. This isn’t going to be a compare and contrast story; circumstances were different all around, but it turns out losing the use of your home stadium does have precedent, and it’s possible MLB is handling it better now than they did in 1994?
This is a look at the situation for the Mariners, and the reasoning behind the decisions that were made.
July 28, 1994 was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.
It was terrible because the Mariners sunk to 19 games under .500 when Mickey Tettleton of the Detroit Tigers hit a walkoff home run off Bobby Ayala in the bottom of the 11th inning.
It was horrible because the MLB Players Association agreed to set a strike date in two weeks, August 12, in an effort to get baseball owners to seriously negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement.
It was no good because one of the few bright spots in the Mariners season, Randy Johnson, was so fed up with losing that he suggested the team may want to trade him, mirroring comments made by Ken Griffey Jr. a couple months earlier.
And it was a very bad day as the Mariners learned that come strike or resolution, they would play the rest of the season on the road.
It must have felt like someone decided to make the sky fall.
*****
The Mariners troubles began in earnest 9 days earlier. On July 19, they woke the same as any other day; in last place in the American League West, the worst team in the league, barely not the worst team in all of Major League Baseball.
As a franchise they were used to metaphorical roofs collapsing on their seasons, so they may not have been all that surprised when the actual roof began to fall. A group of players were stretching on the field before batting practice when an acoustical tile measuring 32 by 48 inches and weighing between 12 and 25 pounds (the poundage varies by source, no one could agree on the weight apparently) came loose from the ceiling, twisting and tumbling 180 feet down through the air, crashing into the box seats between home plate and third base.
Randy Johnson was facing the direction of the stands when the tile fell. “It hit, and there was a cloud of dust. It was pretty breathtaking to me.” Rich Gossage added, a little less poetically, “There was dust all over.”1
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Although Kingdome officials opted to postpone opening the gates for fans, the players finished stretching on the field and began taking batting practice like normal. About an hour later, three more tiles fell from the same section of ceiling. At this point it was clear they could not play and the game was postponed.
Ken Griffey Jr. missed the excitement because he was taking a snooze in the clubhouse. When he woke up, he initially found it all very entertaining.
"They canceled the game for that? Hey, nobody was bitching when the roof was leaking and I was slipping and sliding out there in center field," Griffey said, laughing. "Just put a sign at the gates saying 'Enter at your own risk' and let 'em come on in."
Griffey then peered into the seats where the tile had fallen and said, more seriously: "I wouldn't put my butt there."2
In hindsight it’s incredible the Kingdome lasted 18 years before an event was postponed due to a structural malfunction.3 As Griffey alluded to in his quote above, the Kingdome was notorious for problems with its roof. In fact, the roof design was called into question as early as 1974, when the contractors building the roof stopped construction and sued over the plans for the roof4 as rumors swirled that the newly poured and already sagging roof ribs were on the verge of collapse.5
The problems only continued. In 1975, cracks in the roof ribs were discovered and King County, the government responsible for the ‘Dome, was warned about water intrusion.6 Nevertheless, the building opened and the roof leaked for 18 years until the plunging ceiling tiles forced everyone to finally deal with it.
Inspectors could only conclude that it wasn’t safe to play in the Kingdome. Officials wanted to assure the public that the ceiling was probably fine, going so far as to hold a press conference on the playing field. A King County spokesperson said the inspectors “couldn’t give us the complete assurance that we want that more tiles won’t fall.”7 Inspectors, amirite?
With the Kingdome deemed unsafe for occupancy, the 4-game weekend series against the Red Sox shifted to Boston. Although the games were supposed to be home games for the Mariners, they’d go in the books as Red Sox home games. Because of the last minute change, Boston charged only $10 per ticket for the 3 days (they played a doubleheader on Saturday).
As the visiting team, the Mariners were entitled to 20% of the discounted gate receipts (versus nearly 80% if they were the home team). The Mariners worried their share wouldn’t cover the unexpected travel costs of last minute airplane charters and hotel rooms.
“We asked numerous times about making us the home team because they’re actually our home games,” Mariners President Chuck Armstrong explained, but American League President Bobby Brown “said he was treating this like a rainout that has to be made up in another city.”8 Brown was simply leaning on precedent. “Whenever the home team has been unable to use its stadium in the past, the league has played the games at the home of the visiting team,” a league spokesperson explained.9
Without knowing how long it would take to repair the ceiling, the Mariners packed up their lockers for a surprise trip to Boston, after which they’d commence their regularly scheduled road trip. Despite assurances that all would be well with the ‘Dome in short order, the players seemed doubtful.
“This may be the last time I see this locker,” closer Bobby Ayala said in a rare comment to the media. Griffey was more flippant about leaving. “We’re about to strike anyway,” he shrugged.10
*****
While the Mariners played in Boston the news trickling out about the Kingdome ceiling became progressively worse until they received the worst news possible: Every single tile on the Kingdome ceiling needed to be replaced, all 40,000 of them. Early estimates had the ‘Dome closed for a month with the hope that extra resources could be thrown at the ceiling to speed up the process.
Armstrong was steaming over the news that the entire ceiling needed to be replaced. The Mariners, he said, were “the laughingstock of baseball. We hope the county recognizes the seriousness of the damages done to our organization in terms of our good name as well as some heavy financial losses.”11
For nearly as long as the Mariners had been a baseball team, they had been battling with King County over the Kingdome and lobbying for a new stadium. The vitriol was approaching a fever pitch with their lease expiration looming at the end of the 1996 season. The public had little interest in financing a stadium for a baseball team that showed no intention of winning, while the Mariners claimed they could not win without a better stadium.
Into the middle of the standoff fell the ceiling tiles.
****
After splitting the series in Boston, the Mariners began their regularly scheduled road trip to Detroit and Chicago. They didn’t know where they’d play when the trip ended, but options were discussed.
The top choice among Mariners players and team officials was Cheney Stadium, just down the road in Tacoma, the home of the Tacoma Tigers, the Oakland Athletics’ AAA team. It was chosen primarily because of its proximity to home, a fair thing to want in a profession that has you away from home for half the season.
The American League had objections to Cheney Stadium, however. The seating capacity was only 10,000. As lousy as the Mariners were, they were easily pulling in more than that on a nightly basis. In addition, the lights weren’t as bright as major league lights which gave the AL concerns about playing conditions. Plus, the clubhouse and other stadium facilities simply weren’t up to major league standards. Still, a league representative approved the stadium and the idea was put forth for the Mariners to play day games, which would eliminate the lighting problem and work around the Tigers’ schedule.
The Tigers’ general manager Frank Calarusso was excited about the idea of hosting the Mariners and was eager to put in the work to make Cheney Stadium work for the major leagues. “We’ve had enough great ballplayers walk across this field, why couldn’t we host a major league game here?”12
American League President Brown seemed set from the beginning that the rescheduled home games be played at their opponents’ stadiums. “You’ve got pennant races going on. You’d like to have major league lighting and a major league infield and so forth. It eliminates a lot of arguments that could arise if something screwy happens.”13
Either way, the Players Association had to approve the plans. Mariners players voted unanimously to play their games in Tacoma. Players for their upcoming opponents—the Angels, Royals, and Rangers—voted against Cheney Stadium, with Angels officials also complaining that playing during the day would affect their television revenues. With three teams on their side, the American League got to make the call it wanted all along. The Mariners had to play their home games on the road.
“When you have 75 players vote against it and 25 for it, who are you going to listen to?” the Mariners union representative Dan Wilson said diplomatically. “If we were the other team, we’d vote the same way.”14
There was some recent precedent for the decision as well. In 1992, the Astros lost the use of the Astrodome for about a month because it was hosting the Republican National Convention. As inconvenient as it was to play every game for a month on the road, it was planned in advance and Craig Biggio would say years later that “the league…really took care of us.”15 The unexpected nature of this extended road trip landed a bit differently with some of the Mariners players, however.
“What was the purpose of our voting if the other team could overrule us?” Jay Buhner fumed. “I’m tired of bitching over things we have no control over.” Dave Fleming was also upset. “We’re being penalized for something that’s not our fault,” he said. “Our stadium falls apart and we have to play on the road forever? We were told we had options. We were led to believe we had a say in this.”16
Some players were able to bring their families on the road. For others, it was more difficult. Mike Blowers and his wife welcomed their second child on July 17th. He said that due to the time on the road (and this was before players had paternity leave), he’d seen his newborn for a total of three hours. Edgar Martinez was leaving behind his wife, who was 8 months pregnant. He wondered whether the teams who voted against playing in Tacoma took the human side of their decision under consideration. “Just being away from the family is hard,” he said.17
It was former Mariner Mark Langston who led the charge against playing in Tacoma, his statements convincing the union and the league that the opposing players weren’t simply looking for a home field advantage. “Never in baseball have two major league teams played meaningful games at a minor league park,” he said. “Major league players should play in major league stadiums.”18
"I've thought about this a lot," Armstrong said in response to the pushback from the Angels in particular, "and wondered how we would have reacted had the California Angels lost the use of their stadium because of an earthquake. I honestly think we would have been more accommodating."19
A spokesperson for the players association tried to smooth over the situation, saying of the opposing players’ feelings about Cheney Stadium, “They regard it as a substandard field. I don’t say that critically or pejoratively of Tacoma.”20
Tigers GM Colarusso was upset at the criticism. "Too many of those players were probably scared to come back to Triple A because it's where they belong," he said. "They were scared their teams might tell them to stay here."21
Justified or not, the decision only exacerbated the Mariners’ financial woes. They’d be the visiting team for every one of those games, losing out on the gate receipts, concessions, and other income that come from home games. The team was negotiating with the league for a better deal, but they’d lose a huge amount of money no matter the outcome. They were also facing lost television money because of the venue changes.
And the hits just kept on coming. They had a day off their major league schedule on August 1st, which would have been a valuable rest day. However, they’d previously agreed to play in the Hall of Fame Game in Cooperstown, NY that day. They asked MLB to let them out of the game, but MLB said they could not be replaced.
The Mariners ended a 10-game, 2-8 road trip in Chicago, flew to New York to play a game that didn’t count, then hopped on another plane for California. The Angels hit them again, announcing the tickets for their series would sell for $6, further depleting the amount of money the Mariners were able to make.
The tenor in the local newspapers was bleak. Art Thiel wrote in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:
The only athletic drama left in local baseball is whether Randy Johnson and Ken Griffey, Jr. can outrun the fans to the door…Not since the Pilots stole out of town to Milwaukee in 1970 has baseball bleakness been so vast.22
In the Seattle Times, Bob Finnigan ranked the 10 Worst Days in Mariners History. July 28, 1994 was awarded the #1 spot.23
It was sour times for the Mariners. Going on strike in 12 days wasn’t looking so bad.
****
Bad news continued to roll in about the situation at the Kingdome. The roof was in dire shape, and it had been known to be for some time. The County had not acted appropriately with the information it had, and the Mariners had not wanted to push it for fear of losing home games earlier in the season. Newspapers shouted about the team and the county putting fans in danger. The costs and time to make the Kingdome playable again kept rising.
The Kingdome roof repairs weren’t finished until late October 1994. During the work, two construction workers died in an accident, shifting the widespread negligence from annoyance to tragedy. The total cost of the repairs was $50 million, a bill that wasn’t paid off until 2015, 15 years after the Kingdome was imploded.
In August of 1994, it was possible the team only had two seasons left in town. For all anyone knew, the falling ceiling tiles were harbingers of the end of major league baseball in Seattle.
*****
The home road trip began on August 2 in Anaheim. The Angels, already hostile in the players association negotiations, refused to play the final game of the series at an earlier time to ease the amount of night traveling the Mariners had to do. They did not want to anger their television sponsors and potentially lose money, they sniffed at the destitute Mariners.
The Mariners took that personally. They swept the Angels decisively.
They went to Kansas City next, and after dropping the first game, walked away with a series win. Then, on to Texas and a four-game sweep.
From there, they arrived in Oakland for their game on August 11th.
The players went go on strike the next day. The entire postseason and World Series were canceled. They didn’t play again until the end of April.
But first, sometime around the time the calendar flipped to August, when they received bad news on top of bad news, when it seemed like every other team and the league itself was against them, the Mariners gave us a glimpse of the future.
Mike Blowers reflected 10 years later, in 2004:
From a team standpoint, it might have been the best thing that happened to us. We really got to know each other a heck of a lot better. A lot of us ended up becoming really great friends during that time. Usually on the road, three or four guys might go out together. But it seemed like, on that trip, we had a bunch of times when we would all go out basically as a team. You rarely see that, and it was really cool.24
Blowers and other players said the experience of that extended road trip laid the groundwork for the following season.
On August 11th in Oakland, Randy Johnson struck out 15 Athletics. Ken Griffey Jr. hit a grand slam for his 40th home run of the season. The Mariners ran away with the game, winning 8-1. It was their 9th win in their last 10 games. A good run for a team that was struggling, and a foreshadowing of what was to come.
Who could have known. When it looked like the Mariners were irreparably falling apart, they were finally putting themselves together.
And if they hadn’t put themselves together for the magical 1995 run, and a deal for a new stadium hadn’t been reached, the Mariners would have moved to Tampa Bay only to find themselves domeless once again.
Sometimes Things Fall on Baseball Fields
The fallen tiles brought back a wild memory for Mariners General Manager Woody Woodward. He told reporters the day they fell that during his playing career as a member of the Cincinnati Reds, he was at Dodger Stadium when “there was a boom behind me in the infield and it turned out someone had dropped a bag of flour from an airplane.”25
He was talking about a bizarre incident in 1971. Not only did a bag of flour drop onto the field, but a chicken was reportedly running around in the outfield at the same time. Woodward was running to cover a pickoff attempt at second base on future Mariner manager Maury Wills when the flour dropped right where he was normally positioned.
If you’re unfamiliar with this story, it is worth a read! From the Athletic: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/1723837/2020/04/07/the-night-a-sack-of-flour-fell-from-the-sky-at-dodger-stadium/
Rethinking that 90s Nostalgia
What did you do in 1994 if you had already purchased tickets to game that was relocated to another city? Well, you took a photocopy of your tickets for your records, then you put them in an envelope along with your name, address and daytime phone number, and mailed them to the Mariners Ticket Office to request an exchange or a refund.
Then, you tuned in to the game on either the radio, Channel 11 (only for a select handful of games), or on Prime Sports Northwest, where the game could be shown live. Or it could be tape-delayed.
What a time to be alive.
"PROBE, REPAIRS BEGIN AT DOME18 YEARS OF ROOF PROBLEMS LAND ON SEATING AREAS, COUNTY OFFICIALS, CANCEL M'S GAME." THE SEATTLE TIMES, July 20, 1994: A1.
I’m sure you’ll note the author of this article and it will bring to mind another story about a Griffey snooze. And while I certainly don’t want to get into another Nap Gate, I did find it funny that there were two nap stories by the same guy and I hope you will too.
LaRue, Larry. "CEILING FALLS WITH A BANGBUT RIP VAN GRIFFEY DIDN'T HEAR A THING." The News Tribune, July 20, 1994: F1.
"PROBE, REPAIRS BEGIN AT DOME18 YEARS OF ROOF PROBLEMS LAND ON SEATING AREAS, COUNTY OFFICIALS, CANCEL M'S GAME." THE SEATTLE TIMES, July 20, 1994: A1
Lane, Polly. “Dispute over roof brought stoppage.” Seattle Daily Times (Seattle, Washington), December 4, 1974: 14.
“Sagging beam delays stadium construction.” Seattle Daily Times (Seattle, Washington), November 9, 1974: 7.
“Cracks in domed stadium’s ribs to be patched.” Seattle Daily Times (Seattle, Washington), October 9, 1975: 18.
WILLIAMS, MARLA. "M'S GAMES IN DOME CANCELEDCOUNTY CLOSES STADIUM FOR THE WEEK AFTER CEILING TILES FALLROAD TRIP BEGINS EARLY; TEAM HEADS TO BOSTON." THE SEATTLE TIMES, July 20, 1994: A1.
Street, Jim. "AL SENDS SERIES EAST - MOVE COULD COST M'S $1 MILLION." Seattle Post-Intelligencer, July 21, 1994: D1.
LaRue, Larry. "'WE DON'T KNOW WHEN WE'LL PLAY HERE AGAIN'DISPLACED MARINERS PACK UP FOR BOSTON, LEAVING THEIR BOSSES TO COUNT THE LOSSES." The News Tribune, July 21, 1994: C1
The Associated Press, JIM COUR. "KINGDOME ILLS FORCE M'S TO HIT THE ROAD." Columbian, The (Vancouver, WA), July 21, 1994: D1
FINNIGAN, DAVE BIRKLANDBOB. "40,000 TILES IN DOME MAY NEED REPLACINGM'S SAY FIASCO MAKES TEAM A `LAUGHINGSTOCK'." THE SEATTLE TIMES, July 22, 1994: A1
Bruscas, Angelo. "M'S LOOK TOWARD TACOMA - AL THINKS ABOUT CHENEY FOR SEATTLE HOME GAMES." Seattle Post-Intelligencer, July 26, 1994: D1
and George Foster, Bud Withers. "M'S MAY BE ON ROAD FOR LONG TIME." Seattle Post-Intelligencer, July 22, 1994: A1.
"M'S LOSE BID TO PLAY AT TACOMA SITE." Columbian, The (Vancouver, WA), July 29, 1994: C1.
https://www.mlb.com/news/story-of-astros-26-game-road-trip-in-1992
LaRue, Larry. "MARINERS ANGERED OVER CHENEY STADIUM VETO." The News Tribune, July 29, 1994: C1.
SHERWIN, BOB. "ROAD TO RUIN? 22 DAYS AWAYM'S BEMOAN LONG TIME AWAY FROM FAMILIES." THE SEATTLE TIMES, July 29, 1994: E6.
FINNIGAN, BOB. "CRITICISMS FORCE M'S OUT OF CHENEYAL DECISION MAKES THIS `POSSIBLY THE WORST DAY IN MARINER HISTORY'." THE SEATTLE TIMES, July 29, 1994: E6.
NEWNHAM, BLAINE. "BASEBALL HEADED FOR DARK DAYSGREED SNUFFS OUT M'S CHANCE FOR CHENEY DREAM." THE SEATTLE TIMES, July 29, 1994: E1
and Jim Street, Angelo Bruscas. "AL SHOOTS DOWN M'S TACOMA OPTION." Seattle Post-Intelligencer, July 29, 1994: F1.
FINNIGAN, BOB. "CRITICISMS FORCE M'S OUT OF CHENEYAL DECISION MAKES THIS `POSSIBLY THE WORST DAY IN MARINER HISTORY'." THE SEATTLE TIMES, July 29, 1994: E6.
Thiel, Art. "BAD SEASON, BAD STADIUM STRIKE: THREE." Seattle Post-Intelligencer, July 29, 1994: F1.
FINNIGAN, BOB. "10 WORST DAYS IN MARINER HISTORY #." THE SEATTLE TIMES, July 29, 1994: E1.
https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/20040719/tile19x/ten-years-after-the-kingdome-tiles-fell
LaRue, Larry. "CEILING FALLS WITH A BANGBUT RIP VAN GRIFFEY DIDN'T HEAR A THING." The News Tribune, July 20, 1994: F1.
This is a fantastic read!
I knew this incident had happened, but I did not understand the extent of the other teams seemingly going out of their way to attempt to harm (or perhaps even kill) the Seattle Mariners until reading this article.
It's fascinating how the MLB has perpetually continued to exist as a unit divided against itself. The opposing teams' players cared absolutely none for the plight of the poor 25 Seattle Mariners (plus coaches) who theoretically weren't going to see their families at home for two consecutive months. Normally the owners at least look out for the other owners, but $6 ticket prices to unplanned home games were not about to help Seattle stay in business at all. It was everybody against one. I'd hate to think that baseball at large was still angry about the 1970 lawsuit that forced the industry against its will to try Seattle again, but pettiness is everywhere in this game. That wouldn't surprise me.
Did the impending strike that the owners planned to force the players into play a big role in this? Probably. Everybody knew that this was going to be a two week plan instead of a two month plan, but imagine if there'd been a last second deal worked out, and it turned out that the rest of baseball had just crucified the Seattle Mariners. In that circumstance, there may have been yet another lawsuit for unfair practices causing the loss of the team, that would've put yet another coerced expansion baseball team into the Seattle market by court order, and we could've done this song and dance all over again.
Perhaps then we would've had to wait until approximately right now for baseball to make another orchestrated effort to kill itself in Seattle, just like it'd done in 1994, and like it's done in the modern day to Oakland.
I cannot believe the pettiness on display here, and I can't believe that somebody wasn't able to work something out that wasn't such an open display of contempt for the Seattle Mariners.
Great work and love the "Rip Van Griffey" bit from your sources! A guy does get snoozy with so much travel.