Not only did I remember guys reading this one, I met some guys (hi, Vance McHenry!)
The idea of sleepovers at the Kingdome brought back a memory from when I was just becoming a baseball fan.
I remember being astonished as a kid to read that Rene Lachemann had actually lived for a short period of time, maybe a couple of weeks, in the Kingdome clubhouse.
To live in a *domed stadium* sounded like the most phenomenally cool thing in the world -- almost cooler even than managing a major-league team.
(I read about it in one of those annual guides to MLB, but have also found news clips mentioning it from June 1981. Lach had replaced Maury Wills early in the season, and apparently he got caught between living arrangements at the start of the strike. Lach made a quip about how they weren't paying him as much as Billy Martin and Ralph Houk made, so he had to save money on lodging. I'm sure that endeared him to management.)
Anyway, this post was great, and thanks for writing it.
That's amazing, I hadn't run across that before! I have to wonder if he wandered around the stadium at night when everyone was gone, or if he just stayed in the clubhouse. The 1981 Mariners have so many really unique stories, and that's one more to add!
Not only did I remember guys reading this one, I met some guys (hi, Vance McHenry!)
The idea of sleepovers at the Kingdome brought back a memory from when I was just becoming a baseball fan.
I remember being astonished as a kid to read that Rene Lachemann had actually lived for a short period of time, maybe a couple of weeks, in the Kingdome clubhouse.
To live in a *domed stadium* sounded like the most phenomenally cool thing in the world -- almost cooler even than managing a major-league team.
(I read about it in one of those annual guides to MLB, but have also found news clips mentioning it from June 1981. Lach had replaced Maury Wills early in the season, and apparently he got caught between living arrangements at the start of the strike. Lach made a quip about how they weren't paying him as much as Billy Martin and Ralph Houk made, so he had to save money on lodging. I'm sure that endeared him to management.)
Anyway, this post was great, and thanks for writing it.
That's amazing, I hadn't run across that before! I have to wonder if he wandered around the stadium at night when everyone was gone, or if he just stayed in the clubhouse. The 1981 Mariners have so many really unique stories, and that's one more to add!
This was incredible, I'm so happy to see you have such happy memories with your dad and your early baseball fandom.
Thank you very much for this story :')
thank you so much. I could easily write a whole book about my early baseball memories with my dad.