From the desk of Mary Paynton Schaff

Quick, Seattle baseball fans, where did the following headline appear?

Fans Demanding Scalp of Seattle Manager

Hm, the wording doesn’t sound too far off from some disgruntled bloggers we know.  In 2008, the hometown Mariners went 61-101, becoming the first team to lose over 100 games despite a $100+ million dollar payroll.  It’s easy to imagine a particularly bitter writer taking out his frustrations in this way.

But this headline doesn’t come from a modern day blog or newspaper.  Any guesses before we proceed?

The headline “Fans Demanding Scalp of Seattle Manager” appeared in the May 25, 1919 Seattle Post-Intelligencer.  The previous year, Daniel Dugdale’s 1918 Seattle team won the Northwestern League pennant.  But the lean times following World War I saw the Pacific Coast League look to expand, and Seattle rejoined the PCL in 1919 after a thirteen year hiatus with a new team and new management.  The season did not begin well.  The stories that appeared in the P-I on May 25 give a small indication of how matters stood:

One left Washington Park today under the impression that a hostile aviator had dropped a large bomb loaded with mixed high explosives and spaghetti in the center of the diamond, but it went down in the records as a ball game.

Suffering its fifth fearful slaughter of the week, Seattle went from bad to worse, losing 11-1, and it was the general concensus of opinion that the Angels could have won with their hands in their pockets.

Only a superhuman team could assimilate as much punishment as has been the portion dealt out to Seattle this week.

Yikes.  Read the rest of the story here.  Seattle finished the 1919 baseball season with a record of 62-108, with just 1 more win and 7 additional losses compared to the 2008 Mariners.  The good news? Seattle finished second in Pacific Coast League play the following season.  Bad news? It would take them another five years to regain the pennant.

Further reading:

Dugdale, Daniel E. (1864-1934), Baseball Pioneer.  Historylink Essay 3431 (see also additional Historylink essays on Torchy Terrance, and the Seattle Indians, the Seattle Giants, and Seattle Rainiers baseball teams)

“Runs, Hits, and an Era: The Pacific Coast League, 1903-1958” by Paul J. Zingg and Mark D. Medeiros, 1994

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