BOISE, Idaho — THIS DAY IN SPORTS…July 15, 1999, 25 years ago today:
It’s the grand opening of Safeco Field (now T-Mobile Park) in Seattle. Tailored for the Puget Sound with a retractable roof for those rainy days and nights, Safeco was emblematic of other popular retro-style ballparks built in the 1990s. More than 44,000 fans were in their seats as the Seattle Symphony Orchestra played the theme from the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey” while the roof opened. Legendary broadcaster Dave Niehaus, who had been the Voice of the Mariners since the team’s debut in 1977, threw out the ceremonial first pitch.
On the field, the Mariners lost 3-2 to the San Diego Padres. Jamie Moyer was Safeco Field’s first M’s starter, and he lasted from the stadium’s first pitch all the way through the eighth inning, allowing just one run and ringing up nine strikeouts. Jose Mesa came on in the ninth to close it, but he walked four batters, and the Padres pushed across two runs to win it. So ended the first outdoor major league game in Seattle since the flash-in-the-pan Pilots hosted the Oakland A’s to close the 1969 season at tiny Sicks’ Stadium.
The M’s previous home, the Kingdome, had bowed out three weeks earlier with 56,530 in attendance for its finale as a baseball facility. The one-time palace had its problems over the years. The beginning of the end for the Kingdome had come in 1994, when four tiles from the ceiling of the stadium fell into the stands, leaving officials to declare the site unsafe. As each of the Kingdome's 40,000 tiles were individually replaced, the stadium was temporarily shut down, and the M's played their final 20 games of the campaign on the road. (It would have been a lot more had the 1994 players strike not ended the season.)
The Seattle Seahawks, who had been the first Kingdome tenant in 1976, played the 1999 season in the facility before exiting. The final Seahawks game in the Kingdome was an AFC Wild Card game on January 9, 2000, a 20-17 loss to the Miami Dolphins. The Kingdome was imploded in March of that year Work began at that time on the same site for what is now Lumen Field, which was christened in 2002. (The Seahawks played home games during the 2000 and 2001 seasons in the University of Washington’s Husky Stadium.)
(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra. He also anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK and one on News/Talk KBOI. His Scott Slant column runs every Wednesday.)
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