The baseball equivalent of one-hit wonders, the Seattle Pilots reunited Friday night to mark the 40th anniversary of the team's only season in the American League.
The baseball equivalent of one-hit wonders, the Seattle Pilots reunited Friday night to mark the 40th anniversary of the team's only season in the American League.
The team played a single season in a former minor-league ballpark — Sicks' Seattle Stadium — before sliding into bankruptcy, where an enterprising Bud Selig snatched the franchise and moved it to Milwaukee.
Every expansion team has its share of oddballs and eccentrics, and the Seattle Pilots were no exception. With players like Jim Bouton on the roster — by that time reduced to a sore-armed knuckleballer — its legacy was assured, part of his groundbreaking Ball Four, now out in a fourth edition.
In a way, his book presented a mixed legacy for the Pilots. On the field, the team actually wasn't that bad. But the off-field shenanigans chronicled by Bouton led to a firestorm that helped erase the Pilots from baseball's collective memory.
Until now, as a group of 100 fans or so showed up to the reunion, lovingly chronicled by Art Thiel.
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