Seattle's first taste of Major League Baseball wasn't very palatable. The Seattle Pilots were one of four expansion teams in 1969 and played at a renovated minor league park called Sicks Stadium. The Pilots crashed, losing ninety-eight games and finishing last.
After one season, the Pilots bid Seattle adieu and headed for Milwaukee. Seattle turned its attention from the skies to the seas, where eight years later, the Mariners sailed into Seattle and weighed anchor at the Kingdome, the first indoor ballpark in the American League.
The Mariners first game was a 7-0 whitewashing at the hands of the California Angels on April 6, 1977 and it was a portent of what was to come for more than the next decade. Seattle would finish last, or next to last in ten of its first thirteen seasons and not post a winning record until 1991.
During these lean years, the Mariners had little to offer and what excitement they generated came from veteran players finishing out their careers in the great northwest. Willie Horton hit his three-hundredth career home run for Seattle in 1979 and forty-three year old Gaylord Perry (known as the "Ancient Mariner" for obvious reasons) won his three-hundredth game against the New York Yankees on May 6, 1982.
In 1988, the Mariners fortunes began to turn when they brought Edgar Martinez to the varsity squad and obtained promising slugger Jay Buhner from the Yankees. The next season they unveiled an effervescent young center fielder named Ken Griffey Jr. and a lanky lefty named Randy Johnson, who would post a 133-74 record for Seattle over the next ten seasons.
Under second year manager Jim Lefebrve, the Mariners posted an 83-79 record in 1991, although they finished twelve games off the pace. This wasn't good enough for Mariners' owner George Argyros, who fired Lefebvre and turned the team over to its tenth manager in ten years, Bill Plummer; 1992 was a last-place disaster of a season and led to the hiring of Lou Piniella.
Seattle Mariners History
