Sports teams’ failures increase Seattle’s gloom

SEATTLE – The baseball team spent $100 million and rolled it into 101 losses. The NFL team, once the Super Bowl-bound pride of the loudest crowd in the league, is 1-3 and fading. The college football team, long a perennial Rose Bowl contender, has taken out a long-term lease on the Pac-10 basement, with a fractured fan base and a crumbling stadium adding to its misery. And the NBA team, the one with the city’s only major pro sports championship? It’s just plain gone, shuttled 2,000 miles away to the Midwest. Not so long ago, Seattle was a proud sports town. Now the gloom settling over the fans of the Emerald City will only be matched by the impending months of gray and drizzle. “It’s just tough right now," said Anders Miller, a Seahawks’ season-ticket holder while taking a break from his job tossing seafood around Pike Place Market as one of the landmark’s famous fishmongers. Miller, who plans to load his Seahawks-blue 1978 Toyota and tailgate before Sunday’s game against Green Bay, still counts himself as an optimist. “I want to be one, actually," he said. But fan optimism is rarely rewarded in Seattle. The city’s teams are remembered more for their many failures — no Super Bowl titles, no World Series appearances, the loss of their oldest professional franchise — than the four championships teams: the 1979 NBA SuperSonics, the 1991 University of Washington football team, the 2004 WNBA Storm and the 1917 Stanley Cup champion Seattle Metropolitans. The current scene in Seattle might be the dreariest since the late 1960s, without a single team worth cheering for. In the digital age of anonymous message boards and barking sports radio hosts, Seattle fans are filled with anger and angst. Seahawks coach Mike Holmgren urged them to resist the negative vibe. “I choose to live my life with the glass half full," he said. “I think that’s a choice we can all make. You’re going to have tough things happen. You can’t allow it to knock you down." The civic mood was already turning sour even before the harshest blow of 2008 — the July settlement between SuperSonics owner Clay Bennett and the city of Seattle allowing the team to move to Oklahoma City, ending 41 seasons of professional basketball in the city. The Mariners were expected to be up-and-comers ready to challenge the more experienced and talented Los Angeles Angels. Instead, they underachieved with a surly clubhouse, becoming the first team in baseball history with a $100 million payroll and 100 losses. Baseball was an afterthought by mid-May. Then came the Seahawks’ missteps. Besieged by key injuries, they stumbled through their first three games. They got healthy just in time to be outclassed in their fourth game and get handed the third-worst loss in franchise history by the New York Giants. And across town at the University of Washington? The Huskies are 0-5 for the first time in 39 years, and an angry fan base, clinging to the success of two decades ago, can’t wait to run underperforming coach Tyrone Willingham out of town. Those yearly trips to Pasadena that Husky fans saw as a birthright are now a fading dream. Then there are the Sonics, whose championship banner and retired numbers have been relegated to storage bins as fans hope that fractious state and local officials can help resurrect the franchise years from now. The team that won the city’s only major pro title sold the green and gold for some blue Thunder in Oklahoma City. Fan outrage tends to focus on Howard Schultz, the Starbucks Coffee chairman who sold the Sonics to Oklahoma City owners, and Seattle Mayor Gregg Nickels, who eventually cut a deal that let the team buy out its lease at KeyArena and leave town. “I’m totally devastated by the loss of the Sonics," Miller said. “I went to all the rallies. ... I yell at Nickels every time he walks by. I don’t stop at Starbucks anymore." For most of the last three decades, the area enjoyed at least one team performing at the top of its game. In the late 1970s and again in the mid-90s, the Sonics had the region buzzing with trips to the NBA finals, led by stars like Jack Sikma, Dennis Johnson, Shawn Kemp and Gary Payton. Washington football rose to a co-national championship in 1991 to punctuate a decade of prominence. The Huskies basketball program went to three straight NCAA tournaments earlier this decade. The Mariners’ magical playoff run in 1995 helped save baseball in Seattle and build Safeco Field, and their 116 wins in 2001 may never be matched. The Seahawks’ trip to the Super Bowl three seasons ago is the watershed moment for Seattle fans of this generation. With more than two months left in the season, the Seahawks still offer hope, even as autumn rain and darkness shroud the city. Nathan Seaman manages the Seattle Team Shop fan apparel store across the street from Qwest and Safeco fields, and hesitates to count up the amount of money he’s spent on Seahawks gear. He’ll be cheering for the Seahawks against Green Bay on Sunday, hoping for a turnaround. “They definitely need to start turning it around or the fan base might turn on them," Seaman said. “It might not be the best situation a quarter of the way through the season, but people are still flying the colors." – AP