April 12, 1969: Fun while it lasted: Seattle Pilots stake brief claim to first place

If the baseball fans of Seattle had understood the significance of April 12, 1969, they might have arranged a parade, or perhaps a municipal celebration at Seattle Center with plenty of free-flowing Rainier beer.1 And certainly, more than 8,319 of them might have come out to Sick’s Stadium for the evening’s Seattle Pilots-Chicago White Sox game.

The Pilots, the city’s brand-new expansion team, won, 5-1, to clinch their third day in a tie for first place in the equally new American League West Division.2 The Pilots’ Gary Bell had shut out the White Sox in Seattle’s home opener the previous day.

Standings in early April usually amount to nothing. But in this case, the Pilots’ flurry of early success carried some historical meaning. A loss the following day knocked the Pilots out of their lofty perch, and they never made it back to first place during their only season in Seattle, slumping all the way to sixth and last place at season’s end.3 Not until April 5, 1978, when the second-year Mariners won on Opening Day, did Seattle fans enjoy another day atop the AL West standings.4

As for the game itself – the franchise’s first home night game – it featured 7⅔ innings of strong pitching from Diego Seguí, who turned out to be one of the Pilots’ best hurlers, and a home run by Ray Oyler, who turned out to be one of their weakest hitters. It was also the fourth big-league game and first home-plate assignment for umpire Don Denkinger, who worked 3,823 regular-season games over 30 seasons, as well as 57 postseason games and three All-Star Games.

The Saturday night game, the fourth of the season for both Seattle and Chicago, brought together two teams not expected to compete for the pennant. The Sporting News’ season preview picked the White Sox to finish third in the AL West and the Pilots to finish fifth, ahead of the division’s other expansion team, the Kansas City Royals.5 The 1968 White Sox had gone 67-95, finishing in a tie for eighth place in the AL’s last season before the creation of divisional play. The Pilots, of course, were untested.

Beat writers covering both teams accentuated the positive in their predictions. For the White Sox, Edgar Munzel of the Chicago Sun-Times noted a potentially improved pitching staff and the promise of punch from Bill Melton and Carlos May. For the Pilots, Hy Zimmerman of the Seattle Times praised pitchers Seguí and Jack Aker, solid catching, and a “well-manned” infield. “Will score runs. Looms as best expansion club and may pull surprise,” Zimmerman summarized, with racetrack terseness.6

Zimmerman pegged Seguí, a 31-year-old Cuban righty, as a star of the Pilots’ bullpen. Seguí had worked exclusively in relief for the Oakland Athletics the prior season, making 52 appearances. He hadn’t started in the majors since the first game of a doubleheader on June 11, 1967, when he was pulled one batter into the second inning. Scheduled starter Steve Barber was suffering from shoulder tightness on April 12, though, so Seguí got a spot start even though he was coping with a bruised thumb suffered while fielding a hard grounder near the end of spring training.7

His opponent, right-hander Sammy Ellis, had gone 9-10 with a 3.95 ERA as a swingman with the Angels in 1968. The Angels had traded Ellis to Chicago in January 1969 for outfielder Bill Voss and minor-league pitcher Rube Rubilotta.

The teams played on a field soaked by afternoon rain, which prevented batting or infield practice and doubtless kept the crowd size down.8 The first 2½ innings passed with opportunities, but no runs. The White Sox moved runners to second base in each frame but could not score, while the Pilots stranded a man at second in the second inning.

Oyler led off the third for the Pilots. A Seattle disc jockey had already created an Oyler fan club9 as a tribute to the shortstop’s lopsided skill set: He hit a feeble .135 for the World Series champion Detroit Tigers in 1968, but his defense was so dazzling that he appeared in 111 games.10 With the Pilots, Oyler was getting hitting help from coach Ron Plaza and teammate Tommy Davis.11

One Detroit beat writer said that Oyler struggled at the plate because he “was forever trying to put a power swing on a 5-foot-11, 165-pound body.”12 If Oyler took that approach in this at-bat, it worked, as he drove a pitch 360 feet over the fence in left-center field to delight his fan club and give Seattle a 1-0 lead.13 (“Ray Oyler, of all people,” Munzel wrote the next day.14) The Pilots mustered three more baserunners that inning on a walk and two singles, but could not bring them home. A double play started by future Hall of Fame shortstop Luis Aparicio took some of the steam out of the rally.

In the fourth, the Pilots again made a flurry of offense add up to just one run. Rich Rollins doubled to left-center field.15 One out later, White Sox left fielder Pete Ward lost track of Jerry McNertney’s fly.16 The ball fell for a single amid three Chicago fielders and Rollins scored for a 2-0 Seattle lead.17 Walks to Oyler and Tommy Harper and a passed ball loaded the bases with two out, but Mike Hegan popped to third.18

Through the first five innings, the White Sox managed just one hit and two walks off Seguí.19 In the sixth, Buddy Bradford started a rally by flaring a single over first baseman Don Mincher.20 After Seattle left fielder Davis tracked down and caught a tough liner off Aparicio’s bat,21 Ward singled Bradford to third on a hit-and-run play.22 Melton’s fly to right scored Bradford to cut the Pilots’ lead to 2-1. It was the first of Melton’s team-leading 87 RBIs that season.

The Pilots salted away the game in the bottom half, capitalizing on White Sox mistakes. McNertney reached first when right fielder Bradford dropped what the Chicago Tribune called “a simple fly ball.”23 Singles from Oyler24 and Seguí loaded the bases with none out, leading White Sox manager Al López to call righty Bob Priddy from the bullpen.25 Priddy retired Harper, then threw a wild pitch, scoring McNertney and advancing the other runners.

Hegan singled Oyler home as Seguí took third. Davis grounded to Aparicio at short; his throw home caught Seguí trying to score. Davis capped the rally by stealing second base. Catcher Duane Josephson threw wildly to second and Hegan came in to score, giving the Pilots a 5-1 advantage.26

As rain returned in the eighth inning,27 a final White Sox rally briefly raised tension. Bradford doubled with one out for his team’s fourth hit. One out later, Ward walked, and Pilots manager Joe Schultz summoned right-hander Aker, like Seguí a former Kansas City Athletic. Aker walked Melton to load the bases, then retired Gail Hopkins on a grounder to second to escape the jam.28

One inning later, Sandy Alomar’s grounder to second clinched the Pilots’ 5-1 win in 2 hours and 43 minutes. Seguí earned the win, Aker got the save, and Ellis took the loss.

The results foreshadowed the rest of the season for both starting pitchers. Seguí posted a 12-6 record, trailing only Gene Brabender’s 13 wins among Pilots pitchers.29 He also led the Pilots staff with 66 appearances, including eight starts. Ellis floundered to an 0-3 record in 10 appearances before Chicago traded him to the Cleveland Indians on June 13. He never pitched for Cleveland and never appeared in the majors again, although he resurfaced in Seattle as the Mariners’ pitching coach in 1993 and 1994.30

Fan favorite Oyler hit just .165 in 106 games but slammed a career-high seven home runs.31 He became so fond of Seattle that he retired to the area after his baseball career ended. In the Mariners era, he was occasionally spotted at the Kingdome throwing batting practice to his old team, the Tigers.32

The next Seattle team to reach first place, the Mariners of April 5, 1978, had little in common with the Pilots beyond a blue-and-yellow color scheme. The teams shared no players or coaches,33 and the Mariners played in the modern Kingdome, rather than stopgap Sick’s Stadium.

But longtime observers like Harland Beery knew what the Mariners’ 3-2 defeat of the Minnesota Twins meant. As associate sports editor of the Everett (Washington) Herald, Beery covered the Pilots’ arrival in April 1969. Nine years later to the week, working for the Bremerton (Washington) Sun, he wrote about the Mariners’ triumph under the jubilant banner headline “Mariners Lead Everything, Everybody.”

“The contest was the first of the season in the major leagues,” he wrote. “By winning, the Mariners today are first in everything. Celebrations may be premature, but a Seattle baseball team hasn’t been in first place since the Seattle Pilots shared that spot April 12, 1969.”34

Acknowledgments

This story was fact-checked by Bill Marston and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources and photo credit

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author used the Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org websites for general player, team, and season data and the box scores for this game.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/SE1/SE1196904120.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1969/B04120SE11969.htm

Image of 1969 Topps card #511 downloaded from the Trading Card Database.

Notes

1 Seattle Center is a 74-acre complex used for arts, cultural, sports, and community gatherings such as New Year’s Eve fireworks. Among other things, it is home to the landmark Space Needle. Seattle Center website, accessed July 2024, https://www.seattlecenter.com/. The Rainier Beer brand has long been associated with Seattle and the Pacific Northwest. The brewery’s former owner, Emil Sick, also owned the minor-league Seattle Rainiers and built their home ballpark, Sick’s Stadium, which was enlarged for the Pilots’ use in 1969. David Eskenazi, “Wayback Machine: Seattle First Citizen Emil Sick,” SportspressNW.com, accessed July 2024, https://www.sportspressnw.com/2127691/2020/wayback-machine-seattle-first-citizen-emil-sick.

2 The Pilots had previously been tied for first at the close of play on April 8 (Opening Day) and April 11, following wins over the California Angels and Chicago White Sox, respectively. The Pilots fell into second place on April 9 with a loss to California and stayed there on April 10, an offday.

3 The bankrupt Pilots moved to Milwaukee shortly before the 1970 season, becoming the Brewers.

4 The 1977 Mariners lost their first two games, went 8-16 in April, and did not hold even a partial share of first place at any point during their inaugural season.

5 C.C. Johnson Spink, “‘It’ll Be Cards, Tigers Again’ – Spink,” The Sporting News, April 12, 1969: 5. The “Bible of Baseball” correctly chose the Minnesota Twins as the eventual champs of the AL West Division. It was the only one of the major leagues’ four divisions in which The Sporting News picked correctly.

6 “The View to the West in A.L.,” The Sporting News, April 12, 1969: 12. The 1969 Pilots scored 639 runs, seventh in the league. The AL average was 663.

7 Will Nessly, “Pilots Put It All Together,” Everett (Washington) Herald, April 12, 1969: 12A; Stan Farber, “Seattle Takes First Home Set,” Tacoma (Washington) News Tribune and Sunday Ledger, April 13, 1969: D1.

8 Farber.

9 Harland Beery, “For Openers, None Beat Pilots,” Everett Herald, April 12, 1969: 12A; “‘Wanted 1st One,’ Says Joe,” Bremerton (Washington) Sun, April 12, 1969: 10.

10 Oyler’s bat was so weak that Tigers manager Mayo Smith moved center fielder Mickey Stanley to shortstop for the 1968 World Series to add more punch to the Detroit lineup, even though Stanley had played there only nine times as a major leaguer. Richard Newhouse, “Ray Oyler,” SABR Biography Project, accessed July 2024, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/Ray-Oyler/.

11 Paul Rossi, “Ray Oyler Socks It to the White Sox,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, April 13, 1969: 35.

12 Newhouse, “Ray Oyler.”

13 Richard Dozer, “Ellis Is KO’d by Seattle in 3-Run Sixth,” Chicago Tribune, April 13, 1969: Sports:1. The distance to left-center field was marked at 345 feet.

14 Edgar Munzel, “Seattle’s Segui Squelches Sox, 5-1,” Chicago Sun-Times, April 13, 1969: 143.

15 Retrosheet’s and Baseball-Reference’s game accounts say Rollins doubled to center field; Dozer in the Chicago Tribune says left field. This story splits the difference, but suggests that the ball may have been closer to center than left.

16 Munzel suggested that Ward had lost the ball in the lights, which “are on very low poles compared to other major league ball parks.” Munzel, “Seattle’s Segui Squelches Sox, 5-1.”

17 The Tacoma News Tribune and Sunday Ledger reported that the ball bounced off Aparicio’s glove, although it was scored a single. “Scoreboard,” April 13, 1969: D1. Retrosheet’s game summary describes it as a “single to center.”

18 Dozer, “Ellis Is KO’d by Seattle in 3-Run Sixth.”

19 Seguí also hit the game’s first batter, Buddy Bradford.

20 “Scoreboard.”

21 Dozer, “Ellis Is KO’d by Seattle in 3-Run Sixth.”

22 “Scoreboard.”

23 Dozer, “Ellis Is KO’d by Seattle in 3-Run Sixth.”

24 “Scoreboard” reported that Oyler preceded his single by smashing a loud foul ball over the left-field fence.

25 Neither manager López nor Priddy was long for the team. Troubled by recurring health problems, López retired on May 2 after just 17 games. Priddy appeared in only four games for the White Sox before being traded to California on May 14. Maxwell Kates, “Al López,” SABR Biography Project, accessed July 2024, https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/Al-Lopez/.

26 This account of Josephson’s wild throw is taken from “Scoreboard,” which provides an extremely detailed rundown of the innings in which each team scored. Game summaries on Retrosheet and Baseball-Reference did not describe this play in detail as of July 2024. The play was described as a “pickoff” in United Press International, “Segui Sends Pilots Flying,” San Bernardino County (California) Sun-Telegram, April 13, 1969: D2.

27 Farber, “Seattle Takes First Home Set.”

28 Zimmerman’s prediction that Aker would star in the Pilots’ bullpen did not come true. Aker posted an 0-2 record, three saves, and a 7.56 ERA in 15 appearances before the Pilots traded him to the New York Yankees on May 20 for Fred Talbot. Aker promptly returned to form, going 8-4 with a 2.06 ERA and a team-leading 11 saves for the Yankees over the rest of the season.

29 He also led the team in saves, with 12.

30 Ellis also served as the White Sox’ pitching coach from 1989 through 1991 and served in a similar role for several other major-league teams.

31 Five of Oyler’s homers were hit at cozy Sick’s Stadium and a sixth was hit to left field at Boston’s snug Fenway Park. He hit his final homer of the season in the first game of a June 27 doubleheader; it was also the last homer of his big-league career.

32 Newhouse, “Ray Oyler.”

33 Diego Seguí lasted long enough to pitch in the Mariners’ first game in 1977, but went 0-7 in 40 games and did not return for 1978.

34 Harland Beery, “Mariners Lead Everything, Everybody,” Bremerton Sun, April 6, 1978: 21. The 1978 Mariners are also credited with spending three days in first place, April 5 through 7. They finished 56-104. The first Seattle team to finish in first place when it truly counted – at the end of the season – was the 1995 Mariners, who won the AL West Division title but lost the AL Championship Series.