Inside Pitch
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Product Details
Publisher: Persistence Press
Release Date: May 18, 2020
Formats: Paperback, Ebook
ISBN: PB: 978-1-7345959-0-1; EB: 978-1-7345959-1-8
Trim: 5.5 x 8.5
Page Count: 178
Insiders Reveal How the Ill-Fated Seattle Pilots Got Played into Bankruptcy in One Year
Rick Allen
The story of Major League Baseball’s shortest-lived team and its quirky characters—from the dugout to the front office.
The year 1969 ushered a new Major League Baseball team into Seattle: the Pilots. After many earlier years of successful minor league ball, the city had high hopes for a similar outcome. With plans for a new ballpark and a temperamental but hot-hitting young player named Lou Piniella in the spring training dugout, Seattle was finally getting their shot in the bigs. But the team lasted only one year before going broke and abruptly moving to Milwaukee to become the Brewers. How did that happen?
Jim Bouton’s popular 1970 book, Ball Four, immortalized the Pilots’ colorful cast of clubhouse characters. Inside Pitch goes beyond the gloves and cleats to tell the story of management misfits and administrative mistakes as the team was played into bankruptcy.
On the fiftieth anniversary of the team’s 1970 bankruptcy and move to Milwaukee, Inside Pitch takes baseball fans on a behind-the-scenes look into the brief and quirky history of the Seattle Pilots from the unique perspective of two young team administrators. They share their recollections of the team’s seemingly inevitable collapse and the Herculean efforts to save it by many in the organization. These same young men—who moved to Milwaukee with the team—also reveal some of the administrative hiccups and hilarities during the early days with the Brewers and their new owner, Bud Selig.
About the Author
While touring southern Africa, Rick Allen found himself at a dinner table listening to funny stories from the former CFO of the Seattle Pilots, and with that, Inside Pitch was off and running.
Allen is a lifelong baseball fan who was living in California in the summer of 1958 when the new Los Angeles Dodgers moved from Brooklyn to LA. There, he began collecting baseball cards, never able to track down the card of Charlie Neal, second baseman for the Dodgers. Nearly sixty years later, his son found the card on eBay and surprised him with it at Christmas. Yes, he cried.
A Little League all-star at multiple positions and a frontline third baseman as a teenager in summer ball, Allen was a member of two county championship teams. His "storied career" in baseball ended at the age of eighteen as college called. He never saw a Pilots ball game, as the Pilots bounded to Milwaukee in 1970, and Allen went off to see new worlds with Uncle Sam.
In 1986, he became a rookie member of the oldest fantasy baseball league in the United States west of the Mississippi River. He's traveled to spring training in Arizona annually since 1986.
Married to Alvarita, his wife of over fifty years, they have two sons, both of whom played Little League ball, both of whom were coached at one time by Dad, and both of whom are Seattle Mariners fans.
Allen holds a BA in journalism from Eastern Washington, an MA in interpersonal communication from Ohio University, and an MA and a doctorate in public administration from the University of Southern California. He's worked in upper management and executive levels in the higher education, government, and nonprofit sectors and has founded and owned two small businesses.