300 sLAde goRton: A hALf centuRy in poLitics
Then the club dropped a heartbreaker at the polls. On September 19,
the stadium plan fell 1,082 votes short out of a half-million cast. The own-
ers said they’d put the team up for sale on Oct. 30 if a suitable fallback
plan couldn’t be developed. “We cannot further jeopardize our invest-
ment by undue delay,” team chairman John Ellis said in a letter to Gary
Locke, King County’s new executive.^2
The M’s were playing like there was no tomorrow.
Aheginning of August t t Be the home team was 13 games behind the
California Angels. On October 1 they were tied. Seattle’s stunning come-
back and California’s humiliating collapse were both sealed the next day.
Gorton was in a front-row seat at the Kingdome as the Mariners reached
the postseason for the first time in their 19–year history by shelling the
Angels, 9–1. The team departed for New York that night for a best-of-five
series with the Yankees to determine who would play for the American
League pennant. The M’s returned home four days later, trailing 2–0,
with every game do or die. Gorton was in Italy with a congressional del-
egation, frantically waking himself at 4 a.m. to see if CNN International
would at least come up with a score.
In the 11th inning of game five, with Griffey on first and Joey Cora on
third, Edgar Martinez ripped a double down the left field line to tie the
game. All 57,000 eyes swiveled to Griffey. Arms pumping as he rounded
third, he sprinted home, crossing the plate in an emphatic slide as the
Kingdome exploded. Junior was instantly at the bottom of a delirious
dog pile.
After all that, unfortunately, the Mariners were finally out of juice, los-
ing the American League Championship to a clearly superior Cleveland
club in six games. Elvis may have left the Dome but the fans remained on
their feet, clapping and cheering until the team returned to the field. The
“refuse to lose” Mariners had saved baseball for Seattle. No one put it bet-
ter than the Post-Intelligencer’s Art Thiel: It hadn’t occurred to the lords of
baseball that Seattle, “rather than a bad baseball town, was merely a town
of bad baseball.”^3
inheM t idst of the M’s amazing run, Governor Lowry—no sports fan
but an astute bunter—called a special session of the Legislature to pick
up the pieces from the bond issue. Just before the deadline, the polarized
Legislature—accused by stadium opponents of ignoring the public will,
pressured by baseball fans and the worried business community—autho-