Late Seattle baseball team owner Emil Sick and jockey Russell Baze will be inducted into the State of Washington Sports Hall of Fame Friday and Sunday, respectively. Sick will be inducted prior to the Mariners game against Minnesota at Safeco Field, and Baze will enter the Hall before the Longacres Mileat Emerald Downs.
Sick and Baze are part of a class of six 2012 inductees along with quarterbacks Drew Bledsoe and Warren Moon, retired Seattle Pacific soccer coach Cliff McCrath and retired Mercer Island basketball coach Ed Pepple.
Sick revitalized professional baseball in Seattle when he purchased the Seattle Indians of the Pacific Coast League in 1937. He renamed the team the Rainiers after the brewery he owned and built Sicks’ Stadium in the Rainier Valley. Under Sick’s ownership, the Rainiers won five Pacific Coast League championships from 1939-41, in 1951 and 1955.
Among the relatives accepting the honor on behalf of Sick, who died in 1964, will be his daughter, Mrs. Winston C. Ingman.
Baze is one of only two jockeys to win the Longacres Mile at both Longacres and Emerald Downs (1988, 2003-04). The Granger High School (Yakima Valley) graduate is the world’s all-time winningest jockey with more than 11,500 victories. Most of his wins have been on tracks in Northern California.
Baze won an Eclipse Award in 1995, the George Woolf Memorial Jockey award in 2002, and won the Isaac Murphy award from 1995-03 and from 2005-07. The Isaac Murphy award is presented annually to the U.S. jockey with the year’s highest winning percentage.
The State of Washington Sports Hall of Fame was established in 1960 to honor achievements by athletes, coaches, officials, administrators, broadcasters and sportswriters.
2 Comments
These are all good choices for the Washington Sports Hall of Fame. It’s hard to imagine none of them had been inducted before this year, although Mr. Sick was from a long-ago era and Bledsoe hasn’t been out of football that long.
These are all good choices for the Washington Sports Hall of Fame. It’s hard to imagine none of them had been inducted before this year, although Mr. Sick was from a long-ago era and Bledsoe hasn’t been out of football that long.