Welcome Seattlelites

Post Card from the Seattle World's Fair of 1962. Key Arena is in the foreground to the right.

I wrote about my blog on the Seattle Post-Intelligencer forum on the Sonics, and some from the Emerald City have been visiting.

When I was in the 4th grade and living in Kansas City, Missouri, Seattle hosted the World's Fair which gave the city the Space Needle. It was very exciting for all of us.

We had a family reunion in Seattle and had a meal together in the Space Needle restaraunt. The meal was a bit average and way over priced, but the view was magnificent.

Key Arena was also a result of the World's Fair. Now it's a part of the fight between Seattle and Oklahoma City over the relocation of the Sonics basketball team. What not many know, excepting those in Seattle, is that the reason the team name, "Super Sonics," was chosen because Boeing had been awarded a contract to built the SST, or Super Sonic Transport aircraft which was to be America's answer to the Anglo-French Concord.

The contract was later cancelled. So this town too has had its (pun alert!) ups and downs. We will see how this latest sports opera plays out.

OKC V. Seattle

Oklahoma City V.
Seattle

The way our city and the city of Seattle look at the Sonic situation interests me. The latest twist in this "Sports Opera" is that Howard Shultz, the former owner of the Sonics and founder of Starbuck Coffee (sic), has followed through on his promised lawsuit to void the sale of the team to the Professional Basketball Corporation headed by Clay Bennett. The headline in The Oklahoman, the newspaper in OKC, reads "Ex-Sonics owners follow through on lawsuit threat".

In The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the headline is "Bennett knew he could "flip" team. The story discusses how e-mails discovered through Shultz lawsuit allegedly indicate that Bennett was not interested in owning a team in Seattle, and that had the move to OKC not worked out, his group would have sold the team to another group of owners and used the proceeds to buy a team he could have moved.

Both articles carry the same facts, but from the outset, our paper emphasizes the "ex-owner" who is making a threat while the Seattle paper focus on Bennett personally and his motives for owning the Sonics.

It's a well known ploy in politics that if you can make your opponent the issue, you have gained a major upper hand in your fight. Looks as though both papers are doing their part in the battle.

The Sonics (or whatever they will be named) Are Coming to OKC

Matter of When?
I feel very ambigous about this. I have family who live in Seattle. I think that Seattle is the most beautiful city in the USA. I really wish the team we are getting was from some place like Los Angeles. At least that way we would be paying back the Californians for the way they treated Oklahomans during the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl migration.

On the other hand, this is a step forward for the city where I have spent all but 9 years of the 56 God has granted me. We will have our own major league franchise.
Oklahoman article "The NBA says yes to OKC

In this Zero Sum Game, however, we must remember that our joy comes at someone else's pain. Here is a video put up by a Sonics fan. You Tube: Save Our Sonics