Counting Down Hours Before Seahawks Leave
A Deathwatch Day diary.
10:45 a.m: I arrive at Seahawks headquarters expecting to encounter somber, teary-eyed staffers speaking in hushed tones.
Instead, the receptionist, Ingrid Hatfield, offers a friendly smile and says “Hello.” A pro’s a pro, no? The linebacker tapes up a broken finger and goes back to work, playing in pain. On what appears to the bleakest morning in the history of the franchise, the receptionist smiles and says “hello.”
11 a.m.: Paging through a Colts media guide in the press workroom, it occurs to me: When Ken Behring finally calls in the trucks for the transport to Los Angeles, he ought to have the backbone to move at high noon, in the public view. The Colts never have been able to live down their surreptitious midnight flight to Indianapolis.
12:15 p.m.: Trey Junkin’s in the house. If other players are inside the Seahawks complex, they’re hiding. Not Junkin, the most quoted fourth-down long snapper in football history.
“As long as the field is 100 yards long and 53 yards wide, I don’t care where I play,” Junkin is saying. “I play for the Seattle Seahawks, and Ken Behring owns that team right now. I go where the guys who pay me tell me to go.
“I know that’s kind of a heartless thing to say, but …”
No, Trey, it’s not heartless to face a bunch of reporters and tell it like it is. Heartlessness is ditching a town with some of the most loyal fans in sports.
3 p.m.: Time for the rumored 3 o’clock announcement, which now, rumor has it, will be pushed back to 5. Still, there’s plenty of material to peruse in media guides. The Raiders guide, for instance, reveals that 11 of the past 17 games Al Davis’ team played in Los Angeles were seen by crowds of less than 50,000. The Rams were equally dismal, seven times appearing before crowds under 40,000 during their last two seasons in Anaheim.
Ken Behring might be making the mistake of a lifetime, daring to tread in the footsteps of the fools before him. There’s no guarantee the Seahawks will be dismissed with the same yawns that chased the Raiders and Raiders out of L.A., but, hey, you can always hope.
5:10 p.m.: King County Commissioner Gary Locke is on TV, saying over and over that talks with Behring were frank and candid (as opposed to, say, Frank and Ava, or Frank and Mia) and that an announcement would be made today. Locke could have been asked, “Dude, what’s your sign?” and he would’ve answered, “We had a frank and candid discussion today, but otherwise there will be no further comment until tomorrow.”
5:30 p.m.: Walking to my car, I notice a dramatic sunset framing the Seattle skyline over the water, with the mountains in the background. I think of the irony: Seattle losing football because an owner thought to turn the source of its natural landscape into a contractual loophole.
For Behring to lean on the potential of an earthquake is far beyond contemptible.
I was in San Francisco for the earthquake of 1989; I recall walking down a dark city sidewalk in terror, lost and clueless, my feet crunching shards of glass, hearing sirens wailing in the distance. Little did I know, even then, that my little moment of torment was nothing compared to those who were trapped in burning buildings and underneath collapsed freeway corridors.
To use an earthquake as a bargaining chip, Ken Behring, I have nothing else to say but this: Shame on you.