Blanchette: You saw Stabler play in Spokane? Apparently we all did

Not to overstate this, but when Ken Stabler passed away on Thursday, a little piece of Spokane died with him.

A little lore, a minor urban legend, a cockeyed touchstone, a mock brush with greatness, a peephole into the soul of a city off the major league pike.

Snake, we hardly knew ye. But, apparently, we knew ye enough to keep name-checking ye for nearly 50 years.

Not that it made any of the obits or bro’ eulogies that flowed in the wake of Stabler’s death at age 69, but between being booted off the team at Alabama by Bear Bryant and taking the Oakland Raiders to their first Super Bowl title, Stabler wore a football uniform right here.

This was not quite the first thing I learned upon moving to Spokane. First I had to learn that there was an afternoon paper in addition to the one that had hired me, that the most restorative morning-after breakfast in town was cooked up in a railroad car parked in the General Store lot and that the direction went in front of the house number on the return address.

Alas, all those things eventually had to be unlearned, though breakfast is still being served in Hillyard.

But the Stabler dope came right on the heels of those revelations. And kept coming. And coming.

Stabler and the Raiders on a tavern TV? “He played here, you know,” the bartender would confide.

Stabler in a Lite Beer commercial? “I saw him play at Albi,” a party guest would claim.

Stabler in the headlines for another wild-life escapade? “Did you know …?” a guy peeking over my shoulder at the diner would ask.

Ken Stabler won a Super Bowl ring, passed for 28,000 yards, appeared in a faux commercial on “Saturday Night Live” (“Thanks, Lung Brush!”), swilled and swashbuckled his way through the NFL and everyday life and – irony alert – had his own soft drink. Even without Hall of Fame admission – possibly an oversight – his fame is wide and lasting.

But in Spokane, it’s for the 15 minutes he played here.

The year was 1968, and Spokane had landed a franchise in the Continental Football League, a minor league with grandiose notions, even if the team did practice at Underhill Park sometimes. Often enough, NFL teams shipped their late cuts, low draft picks and taxi-squadders to the CFL to keep them busy.

Which is how Ken Stabler came to play for the Spokane Shockers. Yes, long before the Shock, there were the Shockers.

He’d been Oakland’s second-round draft pick, but an injured knee and the presence of Daryle Lamonica and George Blanda left him a lot of time to scout Bay Area nightlife. So in November, the Raiders flew him to Spokane.

“I remember the first day he came to practice,” said Bob Pederson, a Shockers player/coach, told The Spokesman-Review some years back. “He stayed at the Shangri-La Motel near the airport.”

(Marketing tip to Shangri-La ownership: How does the “Stabler Suite” sound?)

Tom Mitrakos has been a homebuilder in his native Pittsburgh for 30 years, but that season he was Spokane’s center. He was immediately charmed by Stabler’s easy manner, and perhaps disarmed that “he went so hard – every play, every pass.”

But when the play was over …

“We were walking off the field at Joe Albi after a series,” Mitrakos recalled, “and I turned to Kenny and said, ‘Those guys are particularly malicious.’ He smiled and said, ‘Tom, you’re always using those big words like ‘mayonnaise’ and ‘fire engine.’ ”

Maybe he wondered how a teammate could afford ten-dollar words.

“We were making $150 a game – Kenny, too,” Mitrakos said. “I remember them handing out paychecks at the Shocker office, and Kenny’s looking at his and I’m thinking how ridiculous it was, giving him $150 a game.”

He must have thought it was ridiculous, too. In his autobiography “Snake” (a Raiders helmet filled with beer and ice graced the cover), Stabler summed up his experience here in a paragraph: “(The Raiders) wanted to see how my knee would hold up under fire. It would not have held up long with the Shockers. I played one game and completed 20 passes, 17 to my teammates, almost got killed and returned to Oakland.”

His memory isn’t any worse than Spokane’s collective one. There are Stabler mythologists here who insist he played an entire season, that he was every bit the Snake who bedazzled the NFL, that he cut a swath through every downtown saloon.

In fact, he was here for 10 days. He was 10 of 29 for a dismal 71 yards in his lone start against Orange County, and 7 of 10 in relief the next week against Sacramento – both losses, both played in front of about 3,000 people, or about half as many who have told me over the years that they saw Stabler sling it around Albi.

So what does this trivial obsession say about us?

Spokane’s homegrown superstars – Rypien, Sandberg, Stockton – and other pros have been avidly tracked and suitably revered. Scads of baseball greats wore Indians uniforms and became adopted favorites. The Zags spawned cult worship.

But Ken Stabler’s drive-by somehow grew bigger – or at least more interesting – 10, 20 and even 30 years later than it ever was when it happened.

So here’s to you, Snake. Even if the memory of you stuck with us a lot longer than we stuck with you.