The great “What if”

Back in 2018, we launched a series called “The Great What-If,” stories that explored alternate endings to real-life sporting events: what if the SuperSonics had stayed in Seattle? What if the Spokane Indians had remained a Triple-A farm team.

On a crisp Sunday evening, almost half a century ago, nearly 6,000 people crowded into an aging structure just off Spokane’s East Sprague Avenue. Moments before 6 o’clock, they let out a full-throated roar. Turbulator, a dark bay gelding with a knobby right knee, punctuated his charge toward history with a dramatic victory in the Playfair Mile, the championship event for annual horse-racing seasons at Playfair Race Course.

Not that you need any reminders. It is the wound that won’t scab over, the acid reflux that won’t go away. In this part of the country, it’s the rebuke applicable to every folly – and requiring not a stitch of explanation.

In the annals of overhyped disappointments, the canyon fizzle holds a unique place. It had been touted for weeks in the newspapers, on television, on radio, in magazines. Evel Knievel sold the event as a celebrity-filled extravaganza. He had hired a legitimate space scientist to design a steam-powered rocket, the X-2 Skycycle.

What if Spokane hadn’t lost its Triple-A team? Maybe the timeline would have looked something like this:

It’s been 10 years since the Seattle SuperSonics left the Northwest to become the Oklahoma City (Stolen) Thunder. That’s 10 years of fans like me praying for a new NBA team and scoffing whenever ESPN shows the Spokane-like “skyline” of Oklahoma City.