Revisiting an unforgettable 1979 MLB All-Star Game in Seattle’s Kingdome
SEATTLE – As the 2023 All-Star Game approaches at T-Mobile Park, tickets on the resale market are running at more than $320 to just “get in the house.”
Anything close to the field is running in the four-figure range.
This is for tickets that had face values – which are set by Major League Baseball and not the Mariners – from $250 (the cheapest for a season-ticket holder) to $600 (most expensive in the non-premium area)
When Seattle hosted its first All-Star Game on July 17, 1979, at the Kingdome, the most expensive ticket was $17 (and whatever the resale market was, you’d have to ask one of the guys hawking his tickets outside).
But many of the 58,905 in attendance got in the door for as little $7 or $10 simply by filling out an ad in a newspaper, sending it in to the Mariners, then getting their tickets in the mail.
I know this because that’s how my father, Denny, and I ended up sitting that night in aisle 303, row 25, seats nine and 10 – basically behind home plate.
We paid $10 for ours (broken down on the tickets as $9.52 estimated price, $0.48 in state tax).
For our $10 each to attend what happened to be the 50th All-Star Game – the first was held in 1933 but there were two each year from 1959-62 – we saw a night that featured:
• Appearances by two figures whose popularity/notoriety would be hard to explain today – the San Diego Chicken and Morganna the Kissing Bandit.
• Former President Gerald Ford sitting in a box seat in the front row.
• A game that featured 16 Hall of Famers, the first memorable All-Star moment by a Mariner, and one of the unique MVP performances in the game’s history.
The game was awarded to Seattle as part of the city getting an expansion team in 1977 – Seattle had been slated to host the 1975 contest when it was awarded the Pilots in 1969. But when the Pilots moved to Milwaukee, that city got the 1975 game instead.
The game arrived during a summer when it felt like Seattle had also officially arrived as a true major league sports town in every way. The Seahawks were coming off a 9-7 season in their third year, the fastest any expansion team had achieved a winning record. And just six weeks prior, the Sonics had won the NBA title.
Even the Mariners, then in their third season, were showing some minor signs of life – after going 56-104 in 1978, still the worst in franchise history, they stood 40-54 at the break with first baseman Bruce Bochte tied for fourth in the AL in average at .326.
This being a simpler time before home run derbies and red carpet shows, the All-Star Game consisted of just the game and a workout held the day before at the Kingdome that was free for anyone to attend (the Seattle Times estimated attendance at 15,000).
And there wasn’t a whole lot of pomp and circumstance beforehand – tickets announced pregame starting at 5:15 p.m. with the game at 5:35.
Fans might have enjoyed watching the taking of team pictures earlier in the day, which featured the oddity of then-Yankees star Reggie Jackson wearing a Mariners uniform. Jackson, who’d arrived on game day, had forgotten his Yankees uniform, so he donned a Seattle one for the picture (his real uniform arrived by first pitch).
Fans made the trek to the Kingdome during a 96-degree day – which was Seattle’s warmest July 17 (by 9 degrees) to that point.
As fans waited for first pitch, they could be entertained by the San Diego Chicken, who, in something that basically helped invent the sports mascot as we know it today, had initially gained fame performing at games in San Diego as a promotion for a local radio station. By 1979, he was going national and his presence at a game in that era seemed an official sign that it was somehow just a little bit bigger than usual.
In fact, the Mariners had also brought him in for their previous homestand against the Yankees and Orioles.
Not that everyone got what the big deal was about a guy in a chicken costume running around the field.
At one point in the New York series during a Seattle win, Lou Piniella – then a Yankees outfielder – tossed his glove in the direction of the chicken in frustration and afterward told reporters, “If people want to pay to see a chicken, dress up the players as chickens.”
Entertainer Danny Kaye, also part of the Mariners’ ownership group, threw out the first pitch while future Hall of Famers Steve Carlton (NL) and Nolan Ryan (AL) warmed up as starters.
The game got off to a rollicking start with the NL scoring two runs in the top of the first and then Morganna making her appearance in the bottom of the inning.
In what was, to note again, a different time and place, Morganna had come to fame for racing onto fields to plant a kiss on players, having first done so in 1971 to Pete Rose in Cincinnati on a dare.
That she planned to do so in the All-Star Game was no secret – her agent had informed various media outlets that she was in town, and the Seattle Times actually wrote two stories in the days before the game stating that she was likely to try to run on the field to kiss a player. So she did in the bottom of the first with Kansas City’s George Brett at bat. Brett, as did most players, accepted it good-naturedly while security halfheartedly dragged Morganna away – she was charged with criminal trespass (her career would last until 1999).
The game went back and forth from there when until the sixth when Seattle fans got what they’d came for – an appearance by Bochte, the third All-Star in team history.
Called in to pinch-hit with two on in the sixth with the crowd chanting, “We want Bochte,” the then-28-year-old lived up to the moment, bouncing a shot over a drawn-in infield off future Hall of Famer Gaylord Perry to drive in a run and put the AL ahead 6-5.
“I was particularly nervous,” Bochte said after the game, admitting, “I started shaking a little bit.”
When the AL held the lead into the eighth, it looked like maybe Bochte would get credit for the hit that would give AL the run it needed to snap a losing streak in the game that dated to 1971.
But then Pittsburgh outfielder Dave Parker took over.
One of the most-feared all-around players of the generation, the man nicknamed Cobra (also the title of an autobiography he released two years ago) wowed the crowd in the bottom of the seventh when his throw from right field got Boston’s Jim Rice trying to stretch a double into a triple. Parker had actually lost the ball in a Kingdome roof that was festooned with red, white and blue decorations, allowing it to drop before retrieving it and nailing Rice.
A homer by Met Lee Mazzilli in the eighth that by inches cleared the 316-foot wall in left field tied it.
And Parker then struck again.
With two outs in the bottom of the eighth and the Angels’ Brian Downing on second as the go-ahead run, Yankee Graig Nettles hit a sharp drive that bounced in front of Parker. Parker gloved it cleanly and in one motion fired to catcher Gary Carter who made a sweeping tag of a sliding Downing for the final out of the inning.
The NL then scored a run in the top of the ninth on three walks and a balk and the AL went down quietly in the bottom of the inning to give the NL a 7-6 win in what was the longest All-Star Game to date – 3 hours and 11 minutes. The MVP award went to Parker based essentially on his two throws (he also had a single and an RBI).
It was the first time in All-Star history an outfielder had two assists, and it wouldn’t happen again until 1992.
As Parker recounted in a recent phone interview, he happily carried his trophy through Sea-Tac Airport for anyone to see (back then, players flew commercial everywhere) and then sat it down in a first-class seat next to him on the flight back to Pittsburgh where the Pirates would continue their famous “We Are Family” season to win the World Series.
“You don’t forget plays like that,” said Parker, now 72. “They stick in your mind forever.”
The same could be said for those of us who were lucky to be there that day to see them.