BURIEN, Wash. - He looms large over the Seattle sports scene.
"You're that guy!" said Lorin Sandretzky. "I get that a lot."
You could call him Seattle's biggest sports fan. "Big Lo" has been cheering on your Seattle Seahawks for 26 years now, and he's never missed a home game.
"You're with 66,000 of your closest friends." Sandretzky said. "Aw, man, it's just beautiful."
He's long been a fan of every sport. But a chance meeting with outrageous NBA star Dennis Rodman, who gave Sandretzky courtside tickets, was what first put him close to the action. He was hooked.
"It was like, wow," said Sandretzky.
He continued to score tickets from Rodman and other pro athletes he met in his job as a strip club bouncer.
Sandretzky said, "So, Front Row Lo it became."
But life has been no game, no easy victory, for Big Lo. He won hundreds of thousands of dollars in the lottery in 1998, then lost it all, and nearly lost his life, battling a flesh-eating infection.
"I've gone through about 7 different health issues," Sandretzky said.
While working in a tough part of town, Big Lo came face-to-face with death more times than he'd care to remember.
"I was shot once," he said. "I was stabbed twice."
He even witnessed a murder-suicide.
For years, substance abuse took its toll.
Sandretzky said, "Once I kicked the drugs and alcohol, sports became my drug. And, wow, it's the best drug on the planet."
These days, Big Lo isn't nearly as big as he used to be.
"In 2007 I got on a scale, saw 658.7 pounds. And it destroyed me," said Sandretzky.
He cut out the fat and the sugar, and made a goal of losing one pound every week.
"And so, here we are six years later," Sandretzky said, "I'm down 300-plus pounds."
With a life like this, he could write a book. So he did. It's called Sea-Fence!, named after his trademark noisemaker. Highlights include the time Seahawk Darrell Jackson caught a touchdown pass, then handed him the football. Yes, the Superbowl victory was huge, but a different national championship ranks as his sentimental favorite.
"It goes back to the Storm winning that championship back in 2004," Sandretzky said.
The book may be written, but the life of Seattle's Biggest Sports Fan still has chapters to go.
"Be yourself and don't be afraid to do what you want to do."
