RENTON, Wash. — Residents of the Lakeshore retirement community in Renton watched the second Seattle Mariners playoff game against the Astros surrounded by other fans and pieces of local baseball history.
Evelyn Wong said she’s not just a fan, but was the first president of the Seattle Mariners Women’s Club in the 1970s. Her fan foam finger is more than 40 years old.
Game 2 of the ALDS was a great excuse to gather for hot dogs and fun.
For resident Mary Ellen Stewart, it was a great excuse to dig out her memory book and some local newspapers that are more than 100 years old. Her dad was a multi-sport athlete at Sedro-Woolley High School and eventually focused on baseball and played for a number of teams from Bellingham to Mount Vernon.
“[He played in] all the local areas until he was attracted by more of the bigger league teams.” Stewart said.
Her father, Victor Pigg, was a pitcher who eventually played for the Seattle Indians in 1922.
Before the Mariners, there was the Seattle Rainiers and before that, the team was known as the Seattle Indians of the Pacific Coast League and played from 1919 to 1968.
The internet wasn’t around to document Pigg's impact on baseball, but some local newspaper articles boast about his talents and the local pride that came with it.
Photos, newspaper articles from the 1920s of the talented Seattle Indians pitcher Victor Pigg
One such article was written by Royal Brougham who was the sports editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer for 68 years. Fans may recognize the name because Royal Brougham is a street that runs near T-Mobile Park today.
“He and my dad were friends and those are the kinds of people who helped to put Seattle on the sports map,” Stewart said.
Brougham wrote an article about the Sedro-Woolley star making a leap to the pros.
“Pigg was the village hero at the thriving Washington town in his youth, and now that he has achieved success and fortune on the diamond, everyone in Northern Washington is pulling for him,” Brougham wrote.
Another paper detailed Pigg’s latest success on the field and on the same page was a smaller feature about the slumping Babe Ruth.
“They didn’t play together but they played at the same time and were contemporaries so that’s pretty special to me,” Stewart said.
Stewart said the internet archives don’t exactly get the details of Pigg’s career just right but she is proud that her dad was an early part of making baseball popular in Seattle. Victor Pigg was born in 1899 and would have been 122 years old today. She said her dad would be tickled to see his favorite sports taking over the town.
“His last name was Pigg," Stewart said. "Ordinarily, you would laugh at that and make fun of it, but when you’re a professional athlete…they didn’t!”
She said her dad taught her a lot about baseball and she became a fan for life.
“It’s sorta unusual that you are interviewing me during a game because the people who live here know not to bug me during a Mariners game because (laugh) it upsets me," she said. "I watch every game and I usually watch every minute.”