Mark Tye Turner Resurrects Our Seahawks-Heavy Childhood
We know it's Mark Tye Turner, author of Notes From a 12 Man: A Truly Biased History of the Seattle Seahawks, because he's rocking a Dick's shirt. Only an old-school Seattle person could've written this book. And only old-school Seattle people rock Dick's shirts.
(As a child, it was our long-held dream to work at Dick's. In this economy, our dream may yet come true).
Turner, a television writer and producer who lives in L.A. now, has bestowed a wonderful gift on old-school Seattleites of a certain age by resurrecting many happy memories of the 1970s and 80s Seahawks in his book. "My goal was to bring people back," Mark tells me. "Like a sports time machine."
(As a child, we remembered our locker combination by which number corresponded to the jersey number of which mid-80s Seahawk. "33-10-20" we'd remember as "Dan Doornink-Jim Zorn-Terry Taylor." We still sometimes use this method to remember girlfriends' birthdays.)
Our idea is that Mark and us will sit and watch old Seahawks game footage on YouTube. What we don't account for is that this will bore to catatonia the two female Sasquatch Books publicists who've been dispatched to keep an eye on us.
(As a child, we worried far less about keeping females entertained.)
The publicists excuse themselves, and we are ready for some football. The game--the 1987 Seahawks' wild-card playoff against Houston. If you are old-school Seattle, you know the game and are already groaning.
(As a child, our sixth-grade home room teacher Ms. Merriman began class the day after this game with a long diatribe against the instant-replay officials who had failed to rule Fredd Young's interception a legal catch.)
Mark moved down to L.A. during this very football season. "Pre-internet, pre-Sunday Ticket," he remembers with a shudder. To get his Seahawks fix, he haunted dingy L.A. bars, usually the only Seahawk fan among a sea of Giants or Cowboys adherents. "I'd end up sitting in a corner, looking up at some small monitor," he says.
(As a child, we watched all Seahawks games on our family's 17-inch Sony Trinitron. If you asked us to watch a live game on a 17-inch TV now, we would spit in your face.)
The grainy YouTube video we're watching on the Seattlest 13-inch MacBook turns out to be less a game and more a collection of Brian Bosworth highlights. In one, Bosworth comes to the sideline with a giant tear in his jersey and begins to rip it off. Mark comments: "Look at the equipment guy! He's like 'Brian, hold on, we don't have another jersey, don't'... And then look at the guy's face when he rips it off! He looks devastated." You had to be there, but it's very funny. Turner brings this approach to the book. It's not just about what happened on the field, it's about the quirks of the players, the coaches, the organization as a whole. It's this type of stuff that binds fans together, and makes the book come alive.
(As a child, we got a "Boz flattop" at the Fantastic Sam's at Oak Tree Shopping Center. As a pale child with a small, misshapen head, you could not design a worse hairstyle for us. We feel that as a matter of professional pride, the hairstylist should have refused our request. For this reason, we have never returned to Fantastic Sam's.)
For example: In recounting the Seahawks' memorable 37-0 ass-housing of the Raiders in 1986, Turner recalls a typical gaffe from announcer Frank Gifford:
The network displays a graphic showing Raider quarterbacks (Jim) Plunkett and Marc Wilson have had identical starting records since 1981. Announcer Frank Gifford, known to occasionally fumble with his mouth, wonders aloud if you call that "charisma." (My friend Richie and I crack up over this Giff goof. We thought maybe he was thinking of the world "karma," but that doesn't make sense either. To this day, I can't figure out what Gifford meant.).Turner's book is packed with these specific and funny Seahawks moments. Some of them we remembered, some of them we'd forgotten, some of them (especially the pre-1983 stuff) we'd never known. It's a book that will sit on our bookshelf probably until we die, ready to supply a quick trip down memory lane whenever we desire it.
