Tag: The Seattle Times

Start Lynch, Peters for more media coverage

“The Seattle Seawolves (3-5) beat visiting Chicago 28-22.”

That was The Seattle Times print-edition coverage on Saturday morning of the Seawolves’ game Friday night.

One sentence. Six words. Four numbers, two hyphens and two parentheses.

They could have said a lot more, as perhaps the Seawolves staffer who supplied the information had done.

  • J.P. Smith earned his 100th caps, only the second to do so in Major League Rugby.
  • Seattle, who sits at the bottom of the Western Conference standings in Major League Rugby, beat the No. 1 team in the Eastern Conference.
  • That Seattle got on the scoreboard first as Rodney Iona slotted a penalty kick, the first of his 13 points he added in conversions and penalty kicks to the Seawolves’ total score.
  • That Divan Rossouw, Riekert Hattingh and Lauina Futi scored tries, all of which keeps the Seawolves closer to getting into the playoffs this coming summer.

There is a way to get more than six words in the local newspaper: Take this man off the sidelines and into the lineup. Marshawn Lynch at stand-off, at No. 8, on the wing, in the centers for a half, or until the first hydration break. Or let Marcus Peters play some defense. The crowd of reporters, columnists and photographers would strain the attendants at the entry gate.

This has been suggested to the Seawolves previously by an unnamed source. And big names, especially American football names, get coverage. Read it here: Marshawn Lynch, Marcus Peters join ownership group for Seawolves.

And read it online, where the readership is tallied to see which sports capture the most eyeballs.

Back to this blog’s beginnings: Rugby

This blog started because of rugby, and I think it is time for it to return to the great game. Maybe we can earn press credentials for the 2027 Rugby World Cup in Australia.

But for now, let’s stick with the Major League Rugby here in the USA.

Let’s start with a prediction: In the league finals in July, it will be the Seattle Seawolves against the New England Free Jacks, who won it all in 2023.

The Free Jacks might have some competition in the Eastern Conference from the New Orleans Gold, but other than that they’ll beat everybody east of the Mississippi: Chicago Hounds, Miami Sharks, who seem to think adding cheerleaders might make them winners, Old Glory DC and the Anthem Rugby Club, “a comprehensive partnership between the league, World Rugby and USA Rugby.” Not sure who thought that would turn into a competitive side.

Despite being dressed as little tin Revolutionary War soldiers, the Free Jacks play big, winning 46-13 against Anthem, not sure why anyone thought that would be a competitive side.

The Hounds win over the Sharks, 23-19, looked amateurish especially if we note the out-of-place cheerleaders.

NOLA Gold 18-6 victory over Old Glory DC showed some hope that the Gold could give the Free Jacks a tussle.

In the Western Conference, I’m all for the Seattle Seawolves. Sorry if you came to this blog for objective sports reporting. I’ve been a season ticket holder since the beginning. I wrote some stories on the Seawolves for The Seattle Times, but I have since retired (best career move ever, as Carberry, sitting across the Starfire aisle, says). There’s no cheering in the press box, but I’m not there anymore. So . . . Go, Seawolves!

About the 25-19 victory over the San Diego Legion on Saturday: Thank God for Mack Mason and Tavite Lopeti.

Mason, 28, comes to Seattle from the Austin Gilgronis, a team kicked out of the league for having a stupid name. He’s from Queensland, Australia, started playing professionally for Queensland Country in the National Rugby Championship, an Australian rugby union competition. He also played for teams in Sydney and New South Wales. If you look on the Seawolves roster you will learn that Mason plays fly half, is 5 foot 10 and weighs 185 pounds. Nothing said about his kicking. As there should be.

Saturday night he accounted for 20 of Seattle’s 25 points, kicking a conversion and six straight penalty kicks, collecting 18 points from the Bad Boy tactics of the Legion players, who also received a yellow card and a red card. Despite the Legion being down to 14 players after the yellow card, the Seawolves could not find their way to the try zone. That has to improve. Same with the red card.

I, along with many in the crowd, thought the ref could not count the Legion players, letting them play with 15 players after the red card. However, some research shows that “a red card will no longer mean a team is down to 14 players for the rest of the match. The new law will see a red-carded player reduce a team to 14 men for 20 minutes. After that time has passed, the team will be able to replace the player with someone from their bench. The red-carded player cannot return to the field and will face disciplinary action.”

So sorry, ref, for calling you a blind, mathematically deficient idiot.

But a good call on Lopeti’s try in the last two minutes of the game, which took the Seawolves from being down 19-18 to winning 25-19. The try resulted from what looked like a knock-on to me, but as Wallis (sitting next to me at Starfire) says, the ref is much closer and probably has a better view than someone sitting in the top row of the stadium. Go to The Rugby Network and view the highlights of the game (you can slow it down to 25% to see what really happened). You will see, as the ref saw, that the Legion second row knocks the ball out of the hands of a Seawolves’ back toward the SD side of the field. Lopeti charges forward, from an onside position, catching up with the ball and nothing but grass ahead of him to the goal line. Seawolves win.

Probably no pity for the San Diego Legion in the Starfire Stadium, but they are a hard luck team. Go back to the 2019 championship when they lost the shield to the Seawolves’ maul on the last play of the game. Or last year in the championship game when they lost by one point to the Free Jacks. And then a loss Saturday on Lopeti’s dash to the win. Let’s hope the Legion’s luck never changes.

Getting to the championship game in July will be tougher for the Seawolves than for the East Conference winners. The Dallas Jackals were not the joke I expected, using on a last-minute drop goal to win 32-29 over the RFC Los Angeles, who spent part of the second half with two yellow cards, reducing the on-field squad to 13 players. Is that a reflection of the way LA plays the game? Could be.

Houston SaberCats scored four tries and a win over Utah Warriors, 22-15, collecting five points in the standings to lead the Western Conference.

I don’t see any “easy” games for the Seawolves against the other five teams in the Western Conference, but coming up Saturday, March 9, at 7 p.m. look for the Miami Sharks to swim ashore. Cheerleaders, too?

Alex Tizon: “Great journalism from a great journalist”

Alex T. bookjpgBack in the 1990s, I was working as a news editor at The Seattle Times, putting commas in the right places, writing headlines and helping decide where to put things in each day’s edition. That last part was never a problem for stories by Alex Tizon.

“A Tizon story? Put it on Page 1. Photos by Alan Berner? Make it the centerpiece.”

I was reminded of that in a sad way on Thursday, Dec. 12, 2019, at the Elliott Bay Bookstore when people who knew Alex or admired him gathered to hear readings from “Invisible People,” his book of stories he had written for books, magazines and newspapers where he had worked. His work was there, but Alex was not. He died in 2017 at age 57.

His work was read by a student from Seattle University and by his younger daughter, who is a student at the University of Washington.

People who brought this book together explained their roles and why they wanted to see these stories published in a collection.

Melissa, Alex’s widow, remembered Sam Howe Verhovek, who worked with Tizon at the Los Angeles Times, coming up to her at Alex’s funeral and saying, “Don’t throw anything away. Let’s preserve his voice.”

Sam wanted future journalists to learn from the way Alex used literary techniques to tell news stories. So Sam went through what Melissa had saved, won cooperation from Atlantic magazine, the Los Angeles Times and The Seattle Times and got David Boardman, former Seattle Times executive editor, to “go to bat” for this book at Temple University Press. Boardman probably had the inside track there as he is now dean of the Klein College of Media and Communication at Temple in Philadelphia. He referred to the book as “great journalism by a great journalist.”

Several of Tizon’s co-workers and editors wrote introductions to his stories reprinted in the book. As a former news editor, I see this book is a gift to me and my memory. The problem a news editor has is trying to remember a story – no matter how good – as it flies by in the whirl of four editions a day (back then). The story is there one day, then we’re reading copy for the next day’s paper. And now, with the news running on a full 24-hour news cycle, I wonder how anyone will remember anything that happens.

But Tizon’s book reminded me of how well he could, as one of the commentators said Thursday night, take an assignment that might be a throwaway to another reporter and “find a story with anyone.”Alex T 3

I also remember that Alex still told the news. In a story he wrote about a young bride from the Philippines murdered with two others in the hallway of Seattle’s King County courthouse, he talks about the mail-order bride business, the village in the Philippines where Susana came from, her life there, her time with Timothy Blackwell, who brought her to the United States and then, outside an ugly trial to annul their marriage, shot her three times, also killing a baby she was carrying.

When terrorists attacked New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, killing more than 3,000 and injuring 6,000, Tizon teamed up with photographer Berner on a cross-America trip. The story I remember from that series was the interview with Birdella and Ollie May Wells, a daughter, 49, and mother, 74, sitting on their front porch and “talking to neighbors passing by.”

They were “raised on grits and church hymns.” Ollie May’s “face was as stretchy as a rubber band, her voice, happy as a banjo.” She referred to the terrorists as “Kamikazmi-nauts” and noticed that “much of America seemed to be thinking of God right now.”

“An airplane goin’ into a building will do that,” said Ollie May. “Praise be to Jesus,” said Birdella.

It’s an added delight to read the stories that didn’t pass over my desk at The Seattle Times and to reread those that did in a voice that needs to be preserved.