Welcome to the first installment in a three-part series examining the 1918 influenza pandemic and Seattle baseball.
They waited for three weeks.
Seattle Mayor Ole Hanson was stubbornly sticking with his “flu ban” despite news from placating government officials that the epidemic was on the downswing, and the colder weather would kill it off for good.
Four days before the championship game, government officials banned all large gatherings, including those outdoors. Seattle’s baseball fans settled in to wait for the J.F. Duthie and Patterson-MacDonald shipyard nines to play for the championship of the Puget Sound Shipyard League.