The NFL side Seattle Seahawks will be dancing to a new tune next season. A source has leaked to Prost Amerika that the Perry Como classic “the Bluest Skies” will be played on the public address system as their players enter the playing field.
The song has already become popular with Sounders FC fans who sing it at or near the start of every half. Como’s classic was the theme for the 1968–1970 television show Here Come the Brides. Written by Ernie Sheldon, Jack Keller, Hugo Montenegro, the song also appears on the 2016 reissue of the Game Theory album The Big Shot Chronicles but is more famous for its inclusion in the landmark Como album, Essential 60’s Singles Collection. It is a tribute to the permanently sunny climate in the Emerald City.
The “Bluest Skies” whose lyrics also proudly exclaims the natural beauties of the Puget Sound area is known to be loved by the Sounders Front Office especially native Seattleite and Majority Owner Adrian Hanauer. However, he is bizarrely not involved in the story of how the SeaHawks, who are normally known for despising anything to do with the Sounders, got on board.
The SeaHawks won their own version of MLS Cup in 2013. They finished the following Cup Final however deflated as they were beaten by FIFA Fair Play experts, the New England Patriots led by Greg Brady.
They were so much a one man team that his fame caused the Patriots side to be known as the Brady Bunch, which later became another hit tv show, about the children of a White Christian all American white family dealing with the troubles caused when their children discovered shagging.
That 2013 trophy however still made the SeaHawks the most successful sports franchise in the Emerald City and after winning their only Heisman Trophy in 2013, they soon told the Sounders to “go fish yonder” or words to that effect, so they could focus on more important matters like fleecing their fans.
This move left Sounders FC hurriedly seeking new staff who knew something about soccer to replace the departing ones who really didn’t.
That beguiling Wright normally smile reserved for journalists hides a machiavellian mind
Nonetheless, some contacts remained between the two franchises at the Executive level and nothing could part the firm friendship between Paul Allen who owns the parts of Seattle that Bill Gates doesn’t, and Sounders Emeritus Senior Vice President of Operations Gary Wright, whose title may indeed be longer than he is.
Wright is an absolute legend in American sports business pantheon of greats.
He built the SeaHawks franchise in the mid 70s and is widely credited as being the best sports executive in United States history, apart form Bart Wiley obviously.
It seems that he and Allen were drinking shots on one of Hanauer’s yachts one day, and Allen was doing a lot of bragging about Sounders’ lack of Superbowls compared to the Seahawks, who by then had amassed a series of championship.
Wright who is generally smarter than whoever he’s talking to eventually had enough of Allen’s Jagermeister fueled bragging and a bet was made; a bet that has ramifications to this day because billionaire Allen still hasn’t paid him the $5.
Pleased as punch with himself, Allen blurted out, “the day you apple kickers win the Apple Cup or whatever your Superbowl is called, we’ll do any of your foreign commie soccer pinko things at one of our games.”
The bet was on. And the wheels in Wright’s head were turning.
He had a secret weapon. He knew something Paul Allen didn’t. He knew that Real Salt Lake General Manager Garth Lagerwey’s contract was up in 2014 and that Sounders would immediately drag “the best General Manager in the goddam fucking league”, as Lagerwey calls himself when he’s shaving, out of Utah to somewhere closer to the 21st century.
The best goddam General Manager in MLS
Photo: Alex Caulfield (Sounders FC)
Wright knew that Lagerwey would win Sounders MLS Cup inside two years and then invent time travel thereafter so Portland wouldn’t have won it first. Probably.
But Wright still had a problem.
How, he schemed, how to fix the final great roadblock to Sounders’ glory? It is then that he turned to Allen’s own experience and knowledge to defeat the Vulcan Emperor who was totally unsuspecting of the ambush, and a little bit hammered.
“Paul,” Wright asked with those innocent eyes he usually reserves for journalists, “theoretically what would be the best way to get rid of a majority owner who was a complete pain in the ass, knew fuck all, and overrode the sensible decisions the clever chaps made?”
Two years later Joe Roth was gone. Sounders won the World Cup and the incorrigible Wright had won his bet.
Although he could have made revolutionary demands like insist players use their feet to propel the ball at a sport misleadingly called football or make them play without pads against an opponent like Osvaldo Alonso like real men, he opted for something musical.
So although the SeaHawks play in the winter where it’s 90% guaranteed to be pissing down, they will run out to the sound of Perry Como when they open their season against the Philadelphia Beagles.
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