I almost saw Kurt Russell play baseball once.

Back when the Seattle Rainiers used to play at Sick’s Stadium, the minor league team he was on, the Walla Walla Islanders, were in town for a double-header. I was a big fan of The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes and Now You See Him, Now You Don’t (so this must have been 1972), and I also loved baseball, so I got my dad to take me.

He didn’t play in the first game, which went on for so long that I ended up wanting to go home before it was even over. Russell left baseball after an injury in 1973; Sick’s Stadium went the way of Russell’s baseball career, demolished in 1979.

The stadium was replaced a year or two later by a nondescript white factory-type building that housed a CSX film-processing plant. Not long after that, Kurt Russell would be housed within a nondescript white factory uniform for his co-starring role in Silkwood.

According to his bio on baseball-reference.com, the lead role in the movie Bull Durham was written with Kurt Russell in mind—but the studio wanted Kevin Costner.

I almost saw Kurt Russell play baseball in a movie once…

(23 April 2013—originally written 29 March 2013. The story originally referenced Kurt Russell’s team as the “Walla Walla Rainbows”; I’ve corrected that here.)