Former World Series winner Bill North never imagined he’d be taking in an actual NHL game after all these years.
Long before he went on to play for the three-time champion Oakland Athletics in the early 1970s, the Seattle native and Central Washington State College star kept rebuffing pals trying to get him to watch hockey by claiming the rinks were “too cold” and he was all about “warm weather” sports. Even while on MLB road trips later on, some of his teammates would try to get him to go to hockey games, and he’d take a pass.
That’s finally about to change Saturday night as North, 77, a longtime Kirkland resident now retired from a financial services career, attends his very first Kraken game at Climate Pledge Arena when the San Jose Sharks come to town.
“I can’t wait to be there,” North said. “I’m really curious to see what the speed and flow of the game is like.”
Speed and flow were what kept North in the majors for 11 seasons, most notably with the A’s where he was the starting center fielder and an American League base stealing champion during the final two seasons of Oakland’s three-peat in 1973 and 1974. He also inadvertently made history as the franchise’s first-ever designated hitter, filling in for teammate Bert Campaneris, who’d been suspended the first week of the 1973 season after throwing his bat at pitcher Lerrin LaGrow during the 1972 American League Championship Series.
“I even got a hit,” North said. “Not my first time up, but in that first game.”
He actually got two hits that day and remained the DH until June.
North also gained national notoriety during the 1974 regular season when he got into a fistfight with A’s star Reggie Jackson in the visitors’ clubhouse at Tiger Stadium in Detroit. The “Swingin’ A’s” back then were famous for winning despite player squabbles and the team collectively despising owner Charles Finley.
But the fight involving North – there were actually two separate clubhouse skirmishes minutes apart — was arguably the most publicized fracas, in which Jackson reportedly got the worst of the exchange while catcher Ray Fosse later missed three months with a herniated disc in his neck suffered from trying to break it up. Nonetheless, the A’s went on to win a third straight championship, and North and Jackson eventually patched things up and remained friends.
“I talked to him just the other day,” North said. “Everybody made a big deal of it because we fought. But every team I was ever on fought. Fighting is just what they do. It’s about personalities. You can’t have 25 guys all getting along with egos and what have you. They tell you when you first get into baseball to leave your letterman’s jacket at home. Because everyone’s a star.”
North was the AL stolen base leader that season with 54. He’d managed the same total the prior year but lost the steals crown by one to Tommy Harper after an injury caused him to miss several late games. In 1976, he was again the league’s stolen base champ with 75, ahead of the A’s trading him to the Los Angeles Dodgers, where he got back to the World Series in 1978 but lost to Jackson and the New York Yankees.
North is proud of what he was able to accomplish. Especially since he’d been blinded in one eye as an 18-year-old playing summer league baseball when the opposing pitcher attempted a pickoff move to second base.
“I go diving back into the bag and I can still see that baseball coming right for my face and – pow!” North said.
Given there was no Internet in those days, word of his sight impairment didn’t spread. The Chicago Cubs certainly didn’t know about it in 1969 when they drafted North out of Central Washington after he hit .443 that season and went on to win NAIA First Team All-American Honors.
“I didn’t talk about my eye for 50 years,” North said. “It was only six or seven years ago that I started talking about my eye again.”
Growing up in Seattle, he’d never been the best player on his baseball teams. The Garfield High graduate had gone to Central Washington primarily for basketball before his speed and skill were maximized on the baseball field as well.
North appeared in 1,163 major league games, finishing his career with the San Francisco Giants from 1979-81. That Giants stint is how North eventually found himself going to a Kraken game.
A senior employee with the Sharks had grown up a Giants fan and interviewed North as part of a “non-hockey side project” he’s been putting together on members of those prior teams. With the Sharks playing the Kraken on Saturday, that employee – in town with the team – decided to repay North for his time and asked whether he’d be interested in attending the game and later arranged tickets for him and three friends.
“I’m really excited to see what it’s like, especially the fan energy,” North said. “I’ve heard it’s supposed to be very good.”
North moved back to Seattle from the Bay Area in 1991 with his wife, Pamela, whom he met shortly after the Cubs drafted him. In 1993, he completed a degree in sociology, which he’d started working on before pro ball, and two years after that, he was working in financial services.
These days, he spends his time working on his North Legacy Foundation, which recently revised its focus to devote resources to helping children with special needs. He’d started the foundation to honor the legacy of his mother, Frances, who died in 2017 at age 97.
In 1952, she’d been “a fashion maven” and the first Black woman to work the floor at Nordstrom.
The foundation, therefore, initially focused on helping students interested in fashion design. More recently, influenced by the experiences of friends – including former Mariners player and broadcaster Bill Krueger, who has a daughter with autism — North shifted that focus to special needs children.
“This is just something that God gave me to do,” North said. “I’ve always been into helping little kids. This is a new realm for me, a new part of my life. Baseball was one of my realms, and now this is another.”
And so is, apparently, going to hockey games.
North got a sneak preview of what’s in store Saturday when he attended the Sharks’ practice on Friday afternoon at Kraken Community Iceplex. He and a buddy watched the Sharks through their paces and marveled at their speed on skates.
“They all look like teenagers from here,” he said.
Informed that some of them, including Sharks star Macklin Celebrini, are indeed still teens, North laughed.
“There you go,” he said. “You learn something new.”
And he hopes to learn a few new things about hockey and the Kraken by the time Saturday is done.
“You’re never too old to try something new,” he said. “The team hasn’t been around very long, so I’m hoping this is something I’ll want to keep on doing.”
