Mount St. Helens Erupts and Postpones a Mariners Game

On May 18, 1980, Mount St. Helens erupted in southwestern Washington with a lateral blast that killed 57 people, flattened 230 square miles of forest, and sent an ash plume 80,000 feet into the atmosphere. The Seattle Mariners were on the road in Chicago that day, losing 6-5 to the White Sox. Their Triple-A affiliate in Spokane had games postponed by the ashfall, but the big-league club played on.

The eruption happened at 8:32 a.m. Pacific time. Within hours, volcanic ash began falling across eastern Washington and into Idaho and Montana. Seattle itself, 100 miles north of the volcano, was largely spared the heaviest ashfall thanks to wind patterns pushing the plume eastward. But the uncertainty of the day made playing a baseball game impossible. Roads were closed. Air traffic stopped. Nobody knew whether the eruption was over or just beginning.

The Mariners were in their fourth year of existence and had never posted a winning record. The Kingdome, their enclosed concrete dome in downtown Seattle, sat roughly 100 miles north of the volcano. The franchise would not have a winning season until 1991. In May 1980, the team was already well below .500, managed by Darrell Johnson, and drawing modest crowds to the enclosed concrete dome where they played their home games.

The eruption's baseball impact was felt most in the minor leagues, where teams across the Pacific Northwest lost games to ashfall and travel disruptions. The Kingdome had no windows and was largely shielded from the fallout, and Seattle's wind patterns pushed the heaviest ash eastward. The Mariners returned home to the Kingdome the following day. Mount St. Helens continued erupting intermittently for years. The volcano remains active. The Mariners still have not won a World Series.