It seems right with the cosmos that a guy would buy, on the cusp of spring, 2004, a secondhand copy of "Ball Four" at Jackson Street Books.
For the benefit of the uninitiated, "Ball Four" is Jim Bouton's story of his life in baseball, as told in the form of a diary he kept during the 1969 season, when the former New York Yankee pitcher and World Series hero found himself, at age 30 and relying on the knuckleball to preserve what was left of his pitching arm, playing for the expansion Seattle Pilots before shipping off to the Houston Astros.
For those of us who lived in Rainier Valley back then, especially for those of us who were of an age when gaining admission to Sick's Stadium without benefit of a ticket presented as irresistible a challenge as a 50-cent piece balanced precariously on the edge of a storm-sewer grating, Bouton's book is required reading. His story is the lasting shrine to that one season when our neighborhood had its own major league team. It's certainly the most well-known artifact of the ball club that has become, for most, little more than a footnote in baseball history.
Dan Domike, baseball fan, was young back then, too, but he didn't live in Seattle. But he moved here before the old ballpark was torn down, so he at least has that memory.
Domike's fanaticism is reflected in the bookstore he and his wife Tammy opened back in February.
"One of my great loves is baseball, so we have a baseball section," he said. "And we try to feature books that reflect the community. We have books written in Spanish and an African American section."
It's a general bookstore, though, with new and used inventory and enough variety that there is something there for just about everybody who would just as soon read a book as watch TV. And, as in every good store with used books, a person can find plenty of good titles there, books that will set him back less than the cost of a fancy cup of coffee at the Starbuck's across the street. And, like most good bookstores, it has comfortable places to plop down and read a few pages, and its own signature elements, including a pair of zebra finches and the Wednesday night Stitch-n-Bitch, which is, as its name suggests, a setting for knitting and bemoaning all that is wrong with the world. Tammy hosts.
"We have a few refreshments, but mostly people knit and bitch," Dan said. "It's been only women so far, but we're not exclusive."
There used to be, not so long ago, more places like Jackson Street Books. The decline of the small, independent bookstore has been blamed on the big chains (and their buying power), on the Internet retailers (likewise), on escalating rents and online publishing and any number of other factors. But some stores hang in there, some even thrive, and, every now and then, a new one opens.
To make a go of it, though, it would appear that a shopkeeper would have to love books and, at minimum, like being in the store. The hours are long and the road to riches runs through a different county.
Dan and Tammy Domike appear to fit the profile, though. She works at Seattle Mystery Bookshop downtown, where she has been for 12 years. He has been in the business essentially all his adult life. For the past 17 years, before opening Jackson Street Books, Dan was the general books buyer (everything except textbooks) at the Seattle University bookstore.
"When I decided to leave Seattle University, I thought, I'm 53, I'm too young to retire, I've been in the book business for 30 years and I really don't know how to do anything else," he said. "My wife and I acquired a lot of books over the years, so we thought we would give it a try ... I like dealing with the public-seeing what they're doing, seeing what they're reading. I enjoy retail."
So that's where the secondhand inventory came from. As for the new, "A lot of our friends are sales reps for the publishers," Tammy said, "and they've been very generous."
The shop is in Promenade 23, on the south side of Jackson Street, between the drycleaners and the city's Neighborhood Service Center. The space has no street frontage, and if it weren't for a sandwich board sign out by the parking lot, a person would have to walk right by the place to know it is there.
Dan and Tammy and their 15-year-old son Tony, a student at Nova, have lived in the neighborhood, five blocks or so away, for more than a dozen years.
"We did consider 12th Avenue, over by Seattle U, but in this neighborhood there was no bookstore nearby," Dan said. "I wanted to have a space in the community where people can gather for a number of reasons-not just the Stitch-n-Bitch but book clubs and where people can gather for progressive political causes. And it's close to home. If it snows, I can walk here."
"It's a place for an exchange of information that isn't dictated by the chains," Tammy said. "We've been living here so long, and we love the neighborhood."
"And it's cool," said young Tony, in his eloquently brief way. "Kids could come in and get a good book for a book project, and we could even recommend something."
Perhaps "Ball Four" wouldn't be the first recommendation, seeing how it is full of expletives and accounts of baseball heroes behaving with all the decorum of a drunken sailor on shore leave. But that, along with its indictment of the reserve clause (the book was used to help bring an end to a practice that clearly favored club owners) is part of what made it a bestseller and an inclusion on several "best of" lists. Dan Domike could chat with you at length about all of that, and would be pleased to do so.
Just try getting that treatment at the mega-store.
Jackson Street Books is at 2301 S. Jackson St. Regular hours are 10:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday-Friday and 10:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday. Phone 324-7000.
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