With the Timbers going to the MLS Cup Final this Sunday in Columbus, Ohio, I thought it would be fun to give a rundown on how we got here. And not just a basic rundown of the 2015 season, or even the five years in MLS, I wanted to give a 15 year rundown of the re-emergence of the Timbers in 2001 to how they got to MLS in the first place, and how many times the team almost didn’t continue on to the following season during that time. It’s been 15 seasons since that rebirth, so I’ll do three seasons per day all week:
2001:
It was August 31, 1999 when the announcement came out that Portland would be getting a second division A-League team starting in 2001.
Jim Taylor, who had helped organize the 1999 Women’s World Cup in Portland was named the General Manager, and it was a former Seattle Sounder Bobby Howe that would be the coach of the new team.
The team was owned by Portland Family Entertainment, managed by former Trail Blazers executive Marshall Glickman and Mark Gardiner. Though there was alot of big-name signings at the beginning of the season, and the Timbers won their home opener 2-0 in front of a crowd of, and Timber Jim returned to be the heart of the Timbers supporters, and climb the pole at the southeast corner of the stadium during the second half. Though the Timbers did have a good season and made it to the second round of the playoffs before falling to Hershey, things were not going smoothly at PFE. At one point I was asked by Mark Gardiner to take over the team’s official website during a power struggle (I turned them down, preferring to stick with my own site), and at the end of the year, operations for PFE were transferred to The Goldklang Group, whose investors included Bill Murray and Mike Veeck.
It should also be noted that the Timbers Army (then called the Cascade Rangers) had started growing from a dozen or so at the first match to over 100 by the end of the first season, sitting in what was then called “The Woodshed” (as section 107 was known at the time).
2002:
Gavin WIlkinson in the 2002-2003 “hoops” kit
There was alot of player turnover for 2002, though the Timbers still had a good season and made the playoffs once again, but fell to the Vancouver Whitecaps in the first round. This was also the year the “hoops” kits debuted.
On November 8, 2002, Portland Family Entertainment defaulted on the deal with the city of Portland, and before the following season, PFE was dissolved into a smaller group of investors, though the TIAA-CREF investment group took a big loss on the first two years of the Timbers, but the team was stable financially for another year.
The first Timbers Army scarves appeared later that year, and if you have one of the original 100 (I am honored to still have one), hold on to it tight, it’s a rare item in Timbers history.
2003:
Clive Charles #3 is retired
The 2003 season is when the Timbers and their fans started to first feel a sense of loss. Not just that the Timbers missed the playoffs for the first time in their USL history, but also for the loss of one of the most well-known and long-time devoted Timbers fans when Paula Currier died in June. Later that year, Timbers legend Clive Charles lost his battle with cancer mere days before the Timbers were schedule to retire his #3 (which is retired for the MLS Timbers as well), which they did on August 29 before a 3-0 victory over El Paso.
At the end of the season, the city of Portland terminated the agreement with Portland Family Entertainment, which once again meant an offseason of uncertainty.
To be continued tomorrow with 2004, 2005, and 2006…
It’s hilarious you’re trying to document this period when you completely fucked the best documentation of this period by ruining the SCUSA boards despite everyone offering to take it over to maintain it.
That’s a pretty cheap shot that really hurts, since I was going to keep the board going, even after the attack on my credibility by a certain Timbers fan I won’t name and his associates that lasted way too long and did alot of damage to my reputation.
I idled the board when I did because nobody was going there anymore (everyone bolted to Twitter and Stumptown Fotty when we went to MLS) and had issues in my family that needed my attention, but it all started when my hosting provider shut it down because it was getting alot of spam traffic from China that was overloading my account transfer limits (and the server), and my account was eventually shut down, and the board was gone and their backups only went back a week when I tried to get the files. I have a (somewhat earlier) backup somewhere I haven’t been able to find, but I do feel bad about the board disappearing but feel really bad after now being called out for it. I put my heart and soul into that board and this site and would never have deleted the board deliberately.
So the attacks on me are starting again, huh? Oh well, I’ve dealt with this before and am not going to disappear, but this kind of attack is why the board disappeared in the first place.
Allison
Oh and Part 3 will be posted later today. You’ve put me on a huge guilt trip today about the loss of the message board, but there was alot that happened in 2012 that was out of my control and unfortunately they shut me down while I wasn’t paying attention. It was a perfect storm that only recently am I getting past.
But thanks for putting a huge damper on me during MLS Cup finals week. If you don’t like what I write, nobody is forcing you to read it.
It was August 31, 1999 when the announcement came out that Portland would be getting a second division A-League team starting in 2001.
It’s hilarious you’re trying to document this period when you completely fucked the best documentation of this period by ruining the SCUSA boards despite everyone offering to take it over to maintain it.
That’s a pretty cheap shot that really hurts, since I was going to keep the board going, even after the attack on my credibility by a certain Timbers fan I won’t name and his associates that lasted way too long and did alot of damage to my reputation.
I idled the board when I did because nobody was going there anymore (everyone bolted to Twitter and Stumptown Fotty when we went to MLS) and had issues in my family that needed my attention, but it all started when my hosting provider shut it down because it was getting alot of spam traffic from China that was overloading my account transfer limits (and the server), and my account was eventually shut down, and the board was gone and their backups only went back a week when I tried to get the files. I have a (somewhat earlier) backup somewhere I haven’t been able to find, but I do feel bad about the board disappearing but feel really bad after now being called out for it. I put my heart and soul into that board and this site and would never have deleted the board deliberately.
So the attacks on me are starting again, huh? Oh well, I’ve dealt with this before and am not going to disappear, but this kind of attack is why the board disappeared in the first place.
Allison
Oh and Part 3 will be posted later today. You’ve put me on a huge guilt trip today about the loss of the message board, but there was alot that happened in 2012 that was out of my control and unfortunately they shut me down while I wasn’t paying attention. It was a perfect storm that only recently am I getting past.
But thanks for putting a huge damper on me during MLS Cup finals week. If you don’t like what I write, nobody is forcing you to read it.