{"id":1798,"date":"2015-11-30T22:57:13","date_gmt":"2015-12-01T06:57:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pdxcite.net\/soccercityusa\/?p=1798"},"modified":"2015-11-30T23:20:05","modified_gmt":"2015-12-01T07:20:05","slug":"how-we-got-here-part-1-of-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pdxcite.net\/soccercityusa\/2015\/11\/30\/how-we-got-here-part-1-of-5\/","title":{"rendered":"How we got here, part 1 (of 5)"},"content":{"rendered":"
With the Timbers going to the MLS Cup Final this Sunday in Columbus, Ohio, I thought it would be fun to give a\u00a0rundown on how we got here. \u00a0And not just a basic rundown of the 2015 season, or even the five years in MLS, I\u00a0wanted to give a 15 year rundown of the re-emergence of the Timbers in 2001 to how they got to MLS in the first\u00a0place, and how many times the team almost didn’t continue on to the following season during that time. \u00a0It’s\u00a0been 15 seasons since that rebirth, so I’ll do three seasons per day all week:<\/div>\n

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2001:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\"oldlogo\"<\/a>It was August 31, 1999 when the announcement came out that Portland would be getting a second division A-League\u00a0team starting in 2001.<\/div>\n

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PFE lands soccer team for 2001<\/a>
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\nJim Taylor, who had helped organize the 1999 Women’s World Cup in Portland was named the General Manager, and\u00a0it was a former Seattle Sounder Bobby Howe that would be the coach of the new team.<\/p>\n

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Timbers reborn with a former Sounder<\/a>
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The team was owned by Portland Family Entertainment, managed by former Trail Blazers executive Marshall\u00a0Glickman and Mark Gardiner. \u00a0Though there was alot of big-name\u00a0signings at the beginning\u00a0of 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. \u00a0Though the Timbers did have a good season and made it to the second round of the playoffs\u00a0before falling to Hershey, things were not going smoothly at PFE. \u00a0At one point I was asked by Mark Gardiner to\u00a0take over the team’s official website during a power struggle (I turned them down, preferring to stick with my\u00a0own site), and at the end of the year, operations for PFE were transferred to The Goldklang Group, whose\u00a0investors included Bill Murray and Mike Veeck.<\/div>\n

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New team will run PGE Park and PFE<\/a><\/div>\n
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It should also be noted that the Timbers Army (then called the Cascade Rangers) had started growing from a\u00a0dozen or so at the first match to over 100 by the end of the first season, sitting in what was then called “The\u00a0Woodshed” (as section 107 was known at the time).<\/div>\n


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2002:<\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n
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\"gavin-041802\"<\/a>
Gavin WIlkinson in the 2002-2003 “hoops” kit<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

There was alot of player turnover for 2002, though the Timbers still had a good season and made the playoffs\u00a0once again, but fell to the Vancouver Whitecaps in the first round. \u00a0This was also the year the “hoops” kits\u00a0debuted.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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On November 8, 2002, Portland Family Entertainment defaulted on the deal with the city of Portland<\/a>, and before\u00a0the following season, PFE was dissolved into a smaller group of investors, though the TIAA-CREF investment\u00a0group took a big loss on the first two years of the Timbers, but the team was stable financially for another\u00a0year.<\/div>\n
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The first Timbers Army scarves appeared later that year<\/a>, and if you have one of the original 100 (I am honored\u00a0to still have one), hold on to it tight, it’s a rare item in Timbers history.<\/div>\n


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2003:<\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n
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\n
\"OLYMPUS<\/a>
Clive Charles #3 is retired<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/p>\n

The 2003 season is when the Timbers and their fans started to first feel a sense of loss. \u00a0Not just that the\u00a0Timbers missed the playoffs for the first time in their USL history, but also for the loss of one of the most\u00a0well-known and long-time devoted Timbers fans when Paula Currier died in June<\/a>. \u00a0Later that year, Timbers legend\u00a0Clive Charles lost his battle with cancer mere days before the Timbers were schedule to retire his #3 (which is\u00a0retired for the MLS Timbers as well), which they did on August 29 before a 3-0 victory over El Paso<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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At the end of the season, the city of Portland terminated the agreement with Portland Family Entertainment,\u00a0which once again meant an offseason of uncertainty.<\/div>\n
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To be continued tomorrow with 2004, 2005, and 2006…<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With the Timbers going to the MLS Cup Final this Sunday in Columbus, Ohio, I thought it would be fun to give a\u00a0rundown on how we got here. \u00a0And not just a basic rundown of the 2015 season, or even the five years in MLS, I\u00a0wanted to give a 15 year rundown of the re-emergence […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1802,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feature-stories","category-timbers-usl"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.pdxcite.net\/soccercityusa\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/3nil-10b.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pdxcite.net\/soccercityusa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pdxcite.net\/soccercityusa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pdxcite.net\/soccercityusa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pdxcite.net\/soccercityusa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pdxcite.net\/soccercityusa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1798"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/www.pdxcite.net\/soccercityusa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1806,"href":"https:\/\/www.pdxcite.net\/soccercityusa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1798\/revisions\/1806"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pdxcite.net\/soccercityusa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pdxcite.net\/soccercityusa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pdxcite.net\/soccercityusa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pdxcite.net\/soccercityusa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}