🌤️ Tacoma Weather

📆 Tacoma Area Events

⚾From Brooklyn to Cheney Stadium, Chester Rito Still Loves the Game

👮‍♂️WSP: Two Die in Saturday Night Motorcycle Crash in Tacoma

🍷Proctor’s Summer Calendar Kicks Off With First-Ever Wine Walk

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Washington isn’t just a state — it’s a weather system, a coffee order, a ferry schedule, a mountain view, and a traffic backup all happening at the same time.

It’s a place where breakfast is coffee and rain, “a quick drive” depends entirely on whether a bridge is up, a pass is closed, or a ferry is running late, and everyone has at least one strong opinion about the best teriyaki spot, the best trail, and whether that mountain is actually “out” today.

It’s salmon, apples, cherries, farm stands, seafood, craft beer, misty beaches, wide open wheat fields, and enough roundabouts to make your GPS question its life choices. It’s watching for orcas, eagles, elk, deer, and the occasional Bigfoot — though, honestly, Bigfoot may be easier to spot than an open parking space at a popular trailhead.

Washington is two states in one: drizzle and evergreens on the west side, sunshine and wineries on the east side. It’s volcanoes that are beautiful, dramatic, and technically still active; ferries that are scenic until you’re in line; and people who bring either hiking boots or a laptop depending on the day.

It’s quirky. It’s damp. It’s caffeinated. It’s ridiculously beautiful.

…and somehow, everyone still forgets how to drive in the rain. 🌲☕🌧️🗻🚗

At Cheney Stadium, one of the Tacoma Rainiers’ best-known personalities is not on the field. He is behind home plate.

Chester Rito, an 81-year-old usher known by many fans as the “Bard of Cheney Stadium,” has become a fixture at Rainiers games thanks to his love of baseball, his endless stories, and his ability to make fans feel like they are part of something bigger than just a night at the ballpark. Rito grew up in Brooklyn watching Jackie Robinson and the Dodgers at Ebbets Field before eventually moving west and settling in the Tacoma area in the late 1970s.

After retiring from a long career selling furniture, Rito found his second act with the Rainiers in 2010. Technically, his job is to help fans find their seats and keep order in the section behind home plate. But anyone who has spent time near him knows the job has become much more than that. Rito shares baseball history, old stories, vintage newspapers, baseball cards, and the kind of small surprises that turn a game into a memory.

His stories can range from the Brooklyn Dodgers to the origin of foul balls as souvenirs, from old World Series legends to the little quirks that make baseball feel timeless. For Rito, Cheney Stadium is more than a workplace. It is a community — a place where CEOs, plumbers, teachers, kids, longtime fans, and first-time visitors can all sit together for a few hours and focus on the same game.

And Rito does not sound ready to stop anytime soon. He says baseball keeps him young, keeps him connected, and gives him a reason to keep sharing the game he has loved for more than 70 years. For Tacoma fans, that makes him more than an usher. He is part of the Cheney Stadium experience.

If you’d like to read more about Chester Rito, here are two great articles:

Two people were killed Saturday night in a motorcycle crash near downtown Tacoma, according to the Washington State Patrol.

The News Tribune reports that a man and woman, both 39, were traveling north on SR 509 from Pacific Avenue around 8:20 p.m. when the motorcycle crashed into a barrier and came to rest in the second lane of three. Both riders died at the scene.

The roadway was closed for more than three hours while troopers investigated the crash. The two people killed had not yet been publicly identified as of the report.

The Proctor District has announced its summer event schedule, with four neighborhood events planned over the next several weeks.

The lineup begins this Saturday with Proctor’s first-ever Wine Walk, running from 2 to 6 p.m. Organizers say only a few tickets remain. That will be followed by the annual Sidewalk Sale from July 17–19, giving shoppers a chance to find deals at their favorite Proctor businesses.

August brings two more neighborhood favorites: Arts Fest on August 1 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., followed by Food Fest on August 23 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Between wine, shopping, art, and food, Proctor is giving Tacoma plenty of reasons to spend a summer afternoon in the district.

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