Bullying can be rough, even if you’re mayor

The streets of Spokane are meaner than anyone imagined.

Why, it’s so perilous out there that our own mayor can’t even walk to City Hall without getting tongue-lashed and chest-blocked by an enraged wealthy sports czar.

“He just exploded,” says Dennis Hession of his bizarre sidewalk encounter with Bobby Brett one day late last month. “It was really unprofessional and unbelievable.”

The Main (Avenue) Event took place shortly after Hession left a meeting in a nearby building. He crossed the street and was near the Rocket Bakery, 24 W. Main, when Brett chanced by on a jog.

“How are you doing?” offered the mayor, trying to be polite.

Not very well, apparently.

During the next 10 minutes Brett attempted to give Hession several pieces of his mind.

The mayor concedes the discourse devolved into “he was just screaming at me, and I screamed back at him.”

Even so, Hession didn’t instigate this soap opera. “This is embarrassing, but it wasn’t my fault,” he says. “No matter what I did he would not respond reasonably.”

It got worse. When the mayor tried to leave, Brett set up a moving screen to block his path. Hession moved right. Brett danced left. And so on.

“He proceeded to bump me,” says Hession.

The mayor should be accessible, but probably not to this level.

Brett denies committing any mayoral bumpage. He does admit to creating what should go down in Spokane history as the Bobby Brett Bully Blockade.

“I was impeding him,” says Brett. “I had him blocked. He was trying to walk west. I was doing an impression of a wall.”

This guy deserves a long stretch in the penalty box.

That metaphor works since Brett is the most recognizable tycoon behind our Chiefs pro hockey club. Brett Sports owns the Spokane Indians baseball team as well.

(Insert game-ejection joke here.)

But neither hockey nor baseball provoked this rhubarb. This was about soccer and the artificial turf problems at Albi Stadium. I won’t bore you with minutiae. In a nutshell, unsafe turf forced Brett to cancel the Shadow soccer season. The league then revoked the Shadow franchise.

Brett says he can deal with corporate disappointments. What drove him to the public cork-popping point was Hession’s failure to return telephone calls and correspondence regarding the issue.

Hession is “a wuss because he doesn’t respond,” observes Brett. “The last time I checked, the mayor works for me.”

Looking back on the turf war, Brett says he lost his cool and was out of line. “I was right in his face. ‘Get out of my face.’ I do remember him saying that,” he adds.

There’s no guessing how long this sidewalk symposium would have lasted were it not for Ralph Harvey.

Harvey was out on a bike ride with his wife, Rebecca, and their son, Jared, when hostile voices caught their attention.

“That’s the mayor,” said a surprised Rebecca.

They watched Brett maneuver the mayor toward a parked automobile. “He had the mayor pinned against the car,” says Harvey. “That’s when I said enough is enough.”

Oh, where is the magic of instant replay when we need it?

Harvey pedaled over. He hollered at Brett to knock it off. Harvey is 6-foot-2, 250 pounds. Brett decided to knock it off.

And so the mayor went to his office. Brett went on his way.

Just thinking out loud here. But a Brett v. Hession rematch has the potential to outdraw the Zags. Plus, ticket proceeds could go to a very important and much-needed cause.

Sports Mogul Anger Management.