The History of the Seattle Mariners: Supercut Edition

The story of the Seattle sailors is extraordinarily strange and takes a long time to tell, so let's not waste time. This story begins the only way it could have begun with 140 acts of arson. Robert Bruce Driscoll, seen here in handcuffs after finally being caught in 1935 was a transient who had struggled to find work in the wake of the great depression, this sarah engendered hatred of the rich and capitalism in general in many people, including Driscoll in the New Deal of the 1930s, while those in power were busy trying to improvise. together, a kinder kind of capitalism, driscoll took a more direct approach by setting things on fire, one official described him as, quote, the most dangerous arsonist ever known on the pacific coast, over the course of several years he destroyed property worth of at least 18 million dollars in Today's money indiscriminately burned factories, sawmills, churches and a baseball stadium.

Doug Dale Field was a small but adequate stadium that served as the home of the minor league Seattle Indians late on the night of July 4, 1932. Driscoll collected some used game programs lying around. He to set fire to the stands retreated to a nearby hill and watched everything burn when he did so, the team was forced to move to the civic stadium. What you need to know about the civic stadium is that you can't actually call it a field because the term field implies grass, the civic stadium did not have the playing area it was almost completely dirt, it was described as a mud hole, all hated, attendance was sinking and the Indians were in serious financial trouble, the person who kept the team in Seattle was Emile.

He sickened a local beer magnate who bought the team in 1937 and renamed it the Seattle Rainiers. Among the promises he kept was the construction of a new stadium built right on top of the burned-out Dugdale field; was described as one of the best in the world. the continent, in other words, was a sixth stadium, they called it a sick stadium, fast forward now to the 1960s, when major league baseball is playing musical chairs in American cities, it's the perfect time for Seattle to try to attract a important sports team and thank you. part of our arsonist friend the sixth stadium is there to serve as bait the cleveland indians the milwaukee braves and the kansas city athletics all express interest but plans to expand the stadium to major league capacity fail and the Discussions stalemate those from Kansas City end up moving to Oakland, instead, which greatly angers a very important person, Missouri Senator Stuart Symington is furious about losing AIDS and demands that the American League return to put a team in kc as soon as possible in 1960, he lost the democratic presidential primary to jfk and it has been alleged that kennedy was ready to choose symington as his running mate until lyndon johnson again allegedly blackmailed him into the position, be it Whatever the case, Symington finally gets a consolation prize at the Kansas City Royalty Foundation after Symington threatened to push legislation that would jeopardize major baseball's precious antitrust exemption, which essentially allowed it to operate as monopoly, this could have cost MLB tons of money, so they relented and the Royals were born now that the Royals were scheduled to begin play in 1971.

Since the American league wanted to expand in The couples were granted a second franchise expansion plan for Seattle with the estimate that three years and changes was enough time to renovate the sixth stadium and turn it into a major league park, but Symington raised hell: he didn't want to wait three years for the Kansas City Royals, he wanted them. Now desperate to escape his wrath, the beer owners met in the middle of the night and moved forward two years on opening day for royalty and the same applies to Seattle's new team in the strangest way ever: an arsonist serial needed the construction of a new stadium that decades later served as the negotiating ship necessary for Seattle to get a major league baseball team.

In 1969, the Seattle Pilots were born. The pilots are gone, so after their maiden voyage in the Pacific Northwest, the pilots took off and headed east to Milwaukee to become the brewers, which is completely stupid and almost unprecedented in the major four American professional sports leagues, but not completely unprecedented and, in fact, ironically, the only other case in which an MLB team was formed and left its original city after a single year also involved an organization known as the Brewers Milwaukee were the worst team in MLB, they struggled to attract fans and incurred huge debts, so they were sold for 40 grand and moved to Saint Louis for a while before finally establishing themselves as the Baltimore Orioles in the Professional football the Chargers spent their debut season in Los Angeles in 1960 and simply failed to generate enough fan interest as the Coliseum was usually 90 percent empty for their games when San Diego swooped in and offered a temporary venue for play for free the chargers packed their bags and headed two hours south to forever put aside the issue of no one in los angeles caring about them meanwhile, the dallas texans won a championship in just their third year of existence in 1962, but they hated sharing a market with the cowboys so much that they immediately fled to kansas city and renamed themselves bosses, the closest anyone came in the NBA was when the team now known as the Washington Wizards began its early years in Chicago before moving to Baltimore and adopting the Bullets nickname, while the Rockets only spent four years in San Diego before becoming shoddy. attendance resulted in a sale that took place in Houston in 1971 and which, given its astronomical name, could have been called from the first day the Tri-Cities Blackhawks moved to Milwaukee after two years in the NBA, but have been around for some years before.

In a league known as the NBL and in the NHL after just two seasons, the Kansas City Scouts were losing money, leading them to sail away and move to Colorado before eventually becoming the New Jersey Devils, for What the Seattle Pilots became the Milwaukee Brewers and joined only the Chargers. and the milwaukee brewers as truly changing markets after their initial season, they were the last to do so and now, after more than half a century, it's hard to imagine that they won't stay that way forever the reason they left really wasn't that complicated as a sixth stadium in a minor league park was fine if they had enough time to prepare, they probably could have turned it into a functional major league stadium, they didn't have enough time and the sick stadium was an absolute hell thanks to the impatience of the Senator Symington and a During the harsh winter, the renovation project failed.

They had managed to get some bleachers together, but builders were still struggling to put them together on opening day. Fans were lining up waiting to get in and once they finished building a row of bleachers, they bled some more. Those passing through the visiting press box had an obstructed view of left field and every time they hit a ball there, the announcers had to turn around and watch the game through a mirror. There was nowhere for the photographers to set up, so they had to take all the photos while sitting. high on the roof of the grandstand, which probably explains why there are so few photos of the Seattle Drivers' home games, but what really caught their attention was the plumbing, which worked quite well when it accommodated a few 10,000 people over the years when it drew crowds from around. 14,000, it usually had some problems with overflow, but with its new maximum seating capacity of 25,000, the stadium became a biohazard and the entire venue completely lost water pressure.

Players had to go home or return to their hotel rooms just to take a shower. The concession workers. They couldn't wash their hands the toilets didn't work and since the toilets didn't work they had to carry portable toilets the pilot's former public relations director bill sears once recalled a story the morning after a night game a team employee walked by by John's doorman and hears banging, opens the door and runs out, a terrified man. The stadium workers had closed the doors without realizing that he had passed out inside. He had been trapped there all night. The ailing stadium was torn down just a decade later and the place where he stood. once occupied by Lowe's now out front, near the loading dock, is a small unceremonious monument to the pilots, the position of a batter propped up next to the original location of home plate, eternally watching over a flock of cars. wood, it's so obviously in everyone's way, it has to be a matter of time before some fed up employee rips it out and puts it away, but for the moment it's here and it's all that's left of the one season of the Seattle Pilots, one of the worst ideas in the

history

of Major League Baseball let's take one last moment to appreciate that this stadium is literally called Sixth Stadium and then closed the door on this chapter forever, as quickly as the Seattle Pilots arrived.

Seattle, they left, however, anticipating the arrival of the pilots, the city had in the late 60s, funds had already been allocated for a new stadium, Seattle was so determined to get a baseball team and a baseball team NFL that began building the site before the city was promised either - the kingdom was a cavernous, all-purpose indoor stadium with about three times as many seats as the sixth stadium ever had - was not faith blind, although a lawsuit first threatened in 1970 as a means of keeping baseball in Seattle had spent the entire decade stalking the American league, it finally went to court in 1976 and for the second time in 10 years, the league responded. to a lawsuit with a hefty fine and gave Seattle a new baseball team to name the team they turn to the public and solicit submissions.

The winning entry, Mariners, was submitted by a Bellevue man named Roger. smodus the team announced that in recognition of samodas they would be giving him season tickets but they couldn't find him they went to his apartment they left him messages after several weeks nothing roger smotis had gone missing so far we haven't been able to dig up any evidence that he was ever found, but thanks to him we have a word for whatever, the last 43 years have passed, this team came to us through an arson, a political force, poop baths, a lawsuit and a missing person, each team has ties and frustration.

Heartbreak, greatness and confusion, but no other team is like this. The Seattle Mariners are eminently lovable, deeply human, and incredibly outrageously strange. You may not believe it yet, but believe us when we say it. There is no more fascinating team in the entire

history

of American sports. Those Sailors started playing in 1977 and I love their first year here so much that we see their game-by-game timeline in game number five they fell to a losing record and never got back to 500 again and thanks to a late season slide they finished their first campaign with a record of 64 and 98, but my favorite part is how often they simply sat down against their opponent on nine different occasions, lost by double-digit runs when no one else in MLB that year outside of Atlanta He absorbed not even half of it. five of those nine Seattle disasters also occurred in August, meaning they accomplished in a single calendar month what 24 of the other 25 teams failed to accomplish all season long, a season that set the tone for their first decade of existence that , by the way, included 40 of those who lost at least 95 games in six of their first 10 seasons and were on track for a seventh if not for a strike that shortened the 1981 season in total they lost 924 games in that period, plus 60 more than anyone else.

The spread is an even scarier sight driven by the MLB's last five finishes and in its first 10 seasons they allowed nearly 1,400 more runs than they scored in that time, which is more than 70 percent worse than the second-worst team. Needless to say, they didn't even sniff the At the top of the standings to enter the postseason, this green bar indicates the record of the division winner that season - in other words, the number of wins the Mariners would have needed to reach the playoffs, excluding the seasonstrike, they finished with an average of 26.7 games. of playoff position every time the curtain closed on a season year after year, their September games were as significant as the human appendage, even worse, while many teams at least have some star power or reasons for excitement , the first era of sailor baseball lacked it at all.

While in none of those 10 seasons did the Mariners have a starting pitcher with an era under three, they didn't have a player hit even 30 home runs in a season until Year 9, when Gorman Thomas hit 32, the best players who had ever emerged. In their organization they were fairly anonymous names who would have been just everyday players on virtually any other team. Their best pitchers were guys like Floyd Bannister and Jim Beatty. His best bats during this time were perhaps Bruce Bachdy and, although he didn't. I didn't even peak until later, Alvin Davis, if you're familiar with them, you know they weren't exactly people who put asses in seats, if you're not familiar with them, well, they weren't exactly people who put asses in seats. the seats.

So why would anyone watch this team if you choose to appreciate sports simply in terms of winning and losing? There's nothing here for you if you want meaningful drama you're out of luck even if all you're looking for is a narrative arc of any kind sorry we're exhausted all the first sailors have to offer is a series of strange stories, most of which involve in one way or another a fraud Toward the end of the 1980 season that Mariners pitcher Rick Honeycutt had a once-promising season slipping away from him through 10 starts that year, he was one of the best pitchers in the league, he had an era of less than two and a half years, but then by the end of September, his era had actually skyrocketed to almost five in starts 11 to 29. until A ball game in Kansas City in the third inning of that one, Royals left fielder Willie Wilson hit a triple and, while standing at third base, noticed some happenings on the mound that smelled more fishy.

That a stroll through Pike Place Wilson Market prompted the umpire to check both the ball and Honeycutt's hand, sure enough, in an effort to combat his recent struggles, it was discovered that he had stuck a thumbtack against his finger. Cutting the baseball has to be one of the stupidest and most obvious ways to cheat, even in a vacuum, but Honeycut made it so much worse. Honeycutt somehow just completely forgot about the presence of said thumbtack, he rubbed his face and lacerated his forehead in the process. nearly gouging out his eye and leading to a 10-game suspension, naturally, once his playing days were over, Honeycutt would eventually have a second, long career as a pitching coach the following Mariner season, the short strike in 1981 is one of the silliest seasons.

At first it is imaginable that they are managed by Mari Wells, who has turned an excellent career as a shortstop into one of the most disastrous managerial careers in baseball history. Mari Wills was baseball's equivalent of the modern venture capitalist despite never having managed a team. baseball game, he wrote a book claiming that he and he alone was going to disrupt baseball and ensure that he would turn a last place team into a world series champion in just four years. Well you can see how everyone who has managed at least 50 games has fared has one of the worst winning percentages we have seen since World War II and among those who started their careers in the 80s and 90s it is the worst by far in terms of strategy managing a baseball team is much less complicated than coaching a football or basketball team, so what does it mean to be a bad manager?

I left the demonstration to Mari Wills, who found every way imaginable to be bad at his job, because he was always in trouble when Rick Honeycutt was kicked out of that game. After the thumbtack incident, Will said he didn't understand why he was expelled because the explanation was confusing. There's no way this was a confusing conversation. It says something like your pitcher taped a thumbtack to his finger and you're not allowed to do that. but wills never seemed to admit anything, everything was always someone else's fault, usually his players couldn't stand it and only joked when they suggested that they should start losing games on purpose so that he would get fired sooner.

Wills, it was that strange. The combination of bossy and bossy side of him would wake up his players in the middle of the night to make sure they were in bed and chase after kids who caught home runs during batting practice. The outside side of him talked about the starting players. who had been traded a month ago and was heading to the airport in the middle of a spring training game because Captain Will made so many tactical mistakes it would take another 10 minutes to go over them all, but one stands out as the most wildly stupid . idea of ​​his managerial career before a home game against the Oakland A's on April 25.

Wills pulls aside the team's outfielder and tells him to illegally paint the batter's cages for longer than the rule book specifies. He now he puts an extra foot into the field. The supposed benefit is. That one of Will's hitters, Tom Churrick, will have a little more room to step forward as he swings. The downside is that during a baseball game there is a person whose job it is to stand here and stare at the field who is known as an umpire and he has been standing here for three hours a day for many years, if something looks different he will. will recognize right away, so in Will's desperate effort to keep the sailors from getting caught for something, he 100 percent guarantees that they'll get caught for something else when they do. and he gets suspended, he says he's shocked and dumbfounded, yeah man I thought that was going to work too, sure he got fired a few weeks later, ending one of the funniest managerial stents of all time.

It's dumb, says Brad Golden, the official receiver of the sailor who, by the way, is traded. for the Yankees, shortly afterward, Golden ended up in Seattle in the first place because the Yankees traded there for a player to be named later, which is a fairly common practice in baseball. It turns out that the player who will be named later is Brad Golden, who returns to the Yankees and becomes the second player in baseball history to be traded for himself also in that '81 season. More fun things at a Yankees game Mariners Royals in the sixth inning of their May 27 affair.

KC center fielder Amos Otis hit this little dribbler all the way to the third base line. Then Seattle third baseman and part-time comedian Lenny Randall did something you don't see every day, something completely unbelievable, that's right, he got down on all fours and started huffing, puffing and blowing furiously at the ball. in an effort to foul and it worked well, sort of a three little pigs routine, he actually manipulated the ball over the plate and it was initially ruled a foul and the home plate umpire couldn't think of any specific rule against flying the ball, except for the second. consecutive year, Royals manager Jim Fry was not amused by Mariner's further ball-altering antics, expressing his displeasure to home plate umpire Larry McCoy.

Unfortunately, McCoy then changed his mind and refused to be calm and appreciate Randall's blunder, instead of awarding first base to Otis, this is something I've definitely thought about when it comes to golf, if a putt stops just short of settling on the edge of the hole. I want to see golfers bend over and blow it. Randall, for the record, claims to be innocent that he was simply yelling at the ball to go away. Oh, and a quick note about Lenny Randall, who was a pretty weak hitter in his major league baseball career after retiring in 1982, resurfaced in Italy a year later hit 502 and became the god of Italian baseball, but 1981 is not over with the Mariners.

However, just days after Randall's heroics, we see Seattle right fielder Jeff Burroughs getting knocked out at home by the Rangers. Larry Cox. Cox wears the Rangers logo. Burrows also wears the Rangers logo. Two teams with the same caps. This is probably the only time this has ever happened and I think it's cool, it always makes me cringe a little every time I see two baseball teams playing against each other because they would accomplish so much more if they were all on the same team and working together to achieve their goals, but unfortunately reality is a little more mundane.

Mariners caps, helmets and jerseys were stolen from Rangers stadium. At least they had their practice jerseys, but they had to borrow some of the Rangers' batting helmets to wear at the plate. They also launched a third team. the mix was going to the stadium gift shop and purchasing Milwaukee Brewers caps to wear on the field, choosing them because they closely resembled the Mariners' color scheme. This, of course, is because the Brewers stole Seattle's color scheme in the first place when they packed up. and he still left the city free from the oppression of being the Seattle Mariners for a night in which they won 5-3 in the standings. 1981 was another genuinely meaningless season of Seattle baseball, but it was a great year for a couple of sailors who believed Larry Anderson had languished.

In the Miners for an entire decade before pitching well and finally securing a permanent roster spot the following season he finally earned his own major league baseball card. Wow, they spelled his name wrong. 1981 was also the year that manager Renee Latchman took the reins of Mari. wills and although the sailors finished well below 500, she earned the respect of her players and they kept him on as permanent manager through 1982, this of course earned her her own baseball card. Oops, they also spelled his name wrong now both cards were from the 1982 set from the Donrest card company. I went through this entire set of 830 cards and found no misspellings of players from any other team, only sailors.

This was no coincidence even to those in the baseball business. These guys were strangers, but not to us under the latchmen. Mariner season 6 was the best, however, they had managed to carry a winning record into August, something they had never come close to achieving before, but who cares, there were more important matters at hand because for Renee Lachman this was the summer of mr. jello news of the incident hit newspapers across the country on july 4, 1982, exactly 50 years to the day robert bruce driscoll's act of destruction set in motion this endless chain of events the night before, laxman returns to his hotel suite in chicago.

It is a complete luxury suite. with two bathrooms and quite well furnished but when Lachlan enters he discovers that everything has disappeared the pictures have disappeared from the walls the furniture is missing he turns on a light nothing the light bulb has been removed Latchman stumbles in the dark to the bedroom and sits down for his bed It's not there the walls are also empty here how is it possible maybe the bathroom light works all his furniture is piled up in the bathroom he turns to look at the toilet the toilet is full of jelly he runs to the other bathroom the other bathroom is also full jelly discovers that the phone on the wall is still there he tries to call his fellow coaches and players he can hear them but they can't hear him they have taken the microphone off the phone no one can hear him he screams latchman sleeps on the floor that night the next day is dedicated to bringing the perpetrator to justice by offering a reward of hundreds of dollars for information leading to the culprit.

This week the Sailors will surpass seven games over 500, which the Sailors have never done and will never do again until 1991. But who cares if there's a mystery in the bathroom at the beginning. Lachman is suspicious of former sailor Tom Bashurik, who now plays for the nearby White Sox and lives in the area. When Pashurik provides a convincing alibi, the trail goes cold. For the rest of the season, Latchmen is teased through anonymous room service orders for plates full of Jell-O to be delivered to his suite. Who would do this to the team coach? He's surely not a player who has every incentive not to get bad, and yet when the main contributor is revealed at the end of a season, he turns out to be someone who had everything to lose Larry Anderson, one of the biggest pranksters of them all. the times of baseball history, he had managed to get the key to latchman's room and orchestrated the whole thing after finally working his way into the bigs anderson is having a terrible 1982 on the mound at the time of the incident, his era is 5.91 , bad enough to send itI go back to the miners and if that happens at 29 years old, your career is almost over, why the hell would you do it? gave latchmen more reason to send him, well listen you have to get busy with something and that something can't be baseball because baseball is really boring, let's fast forward a few years to 1985. as of july 9, the sailors were 41 years old and 40 They entered the second half of the season with a winning record, an extremely rare feat for this baseball club, they hosted Toronto that day in what was the 622nd game they had played in the second half of a season, but it was only the number 26 they entered. above 500 the previous 25 in that 82 season and, as we will see, they clearly had no idea how to behave in such unknown territory, they managed a comeback in the third inning with Phil Bradley in scoring position and less than two outs for El Freshman hitter Gorman Thomas, who got this hit to right-hander Jesse Barfield, fielded it and fired a beautiful throw in time to catch Bradley, but it resulted in a massive collision with Blue Jays catcher Buck Martinez, who broke his leg and dislocated his ankle. a friend of martínez from their three years as teammates in milwaukee tries to take advantage of that incapacity by advancing to third base martínez still noticed and was able to make a throw to third but sailed to left field where george bell picked him up and threw him a throw to the plate where Thomas was trying to complete the 360 ​​foot run around the base path and who was on the receiving end of that throw to the plate why is it the catcher who is still writhing on the ground completely and literally broken regardless that he has a job to do do martinez catches the shot and applies the tag to his friend, who fortunately took his foot off the accelerator to avoid another collision, thus the mlb's first double play 9272 was born, the sailors had done the seemingly impossible, They discovered a way to get multiple players. thrown out at home by several different outfielders on the same play, amazing stuff from the m who would lose 9-4 in the process, starting a new multi-year drought of not entering any second half games with a winning record in 1985.

Poll asked Seattle-area residents to name their favorite sailor. The vast majority responded that they did not know any. Every sailor retrospective has to find something from this era to talk about, as much as we wish we could start the story in the usually great '90s. The achievement we can think of is Gaylord Perry's 300th victory in 1982. Even then, Perry was an officer who happened to be a sailor the day he did it, but lest you doubt he was a real sailor, he would be kicked out and suspended for a couple of months later for tampering with the ball with Vaseline alongside Alvin Davis, the most recognizable player from the early years is probably Harold Reynolds, a two-time All-Star who was one of the best defensive second basemen of his era and was also known for being released. on the bases, for which you can't really blame him entirely, the Mariners used Reynolds, a very, very, very fast guy in 1988, the consequence was the most counterproductive base-stealing campaign in the last 90 years.

Here's every player who has ever been caught at least 25 times in a season, calculated as a percentage of their base-stealing attempts In the 1910s, players were going for steals with reckless abandon before everyone apparently caught on. At the same time that it was a very bad idea, about 50 years later, the robbery came. back became fashionable before everyone realized this again. The exhibit was Harold Reynolds from 1988, who was caught 29 times against only 35 successful robberies. In fact, Reynold's top search result on YouTube from his playing career is a clip of him getting sent off. It is one of the most memorable clips.

In Bo Jackson's endless highlight reel from the warning track, he completely ignores the cutoff man and fires an incredibly perfect shot at the plate after the game. Reynolds was reportedly sitting in front of a VCR watching it over and over again trying to figure out how the hell it happened. That's how it was for the Mariners back then, they were simply experiencing the baseball other teams played. They were no one's rivals. They weren't even the national laughing stock like other teams were. They just didn't register. refers to the sailors, the only really important story began on the other side of the country, in the bronx, the year is most likely 1983. the manager of the yankees is billy martin over the course of his managerial career, martin He got into a fight in a bar with one of his own players on multiple occasions.

He opened his mouth to a journalist because he didn't show him his notes. He got into a fight with a stranger in a hotel bar after insulting what the man did for a living, which was completely inappropriate. There is absolutely nothing funny about being a marshmallow. salesman, you go from city to city, you probably have a suitcase with a bunch of marshmallows, being billy martin was perhaps the most difficult person in the modern history of baseball on this particular day, as the story goes, many of the players, the children are running. around the clubhouse, but two boys in particular are singled out.

Martin sends one of the team's assistants to tell his father, the star first baseman, that his children need to be quiet. The player, naturally, takes it as an insult, as does his eldest son, who would be ready. Right now he's 13 years old and this kid will be holding a grudge against the New York Yankees for decades to come. You already know his name. Ken Griffey's son is the most beloved baseball player of the last 50 years. Fans were worried they would never make it. to be able to see a player enter the hall of fame where the sailors had his plaque, not because Junior did not enter, everyone saw it coming 20 years before, but because it was rumored that his plaque would be sculpted with the hat of he.

On the contrary, he had always used it like that, not as any kind of statement, but because he always wore his father's red hat when he was little and it kept falling on his face unless he turned it around. Junior's public image was one of a guy who, in addition to being amazing at baseball, had more fun than anyone, always laughing, starring in funny commercials, making increasingly clever and elaborate pranks on his teammates, the story of the real Ken Griffey Jr. was incompatible. With what we saw the Marines do in the 1987 junior issue, an overall draft pick signed him right out of high school and he quickly became a celebrity, taking the minors by storm and receiving an invitation to spring training with major league players in 1989.

He played so well that manager Jim Will Fieber had no choice but to start him in center. field on opening day showed us he can do everything the fever said there's nothing he can't do others agreed in his 1989 presentation the new upper deck baseball card company reserved its number one spot traditionally reserved for a superstar for a 19-year-old who had yet to appear in a single major league baseball game, he did not disappoint, wins above replacement is a metric that attempts to estimate a player's overall value to his team in terms of victories. Junior's mark of 89 was simply over three, the best baseball seen from a teenage position player in more than 60 years.

His season could have been even better had he not missed a month of action after slipping. and falling into the shower, the junior was already becoming Seattle's first great sailor in the first era. the era of the forgotten hobos rebuilding one lost season after another and a remote corner of the country ended and junior ended. Most have no idea what he went through at 17 years old. He was sent from a home in Cincinnati to play in the minors. baseball league in bellingham washington literally couldn't have sent him further from home ken senior, a three-time all-star, knew what it was like to be a baseball star, but his son's journey was something else entirely. junior had to carry enormous expectations before his 18th birthday, the pressure added to the loneliness of being so far from home weighed heavily on him.

He struggled with depression and years later he would reveal that he once made an attempt on his own life at this time at that time. and each time the eldest was there to help him navigate an experience that no one can truly be prepared for, what was once a combative relationship between the two faded away as the eldest came to recognize the burden his son carried. He sometimes said that the only privacy he has is in center field. Here is the youngest during a game in 1990 chasing a fly ball from the outfield his father is in the building watching when junior makes a classic junior move and steals the catch from the left fielder all the senior can do is laugh there he is, Griffey, 40, was teammates with his 20-year-old son, not only were the two outfield neighbors hitting next to each other in the lineup in one of baseball's best-known trivias, but they also They became the first father-son duo to hit consecutive home runs.

Sure acquiring senior status in the first place was probably a publicity stunt, but you'll hear these words from me quite often, who cares in '92, thanks to unreliable pitching, they followed up their first winning season by dipping into the red , seemingly undoing years. of positive momentum they had now finished last in the standings for the sixth time in their 16 year history for reasons we will eventually see this wasn't such a bad thing meeting jay buenoser in one of the great heists of the 1980s the sailors had fleeced the dreaded out of power yankees hitting right fielder giving up only greg phelps in return, okay so here's my chance to solve a decades old mystery for people who watched seinfeld but didn't watch baseball.

Remember the episode in which Frank Costanza. he starts yelling at george steinbrenner out of nowhere about a guy named jay buehner what the hell did you trade jpuna because you don't know what the hell you're doing and steinbrenner goes on talking about a guy named ken phelps my baseball people love ken? phelps bat they kept saying that kent felt kent phelps well this is why frank was so angry unlike griffey buner is not a 5 tool player, he doesn't steal bases hits for average nor does he feel that good, however, He is a master practitioner of blurring and blurring. is a term that buhner himself came up with and refers to the act of vomiting on signal for the purpose of causing vomiting from nearby vomiting out of sympathy why these are the

seattle

sailors we will never be able to answer why you ask when what who sure we can I'll help you with those questions, but not why Buyner demonstrated his true mastery of the craft during a game in 1992.

In right field, Buhner executed a mistake by spilling his lunch on the grass, it must have been a notable performance because when left fielder Kevin Mitchell watched from about 200 feet away, felt dizzy and started vomiting too, finally Griffey Jr watched from center field, couldn't hold it in and started vomiting. The entire Seattle Mariners field was vomiting at the same time Jay Buener had just executed the triple blur. In the middle of a baseball game when 1993 rolled around, Griffey's game reached new heights and at age 23 he was making history for being as great as he was as young as he was on July 25 after hitting a home run in each of the previous five nights.

José Mesa made him the youngest player to go deep in six straight games, then he did it again in the game, after that, then he did it again in the game after the banksters' first pitch, there it goes, until Then, I predict that Griffey has done it. tied the Major League record, holy cow, the boy has achieved it by tying the all-time record with eight consecutive games that to this day only two other players have achieved, regardless of their age, when the dust settles established in that season, he had surpassed the batting average. of 300 along with 45 home runs, all leading to the most total bases by a 23-year-old since Hank Aaron in 1957.

At the time, Griffey's career totals included 132 home runs, 1,428 total bases and 453 RBIs. , which was the most home runs in his career. His age had increased since Frank Robinson, he alone should have accumulated that many total bases more than 60 years earlier, while such a young player had not driven in more than 450 runs since Ted Williams before leaving the MLB to fight in the second war. World Cup combined with his fourth The Golden Glove, if it wasn't clear before 1993, removed all doubt that we were witnessing a once-in-a-generation talent blossoming before our eyes much like the 1981 season. 1994 was cut shortdue to a labor dispute and just like 81 94 was monumentally strange for sailors one of the most sought after records was the single season home run mark of 61 set by roger maris in 1961 in the more than three decades that followed just three boys 1965 willie mays 1977 george foster in 1990 cecil fielder was within even 10 of that number and those boys lost pace with them before the season was even half over, but in 1994 griffey, seen here in green, helped lead an army of players in search of marist in his record matt williams jeff bagwell frank thomas barry bonds and albert bell were bums running in the history books, but it felt like junior, who of course was capable of crying home run without prior notice, had the best shot, the strike ended the season in August and since then we have been left wondering: What would have happened?

I was left in a state of personal conflict. On the one hand, collective action is good and labor strikes are great. On the other hand, I was looking forward to seeing where the lines scribbled on my computer screen were going to go. The strike also denied us the opportunity to witness some of the history that was going in the opposite direction over the years. There had been seven teams at most with so much competition that the Mariners had no chance of competing, but in '94 the American league realigned and now they were. only four teams and luckily all four were garbage, the strike thankfully shortened what probably would have ended up as the worst division in baseball history.

In the end, the Rangers led the west with a record of 52 and 62, despite the Mariners. Being as bad as ever, with just a couple of games left, it was the closest they had ever been to first place at the end of a season and everyone else getting worse is what it took to get the Mariners into contention, so forget your victory. Who cares about the losing record, though. The Seattle Mariners looked like the team of the future. They now wore new uniforms with a redesigned logo and an electric blue jersey in a time when domes were still cool.

They played in the kingdom that was in the shadow of the waterfall and in the middle of a mysterious distant city whose cultural exports were computer things, nirvana and the space needle at that time I was growing up in places that I found ordinary because you always think that the place The one you live in is ordinary, it was easy to assign a mystique to this distant futuristic paradise and the superhero who lived there. After some rumors in the early '90s about a possible move to Florida, the anxiety of keeping baseball in Seattle also disappeared. in a turn of events that seems invented by an eight-year career. old a majority stake in the

mariners

was purchased by hiroshi yamauchi the president of nintendo yamauchi was a billionaire who had never attended a baseball game didn't know who ken griffey jr was and seemed to be more interested in expanding nintendo of america's footprint than actually making a profit, he wasn't prepared for how happy the sailors really made people, as he put it, it was as if the money he spent was alive throughout their history.

Seattle baseball was regularly in trouble and their only victory was simply being allowed to exist they now had a real identity they had their superstar they were the coolest team in baseball somehow things had come together it was the perfect time for things to happen collapsed while the team was warming up on July 19 four roof tiles of the kingdom fell and collapsed into the seats no one was injured, but Mariners games were immediately moved to other venues and the players' strike ensured there would be no more games of the Mariners at home for the remainder of the season.

The team's ownership group took advantage of this to demand public money for a new stadium. replace the kingdom that wasn't even 20 years old if they didn't get this funding they would probably sell the team to someone who would move it out of town there was no way this was going to happen again not now not in the minute Seattle baseball finally found relevance after all these decades, it wasn't fair that in a different, more normal world, a baseball team would build a baseball stadium and play there, and that would be like Seattle baseball having to perpetually fight just to exist, as if it were entering conflict with the order of the universe, it is determined that a special election will be held in September 1995.

The public will, in effect, decide whether an increase in the sales tax is worth keeping the Seattle Mariners, the Mariners themselves who have never made the playoffs or even finished better than third in their division have no choice but to convince the public by making their on-field arguments that they will be coached by Lou Pinella now, three years into their decade-long career. as coach of the Mariners and loved by players and fans. Likewise, Pinella had been a teammate of Ken Griffey Senior in New York and when he became manager of the Yankees, Senior was traded a couple of years later, Senior was playing for the Reds, who hired Pinella to be their manager. again and under Pinella's watch, Senior was traded again.

Regardless of the fact that Senior has always liked Pinella and Junior has too, no one in recent memory can throw a bigger theatrical tantrum than Lou, who will present his masterpiece in Cleveland in a few years in which he will enter a kind of fugue state and neither He doesn't even remember anything he said or did after arguing a call and getting thrown out of the game. He indignantly throws his hat into the field, spends another moment in the face of the empire, then turns around and kicks his hat, kicks again angrier this time and almost misses his hat completely loose, changes course after this, he kicks the hat into the shallow center and gapes. with the umpires a little more, he stomps, bends, turns his cap towards the infield and prepares for a kick, this time he kicks it more 5 kicks, 6 kicks, 7 until he returns to the ground, finally he raises his cap and leaves. but not before he tosses it into the crowd with a final flourish, a helpful Cleveland fan throws him a backhand that he seemed to appreciate after the game point, as Lou Pinella is the right man to lead this team.

The Mariners start the season 14 and 12. The night of May 26 the Orioles Kevin Bass hits one deep in right center It's the seventh inning of a regular season baseball game in May Griffey doesn't have to do what he's about to do but ken griffey jr can only be great, he has done it. has no choice, runs about 20 miles, takes off, throws himself against the wall, makes one of the most iconic catches of the 1990s and falls to the ground 10 feet away from his hat, it is estimated that the sailors who do not have done a lot in six seasons with their superstar will be without him for three months as the Mariners and California Angels battle for the division lead as the Mariners spend June trading wins and losses at an even pace, the Angels are positioning themselves for a run they will finally begin in mid-July in this span they went a remarkable 17-3 and even those three losses were squeaky, one was a one run loss, one extra inning loss and one win, those 17 wins, plus half occurred for at least five runs. the angels are beating the american league in fact up to this point in the season they have by far the best run differential in all of baseball the

mariners

up to here in plus three almost the definition of mediocre in the entire streak of angels who have not gone nowhere and now they are 13 games from the lead time is running out griffey actually returns to the field a few games early but nothing much changes california is standing firm as a rock at about 25 games over 500 and

seattle

He just stands there like a beached whale.

This is all they had done. Even now with a public vote in less than a month in the town of Seattle to impress the sailors. They had not presented any other version of themselves. It seemed as if they did not. had another version of themselves throughout their 19-year history, they have experienced one day in 10 games out of 500 approximately 24 hours in August 1991. That is, suppose they somehow recover in this very short window and arrive there again great, they are less than halfway there. there this is a team with no significant pass to speak of and in all likelihood there is no future only the present exists there is nothing to do but march whoa something terrible has happened to the california angels they are being expelled they are fighting Overall, they are starting to lose and it's easy to understand why losing nine games in a row while maintaining the division lead is pretty horrible, but this one is unlike any other in these nine games where they have been outscored by 48 runs or just over five per game, have been completely defeated.

It's true that up to this point there have been 36 nine-game streaks in baseball history that were this bad, but look who it happened to, almost all of these teams were well under 500. They were already fully cooked when the streak began. losses and, in fact, a good number of these streaks belong to some of the worst teams in the history of the game. The only team that comes close to 95 Angels are the 1957 Redlegs, who were 61 and 49 but were in fourth place and a postseason appearance was highly unlikely for them. These Angels were in first place by a large margin.

Sailing on what at first seemed too little too late the sailors finally smelled blood in the water when they wake up on the morning of September 19th they are suddenly just two games behind it's their big day that night they recover from a four-to-one deficit one to take the Rangers into extra innings in the bottom of the 11th Griffey runs into his final strike What's important to know about junior is that he's much more than just a power hitter, most pitches aren't chances of home runs, but many include some well outside the strike zone, our chance to slap one and with a man in South Los Angeles. they lose again then they watch the news and wait with most of the ballots counted for the measure to fund a new stadium Mariner keeping them that way in Seattle currently leads by a small margin but these are just the voters who showed up today about 45,000 absentee ballots They are still there and were cast some time ago by voters who had not yet seen the madness that is currently unfolding these voters have been watching these sailors the miracle sailors the votes yet to be counted are from people who know nothing more than these sailors the counting continues the next day it is announced that with nearly half a million votes counted the lead has been reduced to 300. there are still 15,000 votes to count that night the sailors come from behind again to knock off the a's 10-7 down in texas los angeles respond with another defeat this happens again and again the seattle mariners now lead the american league west if they hold on they are headed to the playoffs for the first time in their history everything happened so fast that it is disorienting the deluded los angeles destiny lost nine in a row down the stretch and held a comfortable lead, but then, after briefly recovering, they lost nine in a row again.

Losing streaks of this size have been extraordinarily rare in baseball since the Angels were founded 35 years ago. they only suffered a handful and typically during seasons when they were out of the playoff race and didn't have much to play for now at the worst possible time they suffered two in the space of a month no new results from king county votes from the 21 it's time to meet two more heroes first tino martinez just another of the sailor's seemingly endless supply of power hitters his career will be defined by memorable home runs although many of them come after he left seattle and then there's dave niehaus zero emotional investment in the sailors, but the way his longtime announcer, Dave Niehaus, would call the big moments still gave me goosebumps and whether it was his signature phrases like breaking rye bread and mustard for a big salami or just its general contagiousness. enthusiasm that made an ordinary Tuesday night in August seem like game seven of the world series.

He just had a unique way of connecting with fans and bringing the game to life. Tragically, nihaus was taken from us too soon, shortly after the 2010 season, leaving a void. That's really impossible to fill for so much time and years of misery, the only thing Mariner fans could console was knowing that they would be treated to the pure brilliance of Niehaus for three hours, night after night, starting with their first release in 1977 and Continuing for 34 years and nearly 5,300 games later, it's a wild back-and-forth game between sailors and athletics, down by a race to thebottom of the ninth, tino martinez chimes in with a man in the first listen carefully here as dave niehaus's voice fades momentarily before returning closer to the microphone here comes the pitch that Totino turned and melted deeper into right field and that It must be because he was probably spinning around in his chair.

I asked in part one why anyone would want to watch the Mariners in those early atrocious days. Well, that's your reason. regardless of the quality or lack of product presented in the field niehaus always always always provided a plus plus the transmission of bad news arrives on the 26th the measure has for the moment lost the lead but is still alive there are still around 3 000 votes left to tell after weeks of attacking each other from different parts of the country the angels finally have to drag their sorry asses to seattle and meet their conquerors in person they are defeated ten to two thanks to the home runs of griffy and jay buenoser it's their seventh back-to-back victory and the Mariners now lead the West by three games with only six to play the next day it becomes clear that the vote failed the Mariners lose to the Angels that afternoon they win their next two games against the Rangers and finish by splitting the series in Texas After being defeated 9-2 and 9-3, they left exactly enough room for the Angels to catch up and the Angels made their 144-game schedule end in a tie, it takes something major league baseball hasn't seen.

In 15 years, a special one-game playoff between the Mariners and the Angels to decide who will go to the playoffs, what's next for the Mariners and where they end up playing next year, no one can really say, but at least this is guaranteed for Seattle. . The Mariners will play one more baseball game. The last game of an absurd season will turn out to be the most absurd for one. The moment is strange. This is arguably the biggest game the Mariners have ever played, and yet first pitch is at 1 p.m. on a Monday afternoon, well at least it was the biggest story on that Monday afternoon, no it wasn't, it's time to meet Randy Johnson, who at six foot ten became the tallest player in the history of Major League Baseball when he entered the Major Leagues in 1988.

Everyone thought he had greatness in him, it showed in flashes, especially in 1990, when he threw the first no-hitter in Mariners history, but He led the league in walks three years in a row and his era stayed around four, which put him in the spot. middle of the pack and then nolan ryan came to town before a Mariner's Rangers game in 1992, Johnson ran to the future hall of famer and confessed that something about his mechanics wasn't working. Ryan said, "Try to land on the front of your foot." Your heel Randy listens and just like that, his numbers improved drastically and he was on his way to becoming one of the most accomplished pitchers baseball has ever seen.

He was also among the most intimidating. He had a 102 mile per hour fastball, but his most The devastating pitch was a 90 mile per hour slider that had so much that it looked like a fastball, it was almost unfair, he was called Mr Snappy, so with the future of the organization at stake, Seattle captain Lou Pinella had the ultimate ace. he took off his sleeve when he was able to get the ball to Johnson with a short break and it's completely clear why that seemingly risky move wasn't so risky, but in fact it was the obvious decision.

The big unit was not only the best pitcher on the team, but he was also the best in the entire American League by miles in terms of both operations allowed and the time when no one was close to him, he recorded at least 12 strikeouts in nine games, existing in its own stratosphere relative to the rest of the league on its way to fanning. nearly 300 hitters despite an abbreviated MLB season, so while Seattle had winner Saiyong running wild on the hill, the Angel's ace was sidelined with all-star Chuck Finley having thrown over a hundred pitches the previous afternoon to take him to this game, which meant that Angel's hopes rested on veteran sailor Mark Langston, whom Seattle had traded to Montreal in the deal that brought them Johnson.

The Mariners exuded confidence in a game they organized based on a coin toss. Pinella saw victory as a foregone conclusion. So did left fielder Vince Coleman and Randy was indeed an untouchable force of nature for the first six innings of this one, retiring each of the Angel's first 17 batters before his bid for perfection was dissolved by his Former roommate Langston was pretty good too, allowing just one run in six, but then things got away from him in the seventh, the Mariners loaded the bases with former Angel Luis Soho at the plate, who then hit a grounder to right. which probably should have been a final 3-I put it out, but instead first baseman jt snow flubbed snow could only watch as the ball bounced toward bird territory and under the angel's bullpen bench by the time the outfielder right-hander tim salmon dug it up two sailors had scored an unfortunate set of circumstances turned disastrous when Langston's throwing error allowed the biggest embarrassment: four runs scored on a ball that touched an infielder's glove in what has to be the first and only time in baseball history organized thanks to the fielding work of two angels who would each win gold gloves what a season it is baseball for you with the game now wide open the m could just sit back and carry to Johnson to the als title, well the Seattle Mariners are now guaranteed to exist for at least a few more days as they move forward to make their first Ever appeared in the playoffs on the 1995 Alds and if this was a play by fiction, this is exactly the way we would handle it.

Management has made it clear that if there is no deal for the stadium before the end of the month, they will sell it, which all but guarantees a move to Washington. Governor Mike Lowry begins organizing a last-ditch effort to fund a new park, but as things stand it's a long shot for one. Politicians generally hesitate to counteract another's public vote. They were less than a year away from the Republican revolution of 1994. Washington state served as ground zero as its Republican Party's spending generated more victories here than anywhere else in the country. The Mariners' on-field performance appears to be the only variable left if they make the playoffs only to be immediately eliminated. off is that enough to move the needle probably not this team that had never competed in its entire history until about a month ago has to win something five games first against three takes it and again this couldn't have been written better up to this point in the story The New York Yankees had been to the World Series 33 times and won 22 of them They were everything the Mariners weren't The Yankees They played in a historic stadium that lasted nearly a century The Mariners played in a cheaply built concrete dome which began to fall apart after 20 years the yankees were a pillar of american culture the sailors had to fight for the privilege of the existing yankees they married marilyn monroe and hung out with a pack of rats the sailors made toilet jelly and vomited because It was funny in recent times the Yankees had emerged like locusts that emerged to the surface to compete every 10 or 15 years in '94 the strike could have been the only thing that prevented them from another world series since they had the best record in the American League They decided that once again it was their time.

The Yankees were an archenemy for many, but few or none shared the animosity held by Ken Griffey Jr. The 1983 incident was not a simple misunderstanding in the clubhouse, the Griffey family had been disrespected and for Junior, a family man who preferred spending time with his wife and children to living his celebrity lifestyle, it was not an offense. forgettable in ken. In Senior's autobiography, Big Red, he wrote that Junior carried this grudge against the Yankees throughout his career and added that he played his best games against them. He was right, in fact, despite all the debut pitches the Yankees threw, one junior over the years hit better against them. than any other team seven years into his career, baseball's biggest superstar is finally in the playoffs, here's his chance to save his team's future and get revenge on another junior and the Mariners entered the Alds' first game fighting an uphill battle for headlines after sealing their playoff berth with that win over the Angels, they didn't enter New York, their third time zone in three days, until after four in the morning.

On top of that, they They were left without the services of their superstar ace at the start of the series. thanks to Johnson's heroics the day before to even get him here, but Buck Showalter's Yankees had the luxury of being able to send their best pitcher to the mound with complete rest, mid-season trade acquisition and reigning winner Al Scion , David Cohn, Cohn has been red hot. having allowed just four runs in his final 25 innings of the regular season and took an early lead with a two-run homer by Wade Boggs, but as Jon mentioned, having a star pitcher on the mound didn't matter when it came to Griffey, no. it mattered. how good any pitcher was if he wore the pinstripes, Junior was going to dish out the punishment, and sure enough, to open the next inning, he cut the deficit in half with a single, magnificent swing of the bat that sent a split finger into the shape of a cone towards the top.

Later Deck trailed by two with a man on Griffy again took a deep cone splitter to right that tied the score. He has done it again. Bye home run, but alas, the Yankees pulled away with a late inning attack on M's reliever Bobby Ayala and took the game. one by a score of nine to six for the second game, pinella gave the ball to andy bennis in a pitcher's duel against 23 year old yankee rookie andy pettit, making the first start of his mlb record 44 starts in his career postseason and took a third inning. was leading when left fielder Vince Coleman, a man who was an all-time great when it came to stealing bases but who had come into this game with just 27 home runs in his first 11 major league regular seasons, sent a ball quick 3-2 shot that rose in the opposite direction that new york right fielder paul o'neill could only watch sail over the fence to give seattle the early lead they lost for the first time when ruben sierra and don mattingly dropped the bottom of the sixth inning with consecutive home runs and although he regained the lead in a seventh inning with a sacrifice fly from griffey o'neal he hit his own blast to tie it again, needing additional innings to decide this one and a couple of minutes after wednesday turned into thursday, they sure seemed to be the sailors when griffey faced new york closer john wetland against whom, six weeks into his junior year of hitting a walk-off home run, he launched this fastball into the 12th inning in the series he drills it deep into right field towards the gap 385 my walk-off home run has done it again griffey had put seattle on the verge of tying the series in a peace game, which further validates the enormous praise heaped upon him by Mr.

October himself, Reggie Jackson, but on the Yankees' last chance at the plate, Wade Boggs walked to reach base before Jorge Past the pinch-hitter ran for him. posada's maiden trip on an mlb base path and was representing the tying run in extra innings of a playoff game pinellas summoned starting pitcher tim belcher out of the corral, who quickly gave up a ruben sierra double with two outs who took home to stay alive after failing to score in the next three innings against Mariano Rivera Belcher capped what had now broken the 24-hour record for the longest playoff game in MLB history by allowing In the 15th inning the Yankee Coucher gym ladies went home, giving the Yankees a commanding 2-0 lead by forcing the M's to win three in a row as the series moved into kingdom the morning of the third game an update from Governor Lowry arrives to the papers and it's not good the negotiations are still going nowhere the Republicans are holding a hard line no taxes for a new park and if the Mariners are unceremoniously eliminated from the playoffs, well that line is probably easier to hold .

Baseball is not like other sports. One player cannot lead his team to greatness. The best hitter can hit them all. nine times and that is why in Junior's first great seasons the Mariners were mediocre at best, that is why in hishistorically great seasons '93 and '94 one could look at his win-loss record and not even know he was there and that's why game three on October 6, 1995 could very well be the last game the Seattle Mariners played, after two games in the Bronx with a rabid Yankee fan base constantly littering the field and throwing objects at Mariners players.

Seattle was eager to return. to the kingdom and at least in the third game with their backs completely against the wall in their first home playoff game, they were able to stand on the giant shoulders of Randy Johnson, who at 95, we know, was seemingly indestructible, untouchable and automatic throughout the year for the first time. three hitless innings was more of the same until bernie williams' crushing home run in the fourth put the yankees ahead even with the m deity on the mound seemed even bleaker with johnson's counterpart in new york, another recent winner of the al cy young in jack mcdowell in absolute rhythm after having faced the minimum of 12 batters in flat innings, however, that error by williams was johnson's only real problem with seattle taking the lead again with a bomb of two runs in the fifth off the bat of tino martinez and a monster sixth inning brought the baseball world back to normal from being able to ride a shining gem of a great unit when they needed it most to a big win for the second time that week all season and maybe the entire existence of the franchise came down to Randy Johnson left arm on three days rest for the second time that week, even without his best stuff that Randy Johnson delivered, the season is still alive, but to keep it from being pulled offline, Seattle would have to win two more games starting like mere mortals as pitcher and Game 4 starter Chris Bazio.

He wasted no time showing how deadly he was. Three batters in the game, three Yankees were on board, all eventually scored, putting the Mariners well behind the eight ball, just minutes into another O'Neill home run. A couple innings later they buried the Mariners in a terrible five. The hope of running was on the verge of disappearing and might well have disappeared completely if not for the presence of Edgar Martínez, their third baseman turned designated hitter, who was coming off a couple of injury-plagued seasons, but in 1995 he held on. healthy and had been the best in the MLB. hitter Although he was widely underrated outside of Seattle, Edgar never received the enormous amount of credit he deserved largely because he spent most of his career as a designated hitter, well this is the guy we were ignoring if you want to know what He is such a good hitter. and you just want to look at a number of operations or on-base plus slugging is the number for you at 95 edgar's operations surpassed 1100 a mark that even the best hitters rarely reach in a full season up here is a jumble of seasons owned by people like babe ruth, ted williams and mickey mantle in 94, three guys hit the mark, but because of the strike they only had to hold the number for two thirds of a normal season, edgar is here playing almost a full season since the early 60's in forward. until this season his only neighbor is barry bonds the arc of edgar's career is so fascinating as his peak was the exact opposite of griffey ironically when scouts came to watch edgar in Puerto Rico they liked his fielding but saw him as a hitter weak without much potential at 20 years old, junior was already a star with two seasons under his belt at the same age, edgar worked during the day in a furniture store and then worked at night in a factory as a last effort, he crawled to a Mariners tryout after a grueling night shift played through smoke and somehow managed to show enough brilliance to earn a team offer.

He didn't even play his first major league game until he was 24 and didn't play his first full season until he was 27, by which time Griffey had already played so much baseball that he could have retired on the spot and still probably made it to the ballroom. Fame. Edgar was 32 now and he never did 1,109 operations throughout his entire junior career. It's impossible to overstate how great this guy is. went and when the next opportunity to bat came for Seattle, they got two men before Edgar came to the plate, it was time for this superhero to put on his cape and bring the kingdom to life with a towering three-run shot that cut off the deficit to two they finally took a six-five lead behind uh and forgive me if I'm starting to sound like a broken record home run by ken griffey jr on the roller coaster that is mirror baseball, they allowed the yankees to shoot even facing the bottom half of the eighth with Edgar in fourth place, the first three reached base, which is a very good way to give the Hale batting champion the tee.

Poor John Wetland served him a meatball right in the middle of the plate and if he makes a mistake like Martinez will rip your heart out with the greatest thing to not only become the first player to drive in seven runs in a playoff game, but also to open the game wide, although almost not wide enough, as bernie williams almost achieved a miracle. a game-tying home run as the Yankees were down to their final out only to nestle harmlessly into Junior's glove off a compound ankle fracture suffered by his mascot Mariner Moose it was a magical night against all odds the Mariners had tied the series at two games each with forcing a winner-take-all fifth game the following night, the eyes of the entire country fell on the kingdom for this the first day with a single nationally televised game since Joe Carter won the world series about 23 and a half months ago.

Before, unlike Seattle, New York had to rely on his ace for the matter of life and death, although even he knew there were no answers for Edgar. The first two innings were scoreless thanks in large part to the bottom half of the second frame when Seattle had a runner. in scoring position with no out, then two in scoring position with just one out, only for David Cohn to escape trouble by striking out, but then in the third, just like Vince Coleman's surprisingly improbable home run in game two , Mariner Second thirty years old. Point guard Joey Cora opened the scoring by going deep for the eighth time and more than 2,000 career at-bats.

O'Neill responded in the next inning to put the Yankees on top with the Yankees trailing by two in the bottom of the sixth. entrance. Edgar's double again gave Seattle a runner in scoring position with no out and again Cone struck out the side to neutralize the threat, plus deja vu for Junior's next time at the plate in the eighth when his third home run of the series also went out of cone. His fifth overall record tying Reggie Jackson's record for most in any postseason series and bringing the Mariners within one when the inning was based on a completely gassed cone he lost any semblance of control as his pitch count approached 150.

He issued a pair of walks to help load the base before yet another giveaway for pinch-hitter Doug Strange capped Seattle's two-out comeback and tied the game heading into the ninth, where the party was just beginning, the Yankees were about to deal a fatal blow when they got two on base with no out. and the top of the order must face reliever sailor norm charlton in other words, desperation time and we all know who has risen to the occasion time and time again when it's desperation o'clock, less than 48 hours into Throwing in nearly 120 pitches with more than 240 over the previous six days for a very limited appearance, Johnson was somewhat available outside the pen.

The legend of him grew when he sat in the heart of the Yankees lineup to get the M's out of that grim situation unscathed. The bottom half of the ninth was the Mariner's turn came close to victory by hitting Mariano Rivera against the ropes with the winning run of the series in scoring position and with only one out New York responded by calling Mcdowell for the first relief appearance of his career and he too accepted the challenge of keeping the game going. tied in the game, three starters now dueled in extras to decide the fifth game by all the marbles and were left to duel with Johnson pitching another inning and striking out everyone in a herculean effort that left every ounce of everything he had in the field on the ground. the 10th inning became the 11th inning and what was initially supposed to be a broken glass in case of an emergency situation to get out, maybe two had now become a third inning on the mound and finally at this point the effects of his monstrous workload began to cause some cracks.

This single by Randy Velardi provided the go-ahead, a brutal gut punch that sent the Mariners into the bottom of the 11th inning, three outs away from absolute heartbreak and devastation. Joey Cora was set to start and at that point had attempted 36 career bunts with the bases empty, 15 of them resulting in a hit, including one the day before, now that's 16 for 37 runs on board. Griffey continued his torrid stretch by hitting a single into the third run from 90 feet away and the winning run aboard entered the batter's box. edgar martinez a dozen years ago when he worked the graveyard shift at a general electric factory in san juan edgar could never have imagined this moment not even needing a hit to tie the game with the speedy core at third in any outfield fly ball should do well and even with one out they still have Junior on base for Ken Gruffy Jr to score the season-ending run for the New York Yankees.

Well, that's the kind of moment he's been waiting for for 12 years and the opportunity to call a moment of this magnitude is something Dave Niehaus has waited for since the beginning, almost 20 years ago, this moment belongs to these three men . They would love a base hit in the gap and could win it with Junior Speed ​​down the stretch and pitcher 01. the way to edgar martinez swung on a line down the line for much more visit here comes the joy here he's junior the third baseman they're going to wave him on the airplane throne he'll be late the murders are going to play for the american league championship i don't think so just keep going and your martínez with a devil destroys the left field line and they're turning crazy with the kingdom, it's so beautifully disgustingly fake the superstar slides home to beat the bad guy the fireworks are lit in an enclosed location on a nylon field the team just played for their lives and won there's two mobs here , one of them surrounds Edgar, who will spend his entire career in Seattle, this is the blow that will one day push him to the top and take him to the top.

Hall of Fame and is popularly considered the success that saved baseball in Seattle. As dramatic as it may seem, it's probably accurate after opposition politicians lamented that the public's enthusiasm for the team was pushing them over the edge a couple of weeks later. Funds for the stadium were released. Edgar's double to left field is probably the reason the Seattle Mariners are here today. Somewhere in the other pile of bodies is Junior, who did it with his legs this time flying from first base. Almost no other power. Arrow's hitter could have dodged it when he did, he got revenge on a team he had resented since he was 13 and helped save the future of his own team.

Junior is barely visible within this. sailor wheel on the ABC broadcast emerges for just a handful of frames the images we will always remember him for screaming like an idiot in pure disbelief that he killed two dragons at once this is a moment that belongs to another world where the cycles close and stories end where there are heroes and heroes win a moment like this has nothing to do with our world, so after defeating the Yankees, the Mariners finally fell to the Indians in the 1995 Olympics four games to two , but as always, who cares? We'll stop long enough to note the bizarre junior feud with Cleveland pitcher Dennis Martinez in which the two constantly paused the game out of nowhere to get rid of each other when Seattle was sent home after a brutal shutout loss in the sixth game griffey was crushed, but he still found it in him to pay a visit to his opponent's locker room and congratulate martínez, which no one ever does because in the end the mariners got what they came for in a meaningless season, a in which a thousand different things went exactly right and permanently resolved the existential threat that had plagued Seattle baseball throughout its history now the team of the future was graduating to the team of the present now stadium funding was coming to the Mariners The remaining source of fan anxiety was the threatof Griffy leaving for free agency for years that he had talked about without doing anything one day.

He headed to Cincinnati, where his father played for so many years and the Reds had been talking to his agent for weeks, but Griffey finally decided to sign A four-year contract to remain in Seattle and incredibly his best years were still ahead of him in 1996. Griffey Jr. ran for president of the United States as part of a promotional stunt with Nike, what started as a flub quickly turned into a lot. Less fun for Griffey, who was suddenly fielding political questions from reporters, though he would later become perhaps the first superstar athlete on Dice who would gladly play alongside a gay teammate.

He was out of reach in the political arena. The young man definitely had a moody side and it was being revealed that he hated the whole thing. The merits of his candidacy are for political historians to decide, but whatever. the case ended in september he discovered that life on the campaign trail was cruel and prevented him from sleeping until noon and watching ricky lake forever proving the axiom that someone who is obsessed with television can never be president in the field the absolute sailor's talent embarrassment was about to get even more embarrassing you see at this time the mlb draft had a pretty strange format in even years the worst team nationally got the number one pick and in odd years He went to the worst team in the American League when the Mariners finished. 67 and 95 in 1986 was not the worst record in baseball, but it was the worst record in the world.

Luckily for them, the next draft was in an odd-numbered year, allowing them, of course, to spend the first overall pick on junior. Now remember. that '92 season when they crashed and burned out of nowhere after a couple of years of positive momentum, well here they go again, once again the number one pick was waiting for him in the next odd year the last time they threw the dice on a 17 year old and it turned out pretty well so they did it again if you're not a baseball fan you know alex rodriguez as jlo's husband and the guy you've seen on 37,000 different cnbc shows silently on one airport bookstore Let's catch up on all the weird giggles you've been missing here, he's locking out the doorbell, here he is in something called Squawk Alley, yeah, together of course, and here he is in Squawk Box, which is different from Squawk Alley somehow, I think that's how we're going to try to get him, I'm still mad about it and by the way, here he is with crazy money and here he is on cnbc, do it, I'm exhausted, God, he's a weed, I love him as a rookie. -rod was a perfect target for a legendary prankster like griffey griffey once had a habit of betting manager lou panella a steak dinner that he could hit home runs in batting practice sometime in 95 junior had a cold streak losing bed After bed he now owed Pinella an enormous amount of beef, one day Pinella opened the door to his office and found his winnings, a 1200 pound live cow that the young man had borrowed from a nearby farmer and smuggled Pinellas no As upset by the cow as he was by the absolutely biblical dunk he had already done on the ground, this stunt was even funnier when A-Rod was only 18 years old.

Griffy tried to convince him that all the stars on the team were conspiring to monetize his genetics by selling his sperm, even bringing in a friend to fake it. He was a junior doctor and asked if he wanted to participate and ended the nonsense once it became clear that A-Rod was actually starting to believe him, but like Griffey, Arod is a much more interesting person than he is normally made out to be. In this pantheon of baseball gods, A-Rod's legacy is by far the most complicated right now, although the year is 1996, A-Rod is 20 years old and his greatness is baffling, so let me begin saying this during the first 49 years of the integration era. period that began in 1947, Neri, a single infielder had hit 90 extra-base hits in a season, not even anyone who played the classic first base slugging position, then came year 50 and in a-rod's first full season as a major leaguer he racked up 91 as a brief stop in his age 20 season, which is the most surprising part of all, to be so good so young, needless to say he broke all kinds of youth records, there are a million things different. 96 a-rod was the youngest player to ever do it, but regardless of how neo-fighting he was, he still hit more baseballs than any other infielder of any age from Jimmy Fox 58 years earlier until the season 2019, which remains the only case of a short stop reaching 90.

And in fact, even expand the scope a little to all the players on the left side of the infield to even incorporate the third baseman who is still at the top of the leaderboard, which brings me to Edgar Martínez staying on that extra hit theme that Edgar started that season, taking it to a completely different level, here they are each. of his first 311 at-bats of the 1996 season, that's a lot of well-traveled baseballs, 66 to be exact, let me repeat myself in 1996, Edgar Martínez recorded an extra-base hit in 66 of his first 311 at-bats and this was for when the m's had played just 84 games, barely half the season historically, that stacks up pretty well in the modern era, no one has come that close, as the 60 threshold remained unmet, combined with griffy, who had a typical peak season that gave him 96 sailors, three players who overcame thousands of trades, cornering those guys' beer market and becoming the first team with such a trio since the 1929 Cubs.

Oh, and all the What their fourth-best hitter did was smash 44 home runs while driving in 138 runs with an embarrassment of riches throughout their lineup, the 96m offense soared to nearly unprecedented heights as they became the first team of the integration era in producing a team with extensive operations of 850. They also scored at least 5 runs in 107 games, if that sounds like a To you, you would be right, they were the first team in 46 years to have even one hundred such games, a feat that remains extremely rare in modern times. Add it all up and they scored almost a thousand runs at a time no one had before. until that season he had even reached 900 since the 1953 Dodgers and yet somehow this team found a way to miss the postseason, certain that their pitching was terrible, the reigning Cy Young winner, Randy Johnson, missed three months in the middle of the season due to a bulging disc in his back he returned in August with six appearances out of the pen and then was shut down for the season, but it's still pretty spectacular for that lineup to spend all of October on his couch or drinking coffee at grunge concerts, maybe that would have been a little more. understandable in the days before 1969 when the entire postseason was just the world series or even a few years earlier when the postseason included one league and therefore only two teams from each league made it, but this was the second year of the implementation of the lds thus produces four playoff teams per league somehow it still didn't matter a fantastic job ems um how many years have we been trying to sell you the idea that the mariners are the future of baseball?

This will be the sixth year, come on guys, no. Don't make me look stupid, thank you. These four played together for the first time in '94, but the strike ended that season. Griffey was injured for most of '95. Randy was injured for most of '96, but in '97, all four stayed healthy for most of the season. -Rod didn't set the world on fire like he did the year before, but he had an excellent season. Randy had the best season of his career to that point and nearly won another Cy Young Award. Rock-solid Edgar was one of baseball's best hitters again, but it was a junior, the 1997 American League MVP, who found his zenith three years after the strike ended his pursuit of the record. of home runs in a single season by Roger Maris.

Once again, he attempted America's most obsessed record. In sports, he went to the yard in his first at-bat of the season and hit right center field and we were both abandoned by the same David Cohen who gave up three junior dingers in the 95th alds, dude, sorry, near the end April Junior was on track to hit over 90 home runs, everyone knew that would cool off and it did, but even when his pace slowed he was still on track to break the record midway through the season and then came an excruciating stretch of 25 games in which he hit just one home run, like most bad stretches in baseball, seemed to happen for no real reason.

Griffey wasn't too upset that the team was winning and he suggested that sportswriters were too obsessed with statistics and graphs. I have no idea what he's talking about. Anyway, Junior finished with 56 home runs, although he missed by five. Yet he produced one of the most powerful batting seasons of all time along with Mark Maguire, who finished with 58 more in the national league. Griffey accomplished something no one else but Maris did. Since the outbreak of World War II, I would like to take a moment to appreciate the fact that these four were playing in their peak years on the same team and at the same time it could be argued that all four were the best. ever playing their respective positions is a winning argument maybe not but bear with me for just a minute first in junior at the age of 27 his wins above replacement were 59.2 better than any other center fielder that age aside by mickey mantle. a little room to debate between griffy and mantle, if you want, for example you could try to argue that griffey was a more complete baseball player and point to his fielding skills chart, these same guys by defensive war and junior is all the path. at the top with manila and a pretty mediocre territory ultimately, although I think I have to admit that the junior at this point in his career is number two, now edgar, whose case is much easier, the dh is a relatively new and one that players often do not occupy for most of their careers, so their competition is much lower among those who spend at least 60 percent of their careers as a DH, the only player. in the same universe as edgar in terms of war is david ortiz edgar is clearly the best pure dh of all time randy is much harder to evaluate well so here are all the pitchers with a war above 50. at 103.5 Randy's places in FM radio territory puts him in ninth place all time.

I'm going to ignore these guys from the dead ball era because while they were great compared to their peers on the mound at the time, they never had to face scary home run hitters, so that leaves us with the lefty Grove Tom Seaver. roger clemens and greg maddox and randy this is extremely fragile logic because it means we're not even considering, say, pedro martinez or bob gibson or sandy koufax and it doesn't take into account any kind of quantity versus quality considerations that we can point out that he won five Cy Young awards more than anyone else to Clemens and is number two in strikeouts only behind his friend Nolan Ryan.

I can't definitively rank him, but on the best roster of all time I think we could include him as our number five starter without sounding. completely ridiculous and ultimately alex rodriguez a-rod actually only played his first 10 seasons at shortstop before finally moving to third base, so it's a little unfair to compare his war at shortstop to guys who spent their entire careers there and yet, despite playing only half as many games as leaders in this table and completely sweeping some of his best seasons off the table, he appears as one of the greatest of all time.

There are some notable absences in this table. Ernie Banks, Robin Yao and Cal Ripken, shortstops who like an -rod move to different positions in the middle of their careers, so let's stack those guys, yeah, at shortstop, I go with an a-rod every time, yeah you're not mad at me, you should be, this whole argument requires a fair amount of goalposting. move and pick are the best of all time at their respective positions, no, but you could argue without being immediately laughed out of the room, it's right that one of your players is in that conversation, it's great, two, it's practically unheard of, three is a ridiculous notion and four is the 1990s Mariners, modern killer row because this is an unfair semblance of talent that the Mariners had a few months before traded for another player who could have eventually joined this pantheon the year before the team was dragged to Appleton.

Wisconsin for an exhibition game against their minor league affiliate, the Timber Rattlers, when the game was suspended forrain, the teams decided to hold a home run derby to at least give the fans something to watch. Junior hit a few outs and they did the same, but they were both overshadowed by the 20-year-old first baseman from the Timber Rattler, his name was David Arias and, according to a couple of accounts, he hit multiple home runs not only out of the ballpark but also towards the road that is 650 feet away and that could not be possible. True, but that's what they said Junior was looking at in disbelief.

A-Rod was freaking out. He would later say that that night he wanted the sailors to call Arius on the spot. Finally, Aries was traded a couple of months later and started passing. a different name you know him as david ortiz while all this was going on they had one of the most powerful hitters of the 21st century just hanging out in their minor league system you see what I mean it was like divine intervention was feeding transcendent baseball talent in Seattle did I mention that they still had Jay Buener who again hit 40 home runs and that his 40th home run was a 484 foot annihilation into the upper deck and that this home run officially gave the 1997 Mariners the all-time record for most home runs by a major league baseball team, a record that stood for 21 years throughout the rest of the steroid era and had Paul Sorrento hitting 31 home runs and José Cruz Jr who hit 26 stingers in just 104 games was almost a rookie of the year and was traded mid-season because they didn't need any more hits.

It was true that the Seattle Mariners really were the team in the first round series that, honestly, isn't even worth getting into the Mariners' bats. work the bullpen fell apart and the Orioles swept them aside in four games. For those of us who grew up in this era rooting for teams far from Seattle, the Mariners were sort of our second favorite team, our vacation team by all accounts. reasons why I've talked about how we wanted this team in the world series so much just for the privilege of watching it and if these sailors weren't good enough when would it happen?

I remember thinking well, maybe it's time to support the individual now. maybe things like the home run record or what mattered, Junior's pursuit of history didn't depend on his team's good luck or a pitifully small sample of games, come October of next year he would have a full season and a fair chance to bat. 62 home runs and chased the record again unlike the previous year. Jr. avoided that July drop on August 1. He was still on track to hit 62 by the end of the year and never strayed far from that pace. What happened next, I never saw it coming, it stopped. the important thing in the national league mark maguire and sami sosa eclipsed him in august and never looked back was his story now junior once again finished with 56 home runs no other player in baseball history not even babe ruth had done that twice in a fight but we just didn't care he wasn't alone an old friend of his was also being ignored in many ways barry bonds and ken griffey jr were reflections of each other both were sons of star baseball players had a reputation for getting grumpy from time to time from time to time and were transcendently great in every facet of the game up to that point Bonds and Griffey were the '90s, they were numbers one and two on the '90s home run rankings and, unlike many of their neighbors on this list , were excellent at everything, both complemented their power at the plate with an ability to steal bases that few others possessed, with Junior stealing over 100 bases in this time and with 300 bonuses, while other power hitters tended to be a bit bad in the field.

Both men stood out as excellent outfielders with Bonds won seven Gold Gloves and eight Juniors in 98, which was just his age 33 season Bonds joined the club 400-400 400 home runs 400 stolen bases To this day he is the only player who The only player who came close to matching this feat was his father Bobby, and although some in baseball recognized the magnitude of this achievement, the United States as a whole did not care. mattered or didn't even notice, it's comical to remember how little we recognized something that was clearly obvious to us. Everyone on Earth in 98 Bonds looked basically the same as he did at the beginning of the decade.

You could say the same. A young Mark Maguire, on the other hand, had transformed from a normal-looking guy into a cartoonish Soviet artillery prototype that took three days to restock and 25 men to operate his eventual admission that he loaded up on steroids to break the record with 70 home runs wasn't necessary back in 1987, when Griffey was a lonely 17-year-old boy toiling in the obscurity of the arizona instructional league ties back then in his second major league season he would invite the two of them to dinner. They have been close since one night after the '98 season, Bonds had dinner at Griffey's house.

In his book about Bonds, sports writer Jeff Perlman describes a conversation between the two that night as The story goes that Bonz finally let him out. all. He was tired of playing correctly. He played fair for a decade and accomplished incredible things only to become a footnote watching others largely take advantage without scrutiny and be lauded as the baseball saviors he was to have. He also decided that Griffey for the record says that this conversation never happened, whether it happened or not, at least accurately represented a fork in the road that he certainly faced around this time and the general consensus is that he never used any performance-enhancing drugs. that you have had. kids, he later said I don't want him to think his dad is a cheater cheating in sports is cool it's more than that it's beautiful it's not fun when your team is on the wrong side but generally getting angry about cheating is like getting out of to the movies because you disapprove of Darth Vader's actions sports allow humanity to be what it is and everything in its most basic or brilliant form without any real consequences rules are not laws they are challenges when we orchestrate elaborate scientific operations on the roof We express our ingenuity and when our stupid plans blow up in our faces we give the world something to laugh about when, for example, we threw an illegal ball for decades, literally wrote a book called Me and the Spitter, and ended up in the hall of fame anyway. after everyone laughs about it, we show how little this really matters and how arbitrary our standards are.

Bonds supposedly cheated for years, looking like a super crusher in front of the entire world, tearing down baseball's most hallowed records and the powers that be. I don't do anything about it, it's a great comedy, but if cheating is valid, practicing virtue is just as valid. Has Junior ever used peds? No one can know for sure, other than the YouTube commentators, they are all doctors who are very well connected in the baseball world. and they will surely know that if you ask them again, the general consensus is that he did not use medication. I choose to agree with this consensus and I celebrate it, not because he was doing the right thing because who cares about that because he did what he wanted to do, he turned down the opportunity to graduate from a baseball superhero to a baseball god, instead to choose the opportunity to continue being himself, plus it wasn't as if Junior's production was the problem.

Randy Johnson had spent years toiling for this team. If it weren't for leaving every part of himself on the field in '95, the string of miracles that kept the Mariners in Seattle probably wouldn't have happened after the intense workload sent him to the disabled list in '96. , he would return to '97 with his best season yet, but the Mariners charged with keeping all four Beatles on the payroll at the same time did not offer him, and perhaps in some sense could not offer him, a contract extension. Randy spent the last season of his contract feeling completely fine.

They disrespected him and the bad energy seemed to radiate throughout the clubhouse. What had to be done was to trade him. At one point the Dodgers offered a package that included the legendary Wilton Guerrero. The previous season, Guerrero had used a corked bat. He was caught. when the bat broke on an infield ground ball and sent the field flying. They really caught him when he ran trying to collect the evidence instead of running to first gear. He would have been the perfect sailor, but the team announced that Randy was off the market. Things got worse later. a clubhouse shoving match with david segee in july randy's numbers were horrible by his standards and the mariners were almost out of the playoff hunt just before the deadline he was sent to houston out of desperation the hit on johnson Had it been the 1996 injury and concerns about his future health, a lackluster 1998 suggested his best pitching might be behind him, but as if morale had been the issue all along, Johnson caught fire the moment he left the team. city, finishing with an unreal 1.28 era in Houston and helping take the Astros to the top. playoffs randy johnson would end up pitching until after his 46th birthday along the way winning a world series mvp award and four more cy young awards in four consecutive years as soon as he was eligible he was almost unanimously voted into the hall of fame the The loss was catastrophic for the Mariners who had never lacked hitting but depended on Randy to keep his pitching from completely ruining the team in both of their playoff seasons.

His era was much worse without him on the mound. What could this team do without Randy Johnson in 1998? our answer here we see the kingdom about a week before the sailor's inauguration day and you know, he's not that bad, he's only 23 years old, no tiles have fallen since the 1994 incident over five years ago and he offers the atmosphere controlled ideal for junior who has a real chance of breaking the all-time home run record one day the permanently closed roof ensures that the wind will not make his home runs come into play again the field dimensions are also not so hostile to him everything in All the Kingdom seems like the perfect place for Junior to make history and establish himself as the man of all time.

No, no, no, no, no, ah, no, crab apples, from Griffey's debut in 1989 to his stadium swan song on June 27, 1999. Griffey had reached number 377 in his career . runs, 198 of which came at home and while about 50.4 percent of all MLB home runs came at home during that time, Griffey's 198 made up about 52.5 percent of his career total. in an increase over the average Major League player, that is nothing to sneeze at, except his subsequent move to Safeco Field his new $500 million home after the '99 All-Star break met changing a closed and controlled environment by one that was exposed to the vagaries of the Seattle elements, which would cost about 10 to 15 feet of carry from a top hitter's bat.

Safeco's right field fence was about 15 feet farther back than the kingdom's fence. Griffey wasn't a fan of the new park or the stadium dimensions. Ironically nicknamed the house that Griffey built despite Junior's heroic acts to keep the team in Seattle and getting said house built in the style of true sailors, his architect did not even stay for his first full season in the wake of the tragic death. of his neighbor and golfer Payne Stewart Griffey realized he wanted to be closer to home and his family had turned down a million dollar extension about a month after the conclusion of the 1999 season he met with team management looking for a one-way ticket out of the city and finally decided on his native Cincinnati as the chosen destination to continue his career well, the man who brought to Seattle The baseball that came back from the dead, which revitalized an entire base of fans and whose sheer will and refusal to lose got a new stadium built to keep the Mariners in town, disappeared leaving the entire organization reeling and unsure as to what awaited them as a testament to how short it was. of a time that the kingdom lasted the sailors plan to bring in diego follows who launched the first launch in the history of the kingdom in 1977 to also launch the last launch in the history of the kingdom his son david was on the list of the sailors he would have been a beautiful moment but the team made a mistake and somehow couldn't pay for his plane ticket, so he turned around and went home.

It was enough to make you wonder if this team could do anything right. Seattle had a baseball stadium. A serial arsonist burned it down, so they found another one. one but it was full of mud so they built another but there was poop everywhere so they built another but the sky literally fellfell so they built another but for reasons that still confuse us they decided on inhospitable field dimensions towards the face of their franchise, a factor that fueled their decision to leave the city, the end of the kingdom was not the last game of the season, But for everyone who had spent the entire decade marveling at this team, it showed us everything they and we were about to lose in the fourth inning.

Griffey stuck his shoe into the center field wall to rob Juan Gonzalez. It was the swing. The most beautiful thing about baseball is the one we always emulated when we were kids. That's what an unreal player was doing, sending the ball into a concrete sky, watching over the rolls and rolls of artificial grass. There was something saccharine about all of that, even the story of saving the local baseball team that was straight out of a stupid movie, of course, in reality the team had been much more than just him, but for those of us who had marveled at this team for the entire decade.

Now they look like an empty coat, but we're talking about Junior. Before him, the Mariners produced nothing but static from the day he arrived until today. This team has had meaning in everything. What has happened in the 21st century, no matter how chaotic or strange, has made some sense and although no one knew it at the time, Junior had left the Seattle Mariners one last parting gift, the images we are about to see were forgotten for years. and years it's kind of a miracle that this moment is preserved on film no one could have imagined the meaning we would one day find in it it's 1995 in cincinnati junior went out to dinner with a kurunto camera because he's meeting a special guest halfway During tour of America, Junior even brought Senior and his son Trey with him.

He recently saw him with the Pittsburgh Steelers. The player we are about to meet is 22 years old and already has an extraordinary talent, although he will be different. five years before playing his first major league baseball game, Junior presents him with his own jersey with the number 24, the young man is amazed like all young players everywhere, he idolizes Griffey and, in fact, not long after from this visit, he will begin to express a deep desire to play for the mariners one day this meeting is probably the moment he began his trip to seattle i think you may also know his name now it was the a-rod team and in 2000 he secured Even if everyone knew it, you can safely argue that despite missing two weeks due to a concussion, he put together the best individual season in Seattle Mariners history, even to this day.

He finished with an incredible number of wins above the replacement figure of 10.4. If you choose to take that literally, you could say that the Mariners who barely snuck into the playoffs after narrowly holding off Cleveland in the wild card race had Rodriguez to thank that there should have been hope in Seattle after all their 91 wins was a new franchise record, but the city had lost Randy Johnson one year and Junior the next only to pass another year. wondering how the hell they were going to keep a-rod in town, he was set to become a free agent at the end of the season and nearly a dozen teams were ready to deliver truckloads of money to his door, this could happen again , it couldn't happen. again after making short work of the white sox in the first round of the playoffs, they advanced to the alcs to face the yankees, the ancient beasts who seemed to have awakened when they defeated them in 95, while the marines had spent the rest of the decade.

Seeing his enormous potential wasted, Griffy's old archrival quickly turned around and won the world series in '96, '98, and '99, getting hit hard by A-Rod in that series, hitting 409 and leading both teams in total bases. , but faced the same thing. The immutable junior truth was told year after year that no player, no matter how good, can do it on his own. The Yankees sent the Mariners home in six games in the second round. Another world series title, the fourth in five years. The defeat tore A-Rod's heart out. a decision to make now, he could take Junior's route and stick it out, which ultimately ended with him getting homesick and returning to Ohio without ever having caught his whale, understandably, a-rod took the money rather than sign a 10-year contract. years with the Rangers for He completed what was then the largest contract in sports history and was paid what he was worth.

He became the villain wherever he went. Both Rodriguez and the Rangers would later say they regretted the deal. A few years later, Rodríguez himself ended up with the Yankees. On a level of revenge that reads like the old testament at this point the former Seattle fan favorite was relentlessly beaten by the New York media and resented by Yankees fans despite putting up incredible numbers, they just ate him up. I live here, it's tempting to wonder how it could have been different in 1995, when Edgar Martínez hit the double to save Seattle baseball. The batter on deck was 20-year-old Alex Rodriguez, who hadn't done much in the major leagues yet.

You may have noticed it in the margins of that. Junior's Unforgettable Shot What if Edgar hadn't hit that double and A-Rod had had the opportunity to step in and take one of the most consequential at-bats in baseball history? Would he have remained a lifelong sailor after that would be his legacy? They've been different in some ways, it's impossible to say, but he was on his own path now, as for the sailors, their 90's fever dream had passed, they lost junior one year, randy, the next, a-rod, the year after Edgar was still around and hitting well, but he was suddenly 38 years old and had been battling problems with his eyesight.

He had been having trouble tracking the ball in a scary problem for a hitter and needed daily vision exercises just to stay in baseball. J Bunner's aging was still on. roster but his career was almost over that Mariners Yankees season in 2000 Seattle fans had camped in lines outside Safeco Field to buy tickets to the world series and had sat in the rain for days on end, among them there were a woman there to buy tickets as a gift for her mother accompanied by her little pet ferret dressed in a Mariners jersey and matching cap after days of rain and ridicule from passersby, they packed up and went home with nothing, the party over alex, what happened?

It was that after that franchise-record 91-win season, the Mariners exploded to tie the MLB record with 116 wins, matching the 1906 Cubs. They were among MLB's best at everything, scoring more runs than anyone else. and allowing fewer runs than everyone, a pretty big reason for this. The dominance of the entire MLB landscape came from the internal improvement of the guys already on the team, starting pitchers Freddy Garcia and Aaron Seely each had what was ultimately the best year of their long careers. Jamie Moyer continued his lack of age as he approached his fifth decade of life by painting corners with his 85 mph fastball and off-speed prowess and joining Garcia in the top four of Cy Young voting. , Arthur Rhodes, Jeff Nelson and closer Kazuhiro Sasaki led the best bullpen in the MLB with an unheard of era for that era of 3.04 in their offense.

They still had Edgar at the end of his peak and they got the best season of Griffey's heir apparent to center field, Mike Cameron, in the second year in the Emerald City, but two new bats in particular were what really catapulted to a very good team to a The absolute giant second baseman, Brett Boone, signed a free agent contract with the Mariners before that 01 season. The 10-year veteran entered the year as a 255-run hitter who had never had a 100-RBI season while hitting home runs in about 3.2 percent of his career at out-of-nowhere bats, a blessing suddenly taken advantage of, he hit 331, drove in his 100th run on August 1, and had a home run rate that skyrocketed. to just under six percent in 2001, something quite fortuitous and although Buenor missed most of the season by a foot. injury, the sun had set on his time in right field, independently sitting before a new sailor who is ready to take everything we thought we knew about baseball and turn it completely on its head to take every cap or boundary we could naturally expect from a baseball player. and blow him to pieces the 2001 american league most valuable player, ichiro suzuki, where to start, okay, we think of the balance between science and sentimentality as a sliding scale, if you're more of one, you're less of the other, well, each euro is both to an extreme extent they took like bats, for example, the scientists in them traveled with a custom-made dehumidifier to regulate its moisture content and adjust it according to the climate of the city in which it was located.

The sentimentalist in him once felt so guilty for throwing his bat in frustration because he took it to his hotel room and put him to bed that night and then wrote a letter of apology to the manufacturer of he. It is incredibly difficult and almost impossible to innovate as an offensive baseball player while sports like football and basketball have evolved dramatically over the years in baseball, for me the cake is practically baked, only four offensive players have truly stood out. as iconoclasts whose statistical footprint made it clear that they were playing a different variant of the sport who found greatness by doing what no one around them they were doing first to babe ruth for the first 50 years of baseball, virtually no one hit more than 20 home runs In one season, Ruth then set the all-time record with 29 and then nearly doubled her own record the following year with 54 and the dam. broke after that, then there was ricky anderson who set the modern record for stolen bases in a single season with 130, no one has come within miles of him in decades, just like no one else has stolen close to 1400 bases, but it was more than just that he was also a great hitter who was masterful at drawing walks and was much better than most base runners at getting on base first, there has only been one ricky henderson of course we have to recognize Barry Bonds, although not for his home run that hit an on- base percentage of at least 500 is almost unheard of only 10 guys have ever done it bonds did it four times in four consecutive years the fourth and final member of this club Ichiro is the first Japanese position player to break into Major League Baseball and one of only 32 players to retire with 3,000 hits, this should not have been possible, unlike the other 31 who typically began their careers in the Majors.

Leagues around the age of 20, an agreement between Japanese and American baseball prevented Ichiro from entering the majors until he was 27 years old. It was a shame, as Ichiro had wanted to play alongside Junior and A-Rod for years only to finally end up in Seattle right after they both left town. He really had to break his hump to get into this 3000 hit club. Junior didn't do it. Getting here either Babe Ruth Barry Bonds or Ted Williams Against all logic despite arriving almost a decade late, Ichiro did so after having spent the first nine professional seasons of his career in Japan when he finally arrived in Seattle his effort to make Up for Lost Time far surpassed anything we've seen in MLB history from day one and over a decade, Ichiro racked up over 2,200 hits not only is it by far the most any player has ever had in a period of 10 years, but for the most part, ichiro didn't even need 10 years, he surpassed 2000 hits during his ninth season after 2009, he could actually say: "no, I'm fine, I took the next season off and I still have Being the first player since Pete's promotion to have surpassed 2K in any ten year career, there's no one else you can mention at the same time, Ichiro simply existed in his own universe of batting magic.

Three main factors brought him here. The first was his incredible ability to stay healthy and fit. 2017, note that Israel had been in the United States for over 15 years at the time, Tom Brady approached him to ask about his fitness regimen. Ichiro had no idea who he was. His masterful ability to hit anything and place the ball anywhere. We have had hit location data dating back to the 1988 season from then until now. Ichiro has more singles up the middle than anyone and he has more opposite field singles than anyone. Within this same window we can see each player who achieved at least 2,500 hits.

Generally, his punches landed on a preferred side of thefield or middle, they only hit the ball to the opposite side of the field about half as often, meanwhile, Ichiro was less predictable than anyone hitting to left field and right field almost as often. Now many of these were on field goals, which brings us to his third superpower, his speed again within the same window. Ichiro threw more infield punches than anyone else. The stats will rightly point out here that he only has that amount in the first place because his batted balls stayed in the infield so often, which is not optimal, who cares?

Watch him at the 2001 All-Star Game, which, naturally, is in Seattle facing our old friend Randy Johnson. He throws one to first. This should be a guaranteed exit, but this is what made each row so exciting. Virtually every ground ball was a three-second thriller. Remember this, it is 90 feet from home to first floor. but only 60 from the pitcher's first pitch ichiro has 50 percent more ground to cover than randy now let's play again from the top ichiro just recovered from a 30 foot deficit in three and a half seconds he ran like this on every batted ball in every game he He played for years and years, even if he was thrown out, every grounder he hit produced a fire drill.

I'm not sure there has ever been a baseball player more exciting and as compelling as the statistical imprint of him, who seems to belong to a The player from a different era is the man himself Ichiro, betting on being left-handed despite being a right-handed natural. Because I do not know? Ichiro, haven't you been intimidated by all these big, strong American pitchers? No Ichiro, who do you ask for advice? When you're in a slump, I, Ichiro, in just your eighth major league baseball game, made one of the throws of the decade to catch Terrance Long from right field, how did you do it?

Why did he run when he was going to kick him out? Ichiro, what's your dog's name? I don't have my dog's permission to tell you that, Ichiro, what will you do once you retire? I don't know, I guess I'll die. There's something I find really inspiring about Ichiro's friendly and down-to-earth attitude. The stubbornness can be seen in his words and in his play. None of this was supposed to work. None of that was supposed to carry over from Japan, but Ichiro knew it would work and he wasn't going to change anything about the way he played.

Baseball analyst and former player Rob Dibble stated at the beginning of the season that if Ichiro won the batting title, he would get a tattoo on his butt and run around Times Square in a thong. That season, each row hit 350 and won the batting title the rookie of the year award the mvp award a silver hitter and a gold glove thank you for playing rob as a junior ichiro is one of the most exciting and unique players in baseball that this sport has ever seen and just like the sailors of the 90s belonged to junior the sailors of the yachts belonged to ichiro ichiro was a player like no other in terms of reliability game by game he was a metronome that had five different seasons in the who had a hit in at least 130 games not only has no one else ever had more than two such seasons, but Ichiro alone accounts for almost a third of all the times it has been done in the integration era, that It's only for games with at least one hit, what about games with multiple hits?

Well, he also had five seasons in which he did that in at least 70 games when, again, no one else has more than twice in this time, i.e. five seasons in which he could have reasonably been considered to have almost a chance to flip a coin for multiple hits each time, which again is a large amount. An important part of all those seasons, but one of my favorite things about Ichiro that I have discovered is that in 2004, throughout the 60 games the Mariners played between June 30 and September 4, he accumulated 120 hits . Put down your calculators. I understand you, they are two hits. per Mariners game over a period of more than two months.

I was curious if anyone else had sniffed out a similar group of hits over such a long period of time. It turns out that not all cases dating back more than 70 years in which an MLB player reached even a hundred hits in any 60-game stretch of his team's season are actually extremely rare, but not for Ichiro. Buoyed by those pairings of brilliant months, Ichiro put himself in position to launch an assault on George Sissler's 84-year-old record of 257 hits in a single season. A five-hit outburst on September 21 in Anaheim meant that '04 Ichiro became just the second player to surpass 240 hits since the Hoover administration joined '01 Ichiro.

They then concluded a long road trip with Ichiro with 256 hits, just one shy of Sisler's mark with a three-game home game against the Rangers on deck to conclude the season on what was supposed to be a weekend honoring Edgar Martinez's retirement in the final games of his career. Ichiro wasted no time in providing many more festivities to celebrate to lead. Out of the series, he hit this chopper that found its way to his left foot, but things could have soon gone very wrong when Ichiro lost his balance while trying to make a play on this foul ball in the third inning, cool though, since he is a cyborg.

Ichiro was totally fine. to open the next frame for his second at bat of the game where he officially relegated Sisler to silver medalist with this bouncer in the middle Seattle was overflowing with pride Japan was overflowing with pride Ichiro had achieved immortality added another four hits in his last 12 at-bats just in case to finish at 262. Records are meant to be broken, but it would be surprising if this one didn't last until the sun went down on a more macro level, which was the second of five. seasons in his career in which he surpassed 220 hits, no one else has done it five times and in the era of integration no one is even close to Ichiro, once again, alone accounting for a huge portion of all those seasons in the 2001 postseason despite being in the wrong end of the second most lopsided playoff contest in history in the Alds' third game in Cleveland that had them on the verge of elimination, they recovered to reach the Alcs and a appointment with those Yankees again, they got into a hole full of disaster.

In each of the first two home games they again tried to bounce back with a blowout win in game three in the Bronx, followed by this Bret Boone home run that broke a scoreless tie and gave them an eighth-inning lead in the fourth. game that they were about to tie. series if their season-long unflappable bullpen could cleanly record just six more outs, we're talking about the Mariners, so Arthur Rhodes, incredible all year, gave up that run to Bernie Williams in the bottom half of the eighth, it will be a 3-2 was launched high in the air to the deep right, that incredible all year allowed alfonso soriano to break through in the ninth in what turned out to be the dagger to the heart of Seattle, the deep to the right center here that goes to the track on the wall.

She left for Seattle when this inconceivable force of baseball fell directly into her lap and after falling short that first year together at 0-1, not even Ichiro could drag the M's back to October baseball, not in 2002, when An impressive 93 wins were only enough for third place. place in the suddenly hyper-competitive Al West, not in 2003, when they seemed destined for the playoffs, only to suffer a four-game sweep in late August in Boston, the Red Sox led by Seattle's old friend David Ortiz, used the series to equalize the situation. card rankings and launch into the postseason over the Mariners with 93 wins Since the arrival of the LDS in 1995, no other team has won more than 90 games in consecutive seasons while watching its invitation to the postseason dance get lost in the mail. years let alone having 193 in each year while residing in a small division, so the drop after the first one was shocking;

In fact, after that season of pure magic, the Mariners' playoff drought that began immediately extended well beyond the next two seasons and spanned the final eight years of the 2010s, then the entire decade. 2010 and indefinitely until the great beyond, when the NFL's Buffalo Bills clinched a wild-card berth in the final week of the 2017 season, bequeathing the Mariners the longest active playoff drought among the Big Four. North American sports leagues are the only team that could go from annoying a fan base with a season of record success directly to a historically long streak of ineptitude if you're only interested in winning and losing, this is the end of the story 43 seasons the vast majority of them lost seasons 3,219 wins 3,622 losses zero championships zero world series appearances at least some of you will stop watching and at this point we don't care I mean it's really cool but so far As for Alex and it worries me, it's only now that we've gotten to the point of all of this that the Seattle Mariners are challenging us like no other team with this, I don't mean that they test our patients, although that's certainly true, I mean that we They offer the opportunity to appreciate sports as more than an endless conquest;

They've never won a world series, but ask yourself honestly: does this feel incomplete to you? Far be it from me to tell any lifelong Mariners fan how you feel about that, but for the rest of us, what's really missing is this, this is what you want, is it really okay, take it all. Randy Johnson was shut out against the Marlins in the first game of the world series. There's Edgar, whose 11th-inning single drove home. the fourth game winning streak and a-rod who darted around the tag to take a 3-1 series lead, it's good that he came off the bench in the fifth game to smash a crucial pinch-hit double and he's junior who entered the box in the bottom of the ninth and delivered a three-run championship to secure the kingdom's exit.

He went crazy, what a moment that was, if that's what you wanted, you got what you wanted now out of all these stories, which one is your favorite? What story are you telling first? that was the one you're not ready for this team, but sailors aren't special because of their lack of success, it's just that success is completely irrelevant, we've entered another realm here, one that is much larger and doesn't operate in the dead currency of winning and losing unless you let go of those limits you are an astronaut who brought your wallet the sailors of Seattle are not competitors they are protagonists yet you cannot deny the pain that they had already seen the moment pass once when a second four -The one-year window opened out of nowhere.

They won 393 more games than any other team in Major League Baseball. They didn't win a world series or even get to one that was their chance and they failed if you're going through a tough time. This is fine, so the mirrors started with manager Lou Panella, a very real consequence of putting a baseball team in Seattle is that it is so far from everything, it is the lunar colony of baseball, very far removed from even its closest neighbors , is what Junior found so difficult. a rookie all those years ago is one of the reasons he went to cincinnati in 2000 is part of being a mariner pinella was from florida which in a straight line is closer to brazil than seattle after the 2002 season the man who took the Mariners made the playoffs four times and the only coach who ever did left town to manage the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, for a coach of a perennially winning team to up and go anywhere else team is practically unheard of, especially if you are in a good situation.

Terms with the front office that seems like it was Pinella, but this is the team he left for the Devil Rays. They lost 106 games at O2. They were a terribly bad baseball team. Lupinella had traded this for this, but that didn't matter to her. It is his testament. to how much he needed to get home, we already know all about randy johnson's trade of sailors and how he reached supernova levels immediately after leaving town, well eventually history would repeat itself with another randy randy nguyen originally broke into the majors in Tampa in the late '90s he became a star outfielder there in 2002 at the conclusion of that season in Seattle was when Pinella wanted out of his contract so he could manage a club closer to his home in Tampa, a club like, for For example, Tampa, the Mariners obliged, but only if they got significant compensation in return. when he went 4-for-5 with a home run and immediately after that The game's general manager, Bill Bavasi, sent him to San Francisco before the trade deadline for abox of crackers and a half-eaten ham sandwich.

All the wind left down the stretch as a giant got hit better than anyone else in the league, except maybe Todd. helton from mile high colorado in fact, in September of that season o5 became only the eighth player in the integration era to accumulate one hundred total bases in a single calendar month, it is an achievement that as of 2020 no one had achieved in the generation since it was exhausted. so if you're a baseball team that needs a historically strong midseason jolt, just call up the sailors and see if you can get Randy Loose out, oh, and you want to guess where Bay Area Randy Wynn was from in the who played college baseball.

Santa Clara clearly just needed to go home, let's fast forward a bit to 2007. I went to school in Seattle, go dogs, so I've always kept the corner of my eye on the m's as you never know what kind. of rarities could be next and one thing I noticed as the 2007 season progressed was that while they maintained a good overall record, they frequently came on the short end of games that weren't particularly competitive. Here is the run differential for each team. to win exactly 88 games within the modern 162-game schedule, most have a very strong differential, everyone has a positive differential, except the sailors, the worst in this sample by miles, they existed in isolation, quarantined from the rest of the group, who They behaved like normal 88 Ichiro winning team aside, the Mariners' best player in the second half of the decade was third baseman Adrian Beltray, whom they got in 2005.

When he finally retired in Texas in 2018, he did so as without a doubt a future hall of famer last season. he headed to Seattle, in fact, enjoyed the best year of his career with the Dodgers hitting 334 with 48 home runs and nearly won the MVP award over Barry Bonds, so what is this about? Well, you'll see that my shape is right in the middle of this table. It corresponds perfectly with the five years Beltray spent in Seattle. It's as if the Mariners dug up their old logo and used it as a dough cutter to squeeze out the best years of his career.

As soon as he showed up in town, his wins above replacement fell. from 9.6 to 3.2. He wasn't injured either. He just wasn't the same after 2009, he went to Boston and his war immediately doubled and he remained pretty stable until he started battling injuries in his late 40s. I've never seen a player turn his stats into visual art like this fascinating man afterward. Spending three years in the cellar, manager Mike Hargrove was finally turning the team around. He had been hired after the 2004 train wreck and he steadily improved the team from 63 wins to 69 and 78 and in 2007 his Mariners were 11 games over 500 at the end. in June they had won seven games in a row, something they hadn't done in four years and were preparing for a good playoff run and then the next morning Hargrove resigned, there were no health issues, there was no disagreement with the front office major. his heart just wasn't in it he said maybe he was just tired of baseball he was 57 years old that happens except just two months later he accepted an offer to manage the bj's, a semi-pro team in liberal kansas, and at this point he probably already You can guess why Hargrove grew up nearby and played for the BJ's in the early '70s.

He gave up a big salary, a shiny new stadium and a winning Major League team, so he just had to go home. Coaches don't leave winning teams. They are on good terms just so they can get by somewhere else. This never happens. He passed to the Mariners twice in five years. Power hitter Richie Sexton was at home, more or less having grown up in Washington state when the Mariners signed him to a long-term contract. In 2005 he should have fit in perfectly at six-foot-eight, he satisfied the team's historic interest in tall guys, and his legendary banter made him a natural fit for Seattle.

It was reported that years earlier he would acquire alligators with their mouths taped shut and hidden. them in their teammates' lockers, okay let's pause this, do you have any idea how hard it is to tell a story about powerful rich men that goes on for 32 years without a case of someone doing something morally wrong ? These guys never hurt anyone, they just had weaknesses and misadventures are limited to taking cows on strange field trips, they don't care, we're almost to the end of this, you blew it Richie, anyway, the guy could mash and we have the selection to prove it when he is 28 years old.

He had two 45-home run years under his belt, putting him in the company of some of the most powerful hitters of all time, but injuries had derailed his career, his home run ability was declining, and his batting average was never very high. , was plummeting. 2008 would prove to be his last season at age 33. By May 8, the Mariners were well on their way to one of their worst seasons in franchise history. 2007 was an aberration, this was the new normal in the fourth inning. of that night's game against the Rangers, Richie steps in and does something I've never seen before or since when he catches a pitch from Case and Gabbard, who appears to be right over the plate, acts like he's been shot, charges the mound, and He throws his helmet at him.

This has to be the only case in baseball history where a batter pitches to a pitcher without the pitcher pitching to the batter. Richie Sexton was suspended and then traded midseason. The Mariners finished with 101 losses that year. They had paid a lot. money for the privilege of becoming the first team to lose at least 100 games with a payroll of at least $100 million. Ichiro is now the only man left from that magical 2001 season. He had seen everything fall apart at the end of the season. a journalist asked him what the team needed to fix, he sat there fanning himself and said through his translator that we don't have time to explain days before, an anonymous player went to the press stating that Ichiro's teammates didn't like him because of his style selfish game.

Whatever that meant and a player threatened to knock him out These largely disappointing years were overseen by general manager Bill Bavasi, who took the job in 2004, being the general manager of a baseball team is an infuriating job, Players get better or worse for no apparent reason. They suffer strange injuries and you often have no control over whether they get along or not. Add in the ridiculous and arbitrary nature of baseball itself and it's enough to make you lose control. Apparently feeling that his days in Seattle were numbered, he made one last effort. to unify his team by attempting a mass citizen arrest of some kind oh no you can't do that bill people have been imprisoned for less bill he was fired shortly after this team wasn't rebuilding he wasn't a lovable loser the Mariners just got arrested Seattle were certainly no strangers to being bad, but after more than 30 years it seemed like for the first time they were really unhappy and I don't know about you, but at this point I don't care much about winning.

In a perfect world, happiness is all I would want for these people. I want Ichiro to have fun. I want their old junior hero to return so they can play together like Ichiro always dreamed of. I want you to do it. I don't know, run. around the clubhouse and tickle fights, I think we've wanted a lot of things. Mike Blauers was a local college baseball star and spent three different stints playing for the Mariners in the '90s before landing a broadcasting job with the club after his playing days. and it is perhaps on that side where his true legacy lies because that platform allowed the entire world to realize who Mike Blowers really is, a spiritual medium.

Don't believe me right, let me introduce you to his ball game in Toronto on September 27, 2009. and blowers pre-game prediction for the game player to click on the final game photos of the series Mike, who's yours? I clearly believe that today will be your sopo. He's hit well the last few times he's had a chance to play, I hope. who hit his first major league home run today, second baseman tui osisopo accounted for 189,487 of the mlb at-bats in yachts 4, 22 of which resulted in home runs, representing approximately 2.23 per percent of them, which means about a 1 in 45 chance of correctly identifying a particular at-bat in which a second baseman will hit a home run second like the blowers did by specifically identifying tuiasasopo's second at-bat in the game , will receive a fastball from talent talent was a relief pitcher for most of his 10-year career, but was a starter in 09, it was by far his busiest season, with more than twice as many innings as anyone else and thus reached a 3-1 count on 70 different occasions, of which he threw a fastball, 80 percent of the time he was going to hit it. from left center field probably oh maybe on the second floor of the 30,260 home runs hit by right-handed hitters in the 2000s, 17,296 of them were driven to left, which is about 57.2 percent in a 3-1 about 2.61 of the decades 1.66 million at-bats ended in a 3-1 count about one in 38. and that's inside ball three three balls.

I've never been on the straight side of a 3-1 count in my life. That's the absolutely disbelieving Dave Knee House on the call 3- 1 pitch on the road rose and melted oh by the time he was in his 33rd season calling Mariner games he had seen it all or so he thought that Babe Ruth in the 1932 World Series receives the most love for a called home run despite being You know, Babe Ruth Blowers confidently took his opportunity for a 23-year-old fringe major leaguer who batted eighth in the lineup and who he had yet to hit a single home run and at the same time included every detail imaginable and accomplished everything, if there ever was a The scariest sports prophecy I haven't seen because the same season doesn't exist.

Another sailor's luck turned in a different direction. You see, Adrian Beltray, famous for not using a cup at third base when he was a rookie, the Dodgers tried to get him. use one, even finding it every time he didn't, he refused and they finally gave up. Everything was fine until August 12, 2009. The bad energy of the moment seemed to emanate throughout the stadium, spreading bad vibes and disrupting electronic systems. The plate camera took everything out. the exit that never happens on an infield play the third base side camera didn't really pick it up we really can't see it well maybe it's for the best incredibly Beltrey stayed in the game and even scored the game-winner he ran in the inning 14, but it would be a few weeks before he played again, even then he refused to wear a cup for the rest of his career, reasoning that he already had three children and that he no longer wants to.

It's just September 1st, he's the first at bat since the injury, his walk-in music plays a word or so right now and here comes Belfry, who's missed 18 games, you hear him recognize him before the game, one of Beltrey's colleagues secretly arranged to have his music changed without an appointment. The Nutcracker Suite, who would be so youthful? Who the hell would do such a thing? Some would point out that the Mariners' re-signing of Ken Griffey Jr was little more than a crowd-pleasing concession. Who cares? Now 39 years old, about the same age his father was when he was signed as a publicity stunt decades ago, Junior was certainly nothing like the player he used to be, but he still had some power in his bat and, what's More importantly, he immediately changed the culture of the clubhouse while 2008 was rife with finger-pointing and tantrums.

An older, wiser young man let everyone loose and united the team. In particular, he set out to bring Ichiro into the fold which largely What was not said during Ichiro's career is that it was often a lonely experience for him as a junior who mainly wanted to spend time with his family and play Nintendo. Ichiro mainly just wanted to go home to his wife, the dog and the comics and although there were Having learned some English over the years, the language barrier was still very real, those around Ichiro said they had never seen him so happy in the clubhouse.

Ichiro and Junior were inseparable and Ichiro would later say that his friendship with Junior was nothing short of a miracle. His lockers were next to each other and the two thirty-somethings were seen constantly. Pushing each other around and laughing, the only way they could have been more adorable is if they routinely got into tickle fights in the clubhouse, which they did constantly, it was a perfect world. Ken Griffey Jr probably knew by now that he was never going to play. in a world series he had never had anything to say to therespect, it didn't matter what he did with his glove of bad oars, but this could change him and he did, he fixed this team with the benefit of hindsight, we know that containment on the field was not in the cards for the seattle sailors and He has never been to this day that never happened the only fight left was for happiness for a year at least it was a fight they won his junior years in cincinnati they didn't go the way anyone wanted in his eighth and after half a season there , the Reds were never a serious contender, leaving him once again with his individual goals, the most important one, the one everyone wanted to see, being Griffey's challenge to the all-time home run record.

No one expected him to maintain this breakneck pace throughout his entire career. career, but shortly after landing in Cincinnati his numbers fell off a cliff, he kept getting hurt, it's one of the most frustrating things I've seen as a sports fan over a six-year span, he had missed over 400 games, around fingers. The seasons and a half worth his attempt to become the greatest home run hitter of all time were over. Junior never made it to the top of the mountain either as a member of a team or individually in the short or long term when he finally returned to Safeco Field as a visiting player in 2007, the future we had all imagined for him was gone, but to the fans The Mariners didn't care about any of that, they went crazy for him and when Junior's bat came back to life at the end of the 2009 season.

They all went crazy for him again, he hit three home runs in the last stand at home and He singled in his final at-bat after fellow players threw Junior and each row over their shoulders and paraded them back to the dugout. Alex and I have spent Months thinking about the Mariners, what they mean, what they are for, how to appreciate them, the ultimate irrelevance of success on the field, the importance of celebrating a team for what it is and not what it could be , and then I saw this, it's like this team and these fans got it all along.

Did I come late to the party. What you're looking at now is a team that won't go to the playoffs. They weren't even close, but they are getting a standing ovation and high fives. their caps in gratitude this is whoville i have never seen another team do this this team and these fans are not celebrating any kind of accomplishment on the field they are celebrating each other they are celebrating themselves right now what the baseball gods offered junior, the perfect ending to his career, something like a world series title would have compromised the lesson here, his career should have ended at this moment, one in which he was the object of unconditional love, but junior did not accept this offer of the gods of baseball. he would return for one more year things can never be simple things will never end the way they are supposed to end not for ken griffey jr not for the seattle sailors the instinct to return home can be overwhelming but actually doing so is a different matter . 1986 the Yankees are a few innings away from a game.

His left fielder Ken Griffey Sr. is supposed to be there, but he's not. He is so miserable as a Yankee that he decided to stay home across the river in a jersey and skip the game entirely that the team sent. a state trooper to check on him the older man ignores him walks to his car and drives south as far from the bronx as he can after about an hour on the Jersey Turnpike the older man turns around and drives back the younger one returns for another year at 40 years old playing exclusively as a designated hitter he is hitting 184 he is terrible by some measures due to the level of production expected from a dh 2010 ken griffey jr is on pace to become one of the worst players in major league history Weeks ago in baseball a couple of teammates leaked to the press that Junior had been found sleeping in the clubhouse in the middle of a game Junior did not deny it but the betrayal hurt him everything hurts in fact it is the bottom of the ninth inning on May 31.

They send him to pinch hit with a man on first. He has a bad knee and that makes his swing look terrible. His old swing, the most elegant swing baseball has ever seen, is a thing of the past. He now commits a foul. They put a chyron on him to mock him. us with what everyone in the building wants to see just one more home run from ken griffey jr he hasn't hit a home run all year that's not going to happen nick's pitch is low and junior loved these ones he hits it's like the store owner shooing a rat outside by offering an almost tailor-made double play, but justin morneau can't get the shot out of the junior's safe despite having staggered to first like a child wearing his father's boots, He calls himself a pinch runner and leaves the game that night Junior picks up a couple bottles of Mountain Dew, gets in his car and drives east, he doesn't tell anyone that his old friend Jay Buenoer gets a call from a friend who he insists up and down that he just saw ken griffey jr filling up his car at a gas station in montana that's impossible the sailors have a game in seattle today but he couldn't stay a minute longer he couldn't wait anymore he misses his family immensely in Orlando Florida and he is driving home without stopping to rest it is a trip that he says takes 43 hours, you can doubt him if you want, just remember who you are doubting.

He calls his dad three times on the way and tells the older man how happy he is with what he is doing. He has to go home, there is no press conference, no ceremony, no parade, just two headlights in the darkness, welcome to the era of Félix Hernández, the crown jewel of recent Mariners history carried the team on his back for years, at least as much as a starting pitcher can It's not because you see that no matter how well one pitches, he won't put runs on the board for his own team and when it comes to run support, forget about halfway, sailor bats usually neither They couldn't even catch up with him one step along the way, for example.

In 2010, Hernandez, 24, pitched magnificently but didn't even make the all-star team as his 7-5 record was considered too disappointing by voters stuck in the stone age when the season ended. His record of 13 and 12 was even worse. That's because the Mariners scored a pitiful 513 runs that year, the fewest of any team in a full season since 1972, and for Felix they were somehow even worse. Take a look at the run support his lineup provided in his 12 losses, in fact 4 in Anaheim. serves as an outlier here, as he scored an embarrassingly low 10 runs in the other 11 games, obviously, none of this is any kind of indictment against Hernandez, who is clearly the best pitcher in the American League.

Fortunately, there was no duplication in the egregious All-Star snub of him. and was able to legitimately win the el cyan award to put into context how little help he received was here are each of the 110 instances in which starting pitchers won that award through 2019, ordered by the percentage of their decisions made up of losses before of felix not the starting pitcher who won the cy young had a mark over 40. hernández at the top is 48 percent in the time since jacob degroms surpassed 40, but that's it, no one else has even come close, It takes a special brand of incompetence to take on such a special season from a pitcher without even having any inherent advantage in the ballgame when he's on the mound.

He also did something only two other pitchers in the 21st century have done: pitch at least seven innings and allow no more than two earned runs in more than 20 different games with no one in 2010, even in his neighborhood, the mirrors managed to take one of the great pitching seasons in recent history and completely wasting it, by the way, the other two beer pitchers who have done it this century, 2009 Félix Hernández and 2014 Félix Hernández, but I want to focus on one game from 2012 for a second, specifically the afternoon of August 15 with Tampa Bay Raisin Town, although they would have been better off just hitting the snooze button and not.

He didn't even bother to show up, and in reality, after Felix sat everyone in the lineup the first time, his own outfielders for the most part didn't even need to be there, whether Trayvon Robinson, Michael Saunders, and Eric Thames just didn't would have taken their usual positions on the field after the third inning and with the exception of just one fly ball by Benzobrist, it would have had no implications on how the game played out because the other 17 of Tampa's last 18 appearances resulted in 10 strikeouts and 7 weekly hits to infielders. one of only four times a pitcher struck out a dozen in a combined perfect game that almost never allowed a ball to leave the infield, and a reasonable argument can be made that this was as dominant as any pitching performance in baseball history.

It all culminated at 3:02 pm with this corner kiss switch that left Sean Rodriguez more frozen than absolute zero in what was truly a crown-winning masterpiece written by King Felix and since Seattle got a pair for the field's only singular race something less than that. It probably wouldn't have been enough, but he made that move because from start to finish Felix was a perfect game. A perfect game finally happened in a Seattle mansion. The king did it, which is what's known as the king's court, the special section in left field. reserved by the team every time King Felix takes the mound no one else got that honor, not even the junior, even among this pantheon, Felix is ​​special, these were fans who just weeks before had to watch their most beloved superstar walk out Through the door.

It was a trade that Ichiro had requested not only that it was a trade with the Yankees whom the Mariners were setting up for a three-game series. Their first at bat and pinstripes just hours after leaving, the Mariners arrived at Safeco Field, if this was any other team or in any other city this could have been ugly and yet nothing was going to change his love for israel suzuki they cheered him when he bowed and they cheered him again when he hit a pitch into center field it was a decision ichiro had made made out of love, he knew he was expensive, that his skills were declining at 38 years old and that Space had to be made for the sailors' reconstruction efforts.

Seattle fans in general seem to understand that it is as foolish as it seems to reduce a you appreciate sports this way, your happiness is no longer at stake with these stupid b l lists out there. There are no limits anymore, the love you can send is infinite, you can give it to the one who wears a different uniform, now the one you are supposed to hate more and of course you can also give it to the one who stayed, Felix stayed. for 15 seasons longer than any Sailor in history, other than Edgar Martinez, the next winner at the peak of his powers, could have entered free agency and gone wherever he wanted, instead he stayed while the Mariners gave him They paid well.

Felix surely passed up tons of money. stay with this team that had been terrible almost the entire time he was here practically anyone else with his transcended ability would never have done it that junior didn't do it randy didn't do it a-rod didn't do it felix and in doing so, he paid a price in terms of wins above replacement. These are the 50 best pitchers of the 21st century, based on the number of trips each of them made to the postseason. Many of Felix's teammates have appeared in the playoffs on a regular basis. the vast majority have been there at least four times almost all have been there several times Felix, having tied his fate to that of the Mariners, is the only one who has never appeared in a single playoff game, not that he wasn't close, It was regular.

Major League Baseball had expanded its playoff format to allow for a second wild card team in each league, and in 2014 the Mariners and A's battled for that final spot. The win-loss table looks like two people trying to avoid a party once the A's started. Failing, the Mariners timidly abandoned their positive momentum and hid behind it on the morning of the final game of the season. The place was still up for grabs. The Mariners' victory that afternoon, coupled with an A's loss in Texas, would force a one-game tiebreaker. that could lead Seattle to its first playoff appearance in 13 years and guess who got the ball.

The first pitch of the A's game is scheduled about an hour before the Mariners game. Seattle fans in the stadium likely hearing the final score of that game in the middle of this game will need a distraction and they'll get one in the form of a Félix Hernández masterpiece. Felix knocked down the first two angels andthen he singled off Albert Pujols. That's all they'd get out of him as he immediately sent pujols back to the basement with the third out, he was firing on all cylinders at one point striking out four in a row and then hitting six consecutive infield ground balls the ball hadn't even left the infield in more of three innings after five innings without pitching earned runs one hit without walks seven strikeouts on this Sunday afternoon King Felix was invincible Mariners fans are closely watching two things: the game on the field and the game on the scoreboard, as any baseball fan will tell you, the latter is an especially stressful experience.

It tells us very little, but it does tell us that at the bottom of the ninth, with a man on first, the Rangers have the start of a meeting on the field, while the newly acquired superstar sailor Robinson Canoe hits a single to lead off the bottom of the fifth here everything is as it should be and it's over congratulations to the Oakland Athletics they hung on a foul ball sails towards the king's court a fan makes a beautiful catch with his bare hands they are going crazy they haven't heard it yet but Félix has his The face here says it all in his 10 years with the Mariners up to this point, Félix Hernández has never been this close to playoff contention and to this day he has never been this close again and God , how he wanted it with the playoff race over manager Lloyd McLendon. gives Felix the rest of the day off, sends him to the mound in the sixth just so the fans can send him off with a cheer, and as such, Felix is ​​officially credited with five and a third innings pitched, that's every start of exactly five. and a third of innings between 1904, the first available data goes back to the end of this 2014 season, in total there were 9777.

They are plotted here by game score, which is a metric developed by renowned baseball writer Bill James. The game score is a rating intended to evaluate the overall quality of a pitcher's performance. Felix's game score that day was 73, which seems likely to have been the best start of exactly five and one-third innings in major league history. baseball leagues, the sailors have taught us time and time again that no player can do it alone like a pitcher who in his prime was able to completely take over a baseball game like no one else could. Félix Hernández came closest to breaking this rule, but even when you can, you can't, the Mariners are out of the great beyond now throw away your compasses, they don't work here, while normal teams experience phases of success and recovery that last for years Since 2013, the Sailors have had a losing record, a winning record, a losing record, a winning record, a losing record, a winning record and a losing record.

There is no reasonable way to set expectations for where they will finish in a given season. This is the footprint of a team that refused to completely rebuild and who can blame them because rebuilding is boring instead they did something they had never tried before in the 90's they built their teams from scratch recruiting juniors and a- rod landing randy in a trade as an afterthought and taking edgar out of a general electric factory the makeup of the incredible 2001 team was very different. They got a mega star at a big price and surrounded him with a rock solid supporting cast in the offs, they became relatively big spenders on the free agent market for the first time landing Adrian Beltray and Richie Sexton, but this time They seem to be wondering what if we paid an absolutely gigantic amount of money to one guy, hey, what was that lesson we've been learning over and over again for the last 30 years and more that one person can't lead a team? to greatness?

Yeah, what the hell was one of? the most unexpected free agent signings in history and it was like they were trying to buck the tide of history randy johnson later became a yankee so did a-rod so did tino martinez so did ichiro thanks to his eternal blood feud with the yankees They never could have had Junior, but they could have had almost anything else they wanted, and yet it was the Mariners, the team that almost never made a splash in free agency, who came out of nowhere to take out a superstar second baseman in New York 10 years ago. $240 million sailors from all teams had awarded one of the largest contracts in the history of sports and the architect behind the deal was his agent brodie van wagonen, do me a favor and remember that name for a minute if you can anyway canon van Wagonen left like bandits because at the time of the agreement, Canoe was already 31 years old, there was no denying what a great player he was, but the sailors should have known that he would regress at 30.

He did, although Kanoa still It was quite productive. Only two of his five seasons in Seattle were canoe-caliber in 2018, Kano was arrested for allegedly violating the league's ped policy and suspended for 80 games after the season, the Mariners were lucky to escape this deal when They dealt him to the Mets, who took on most of the rest of his contract just in time to see his numbers bottom out. Aside from Canoe, the big winner in this deal was Brody Van Wagonen, who pulled off one of the most one-sided deals in the game. century. The big loser was clearly the Mets' general manager, Brody Van Wagonen, who went from being a top baseball agent to a front office executive.

He took a career leap that he had never heard of before, just in time for her to accept the end of his own deal from him. I have no explanation for this, maybe he was just trying to be polite in any case. Robinson Cano made the Mariners a slightly better team than they otherwise would have been the 2016 team. He deserves sympathy from him. They had the fourth-best run differential in the league, scoring 61 more runs than they allowed. That should be enough to get them into the playoffs, especially in the new 5-team format, but as long as their neighbors.

Didn't they do it by a wide margin? The Texas Rangers won the AOS despite a much less impressive run differential. Pythagorean wins and losses solve this by presenting the record that would be expected of a team based on their run differential looking at the Mariners' differential. one would expect 87 wins, which is almost exactly what they got in real life, but if we look at the Rangers we would expect much less than 95 wins, just 82, in fact this suggests that the Rangers got lucky and scored at the right times throughout the season. and if it were not for that, the sailors would have won handily in the west.

This is a fantasy tool for nerds who have nothing better to do than count beans all day. That describes me accurately, so let's continue here, we look at the differences between the Pythagorean victories. and actual wins by each team in the integration era, there are almost 1800 teams here, some had incredibly unlucky luck and ended up with far fewer wins than their run differential would suggest the vast majority finished where you would roughly expect a pair. of wins, some were very lucky, but the only team that had more absurd luck than anyone else in modern times was the 2016 Rangers team.

That outrageous amount of luck is what kept Seattle out of the playoffs that year. Now, the 2018 Mariners, who won 89 games and lost. the playoffs don't feel bad for them, here is the run differential for each team to win exactly 89 games within the modern 162 game schedule, most have a very strong differential, all have a positive differential except the 2018 Mariners , the worst team in this sample by miles. Let's visit this chart again in the list of the luckiest teams of the modern era. These Mariners are right behind the Rangers at number two. If this sounds familiar, it's because I stole Alex's script word for word when he talked about 2007, when the Mariners pretty much did the same thing. exactly the same modern seattle sailors are not cursed they are not desperate they are free the burden of greatness is gone the age of expectations is over they are free to delight in what today seems like an endless aimless and deeply strange epilogue only as They were in the early days, it's true that strange and stupid things happen to all baseball teams, but simply put, sailors have a gift, speaking of sailor gifts, one of them was possibly a home run as shocking as There has been in the history of the major leagues.

Let's go back to 2008 a bit, now that you're familiar with Felix, we already know all about his pitching prowess, but when he was just 22 years old, he hit this grand slam against the Mets at Shea Stadium in just his ninth career run since the birth of the Mets. Mariners in 1977 through the 2019 season, which was one of 233 plate appearances by a pitcher with bases loaded, was the only one that resulted in a grand slam, okay, that's cool and unlikely, but I want to know what did it exponentially more ordered and improbable than alone. A one-of-a-kind grand slam was hit by the pitcher who had the best era in all of Major League Baseball that season.

In fact, Johan Santana was in the midst of what was arguably the best season of his career, a career that earned him multiple Saiyong Awards. On top of that, he hadn't allowed a grand slam in nearly five years and more than 1,000 innings and that streak was broken by a pitcher, a beer pitcher, a pitcher who, by his own admission, had never hit a home run at any level. of sports since little league there is nothing on this planet that makes less sense than baseball turned out to be the penultimate grand slam ever achieved by a visiting player at shea stadium the last one also hit by a pitcher the cubs jason marquis again nothing about this sport makes a lot of sense in 2010 the mariners made a reasonable bet on eric burns once an mvp candidate mearns was signed for the minimum after a couple of injury filled years that almost took him out of baseball completely the first few weeks were really tough for Burns who was hitting only 111 but the Mariners were playing 500 baseball on April 30th they took the Rangers into extra innings with a chance to get a winning record in the bottom of the 11th with Burns at the plate and Ichiro at the third manager Don.

Wakamatsu calls a suicide squeeze if successful, there are a few more exciting ways to win a baseball game, the idea here is that you burn the buns at lightning speed, every euro is thrown home before the balls leave your hand of the pitcher and slides toward the plate before frank. Francisco can field the ball cleanly and throw it to the catcher. This is always an extremely risky decision because it all depends on Burns being able to make contact with the touch, if he doesn't, Ichiro will be completely hung out to dry Burns. to put his bat on it no matter what the 11 year veteran stands to make a bun francisco throws the pitch heads down and out what are you doing defies explanation with ichiro's fate at the line burns take back the bun it seems immediately realizing his mistake by reflexively pushing his bat over the plate even though the pitch has already been thrown this is now a murder grip on ichiro because he is ichiro almost makes it anyway reaching the plate just milliseconds after the attack this would have been the winner of the game instead of ichiro is out vern strikes out to end the inning the rangers win in the 12th the mariners start a streak of eight consecutive losses they never get close to 500 again and end with 101 losses the worst record of the American League remember the story of Junior's epic 43-hour exodus from Seattle, which occurred a month later, well, here's an extremely poor man's version of that story after the suicide debacle. manager and continued riding the Safeco field to his home in downtown Seattle.

This was his life now. Eric Burns retired soon after and became a triathlete, now cycling thousands of miles across the country. This is like something a Sim would do. Literally riding a bike out of the clubhouse, he was seamlessly and immediately reassigned from baseball player to cyclist. Incredibly spectacular. I am in awe of the first 43 years of Seattle Mariners baseball. 331 of their road losses in the 1921 regular season came when their opponent was at bat and came out victorious, that was more than any other team in their league except Toronto, but they found a way to lose that eluded even the Blue Jays, while the overwhelming majority of the Mariners' losses were obviously due to allowing game-winning hits in their pursuit of thoroughness, they managed to lose on a play in which they recorded a strikeout on September 29, 2010.

The EMS are holding a lead. of a fading career in texas before a wild pitch with the bases loaded by the relieverSeattle's Dan Cortes allowed the Rangers to tie. all, interim manager darren brown leaves cortez in the ninth inning game, where mitch moreland walks with two outs to get the winning run and bring nelson cruz to the plate with two strikes cruz chases this slider in the ground in what normally would have sent the game to the extras, but it is another wild pitch from Cortés and a bad throw from catcher Guillermo Quiroz sails into right field Moreland climbs onto his horse and begins a victorious 270-foot ride around of the base path to score a strange outfielder victory and if a baseball game that ends with a strikeout isn't crazy enough Cruz flirts with making it somehow even more outlandish see by getting there first for Kira Cruz's throwing error decides to turn around and attack towards a second logic that would be totally sound, if the Rangers had been down one or two runs but were tied, that is, with a man on crosses it represented an irrelevant run, furthermore, since there were two outs, It's not like he was trying to eliminate the potential for a subsequent double play ball, it was an affront.

For all rational calculations of risk and reward, fortunately for Texas, the natural instinct in that situation is to shoot home, and thus Cruz's brain fart was ultimately harmless, ensuring Seattle ignominy of the rarest kind. of all the losses that are a strikeout, a nice strikeout, Nelly in In July 2011, the Mariners lost 17 consecutive games to this day. It's the second-longest losing streak in Major League Baseball's last 30 years, but what makes this one special is that for a large part of it they managed to fall 10 games out of the standings. In a 10-game span on the morning of July 6, the Mariners were sitting at 500 and just two and a half games behind the AOS-leading Rangers, just 10 games later they were 12 and a half behind, out of contention, the odds of your 10 losing streak that perfectly coincides with the division leader's 10-game winning streak is extraordinarily long-shot.

To simplify things a bit, let's assume your odds of winning the game are 50 50, which for both teams is more or less the case, logically, the odds of you losing and your division leader's wins are 25 percent or one and four for that to repeat itself in the next couple of games as well, that's one in 16 As you might imagine, the number increases very quickly from now on, now the probability decreases a little for In this stretch of four games since the Mariners and the Rangers played each other, the United States losing automatically meant that the Rangers won. , so the odds of meeting the conditions expanded to one and two, but in the end the coin flip odds of this 10-game stretch are about 1 in 65,000.

This has happened at least once before, most recently with the 2002 Detroit Tigers, but that was at the start of a season with low expectations. The Mariners suffered this humiliation in the middle of a playoff race they were in. In the thick of it, but at the end of the season, when they were 29 games out, you would never have known it. Now that we have reached this era of Mariners baseball, we can finally talk about two players who are very near and dear to me. The first is Jack Wilson, a defensive shortstop extraordinaire who once made consecutive errors when they tried to convert him to second base in accordance with the time-honored Sailor tradition of appeasing himself without asking anyone's permission.

Wilson was so despondent that he went straight to the clubhouse at the end of the inning and decided not to return in terms of defensive winds above replacement. Wilson is among the top 50 defensive players of all time. He's pretty underrated in part because he wasn't a great hitter. and partly because he spent most of his career playing for terrible teams, but he made some incredible plays, the most memorable of which is probably this one from April 4th. Wilson manages to drag the toe for second and then spins to throw it to first despite his momentum. Taking it in the opposite direction, Jack Wilson only played for the sailors for a short time, but that's all the time he needed to perform the two miracles necessary for the sainthood of the foolish Maloufis.

The first came in July 2010, near the end of a 13-inning game. wilson runs down a bouncing ball up the middle turns double clutch and with a flourish throws it to first. I can hear the baseball police sirens approaching. Let me guess you have to have the baseball to be able to throw it. So limited thinking. The second of his miracles is more understandable in context, but it's still a lot of fun to see an errant pitch first send the ball into foul territory after initially chasing it. Wilson does what is probably the right thing, which is to detach himself and let Ichiro take it, it's just the way he does it.

You see, most of us saw this piece as an animated gif. In fact, most of us knew that Jack Wilson simply threw gifts. This is all we saw or knew of him at the time. A tremendously talented man. with a soul, a man with hopes and dreams, he was bottled up in a dozen of the funniest frames of his life. Our other hero is Raul Labones, whose career arc is one of the strangest I've ever heard, as he had three separate careers with the Sailors who were a kind of passenger comet who had visited during the Death Star years. late 90s, as well as the malaise of the mid-aughts before saying goodbye to her when she was 41 years old in 2013.

Much stranger, however, is how late she was, in fact, a great hitter. Ibanez was the last flourisher in baseball history. These are the guys who hit the most home runs from age 30 onwards. In this category, he hit as many as Manny Ramírez and almost as many. many like willie mccovey and ted williams, if you're surprised to see him here, believe me, i was too. Now let's take these top 25 and see how these same guys rank all-time in the under-30 home run category, as you might imagine. usual suspects like barry bonds hank aaron babe ruth and willie mays were also some of the best young home run hitters of all time, some were late bloomers with andre scalaraga in the 500th and nelson cruz in the 700s but no one is in the same Universe that Raoul Bonyes whose home run total before age 30 ranks 1925, only hit 27 home runs when he was 20 years old and although he hit the vast majority of his home runs when he was 30 years old.

What I find incredible is that he hit almost twice as many home runs when he was 40 than when he was 20. It's disconcerting, but it is in left field where he accomplished the two miracles necessary for sainthood. On August 6, 2013, the video went through the bones chasing the ball, squaring up to the infield and throwing it to the 27th base. He's not the only one to do this from time to time, the ball just slips out of his hand . It happens, but I knew I had seen him do this before May 3, 2008, today, this moment where he did the exact same thing is still alive, just threw a gif, it probably would have been instantly forgotten, where it wasn't for our blog sailors.

Look at all these games, over 2000 since 2005 and know that the bloggers and commentators at Lookout Landing told the story of almost each and every one of them, entry after entry, they could tell you stories for hours and hours, stories of Alex and I don't have no idea if success was the only thing that mattered. These people would have left a decade ago to stay requires what you might call insanity, but what I would call an evolved spirituality, a higher understanding of sports and what they can offer us, oh man. On September 13, 2014, the Mariners woke up with a record of 80 and 66 and were right in the thick of the wild card picture as they prepared for the second game of a great series against a team we already know Seattle was in a fierce fight. competition for a playoff spot, both teams have their ace on the mound so runs will likely be at a premium, mariners look to get on the board first when logan morrison draws a one out walk, next catcher Mike Zunino hits a hard ground ball to Oakland second baseman Eric Sogard, who turns it over to shortstop Judd Lowry to try to start a double play.

Now in baseball you see base runners occasionally take fairly wide slides in an effort to break up potential double plays, but the rule is that when sliding on a base, your body has to stay within arm's reach of the bag. Here's Logan Morrison's attempt to break the double play unless he plans to transform mid-slide into an inspection device. This is problematic. Morrison is a big guy at 6'3 and honestly, I'm not sure he's even within arm's reach of the bag let alone within arm's reach. The referees make the easiest interference call of their lives and award Oakland an inning that ends with a double play.

Maybe it wouldn't have mattered and Zunino would have been ejected anyway, but we will never know what could have happened. What we do know is that the Mariners lost that game by a single run. If it had been the other way around, the Mariners, not the A's, would have gotten the second wild card of beer, sometimes sailors are contagious and simply being on the same playing field as them can infect you with marineritis, like next year, on July 26, with the Blue Jays in town, when Toronto kicked off the top of the fourth with runners on the corners without anyone getting out. second baseman ryan goins, who hits a ground ball to mariner first baseman mark trumbo, who quickly steps on the bag to get an out, a blue jay, kevin pilar, gets caught in a jam and then the other blue jay, ezekiel ruta , gets caught in a bind, somehow, this ends inexplicably. with a meeting between the two at third base that is not allowed in the sport of baseball so the last pillar inhabitant is ruled out but hopes that there is more out of nowhere an extremely muscular ghost descends to the safety field to push the other blue Jay Carrera's bag tag was applied on the third out.

I haven't seen every triple play in the history of baseball, but I'll be damned if that's not the stupidest thing, if something in this story has somehow reminded you of the larger world that exists, in which These decades have been felt like centuries, it was a pure accident for which I sincerely apologize. This is the value that baseball brings to the Mariners, especially since nothing necessarily belongs to a larger theme or narrative arc, even though sometimes nothing is written, nothing is accomplished, nothing is taught. We learn that things only have meaning as long as we decide that they are.

It is purely a celebration of human beings. The best and strangest of the strange accidental stories they tell within this lunar colony. A Seattle Mariners game is a window into what our world could be like. If we didn't have important things to do all day, sailors have been a reflection of their time in a way, even if it was by accident, their mistake coincides perfectly with the emergence of the individual in our culture. The idea of ​​doing things collectively diminished in favor of doing it. all yourself, whether through the barrage of self-help books of the '80s, the craze of the '90s, or the rise and grind of modern times, similarly the only plaques or trophies these people could earn They were the ones who could go and The Sailors are almost like an mma training camp in this way, they don't compete for team titles, they provide a platform for the pursuit of individual greatness, as always with this team, this requires you to reconsider what It's a team and what a team. it may not be a flaw it's just the way they operate randy johnson was the first in this pantheon to enter the baseball hall of fame after his years in seattle he began a completely different new life in baseball at 35 years winning four consecutive cy young awards and leading the Arizona Diamondbacks to a world series title and only their fourth year of existence and that's how the Diamondbacks, a franchise 21 years younger than the Mariners, saw their hat represented on a Hall of Fame plaque before the Mariners, of course, Seattle didn't.

I have a long wait, I'm not sure any American athlete has been more universally loved than the junior, even melting the hearts of the notoriously grumpy Baseball Writers Association of America. The ballots are confidential and the last five or ten percent of voters are the hosts. cows that leave immortals completely off the ballot for reasons they will never have to explain, over five percent didn't vote for players like ricky henderson and willie mays, which should tell you something, but even they showed up for ken griffey jr, he wasn'tSimply a Hall of Famer, he was a man who received over 99 votes from the writers' association, the most votes in Major League Baseball history at the time, more than Babe Ruth Hank Aaron or Willie mays, a man who had never played in a single world. series, a sailor from Seattle in his hall of fame speech, junior paid tribute to senior by thanking him for everything he had done for him and made the decision to play baseball to support his family because that's what men do and I love them both for that. men could barely beat him, it was a very different story for Edgar Martínez, the night shift factory worker who managed to claw his way into professional baseball, he didn't play his first season in the Major Leagues until he was 27 years old. , suffered injuries that relegated him to a DH role and overcame vision problems that nearly ended his career in some ways.

Through it all, he became one of the most reliable big hitters in the history of the game. Edgar is one of the 18 players who finished with operations of at least five thousand. times while taking at least 600 plate appearances for each, that's where the reliable part comes in, what's more notable is that while the others started racking up these seasons when they were in their early 20s, Edgar didn't even start to function up to 32 years. He made it at home. races, yes, but also through an incomparable ability to smash doubles in all directions and practice incredible game discipline.

He mastered the art like almost no one has if he hadn't, would the Mariners have gotten every win they needed? force that playoff at 95 someone else would have hit that double would the sailors exist today edgar's status as a career DH severely damaged his hall of fame candidacy as if it were his fault that the d8 is a position in baseball like all players who had 10 years of eligibility to break the 75 threshold needed for a plate in the first six years his candidacy went nowhere, but Junior and Randy began campaigning for him, as did other baseball stars who told stories how terrifying it was to throw at him, whatever the reason.

Edgar's true fashion peaked late and in his final year of eligibility he was voted into the hall of fame along with Junior and Randy. He joined Dave Niehaus, who received the hall's Ford C Frick Award just a couple of years before he passed away. The remaining question mark from these years is A-Rod, after leaving Seattle, he turned Heel. Fans and media resented him. For whatever reason, they were able to find out how much money he made. I hire it from him. He disputes with the Yankees. The fact that he wasn't Derek. jeter steroid use that he finally admitted meanwhile he was busy cobbling together not one but two hall of fame caliber careers these are the operations of every man in the history of baseball to play at least 1,000 games in his career as a shortstop and this chart is the same story only for third baseman a-rod who is trading to the yankees he needed to move to third base pretty well on both leaderboards by this standard he is the best hitting shortstop of all time he is also , by nose, the best hitting third baseman of all time. -rod is the anti-junior the Seattle team phenom who chose to use steroids who was willing to play for the Yankees who eventually won a world series ring it's a pastime among baseball fans to wonder what junior would have accomplished if fate didn't had taken a sledgehammer when he was 30 years old, well, maybe in Alex Rodriguez we will see the answer thanks to his admitted use of steroids.

There's no telling exactly what voters will do with A-Rod when he's eligible to vote in a couple of years, perhaps. he hurts maybe he's been rehabilitated for a second life as a CNBC idiot. I really hope he makes it. I love this nonsense in 2019, the Mariners started out winning 13 of their first 15 games, which was the most in Major League Baseball, and in fact, it was so remarkably good that, over seven decades, 21 of the 29 other teams never started a season winning more than many of their first 15 games, the Seattle Mariners had never started so well, not even in their historic 2001 campaign, they only won 11 of their first 15, but then the 2019 m immediately lost 37 of their next 49, also the most in MLB and a streak so remarkably bad that six other teams during that same period have never suffered as many losses in any 49-game stretch. again an absurd fluctuation of all-time highs that instantly plummet to all-time lows only the sailors it was all part of a season in which thanks to the no shortage of injuries and effectiveness and losses due to blowouts Seattle used 42 different pitchers, the most in the history of major league baseball, they broke the record. that they themselves tied just two years earlier the mariners had now spent a literal generation wandering the abyss of mlb there are real human beings on this earth born after october 2001 who have reached adulthood without ever having existed for a career of Marines playoffs and through those annoying 18 seasons that followed their qualification to the 01 postseason in which they failed to make a single return trip. 28 of the other 29 MLB teams had secured multiple playoff appearances and even the Marlins get a pardon for turning their only trip into a world championship.

This was the year. The last two great sailors said goodbye as they began their season with a series at the Tokyo Dome. Ichiro Suzuki, 45, prepared to play the last two games. He was created purely to please the public, since his abilities had almost disappeared. The last appearance for Ichiro, the oldest outfielder to start a game in more than 100 years, came so close to an infield single. Junior had made the trip to Japan so he could be there to greet him. There was also Felix, who was now truly the last. great sailor has been gone for the past 30 years in a row the sailors have always had at least one iconic player on their roster, but while ichiro is guaranteed to make the hall of fame the moment he's eligible, things aren't that simple for Félix Hernández's fastball. he regressed and as he struggled to adapt his effectiveness quickly disappeared, he went from excellent to good, average to terrible by major league standards, being a penance for the Seattle Mariners and world series titles were never on the line for him , leaving things like a hall of fame. plate, the only hardware he could aspire to five years ago, seemed destined to have one in 2020 as he approaches his 34th birthday, but he struggles to stay in the major leagues.

It doesn't seem likely that Felix would have stayed in Seattle and given this. team and these fans, every part of himself until there was not much of anything left, the team was going to move on when he took the mound for the last time, everyone knew it was the last time, it's true that his last start was a loss that He lowered his record to 1-8 in the season that allowed five hits and four walks and five innings and change and that the sailors were lucky to only be losing three to one when he left the mound it is true that just a few weeks later the nationals Washington would win a championship leaving the Seattle Mariners as the only major league baseball team that has never appeared in a single world series, but when I see him say goodbye and when I see the king's court shower enough love for him to No matter what happens next, I'm talking about the king and his court one last time, who's to say what's next?

Well, I guess it's a question of whether the last 43 years were an accident, Seattle sailors blindly stumbled upon the stories most strange and fascinating to people generation after generation purely by chance or other reasons they are eccentric because their lack of conquest in the field allows them to be so geographically remote that the relentless march of the normal cannot reach them if their fans love them so unconditionally that they Allows them to ferment into something so captivating They are touched by God They will always be like this before I disappear forever Nearby resident Roger Smodus, who suggested the name of this team, also provided an explanation for why you like the name I have selected sailors because of the natural association between the sea and Seattle and its people, who have been challenged and rewarded by it so that you