"Swung on and belted!"

Dave Niehaus, the soul of Mariner baseball, has passed away at seventy-five. In his honor, 710 ESPN has compiled some of his most memorable calls, late summer sunshine for a cold November night.

More audio at MyNorthwest.com

journey to The Bigs

I'm a little jet lagged from a trip to the East Coast, so the next couple posts are going to be link-heavy travelogues. But not mine, because I'm tired and hungry with a brain and stomach three hours ahead of schedule.

In the first series, Jim Caple slices up life at every level of professional baseball in Washington state (with a quick jaunt to its northern neighbor). It's of interest to baseball fans, Pacific Northwesterners, and, most of all, students of the American Dream: doing what you love and being paid for it.

Caple begins his odyssey in Walla Walla:

This fertile region grows everything from wheat to grapes to onions, and pretty much everyone is planting their own dreams here, hoping they'll take root. The general manager sitting behind home plate dreams of running a major league team. The young man in the play-by-play booth dreams of calling games for a top pro team or a big Division I school. The enology and viticulture student running the concessions dreams of operating a world-class winery. Even Sweet Lou, the giant onion mascot, is dreaming up routines for next season.

Continue with him to Victoria, Everett, and Tacoma--and, if you're one of a lucky few, stride into Safeco Field with a number on your back and a fatty paycheck in your pocket. The vast gulf between the majors and the minors will never seem vaster.

And when you're done, watch Sugar.

the ones that got away

Jeff Sullivan tackles the myth that ex-Mariners inevitably thrive upon exiting Seattle. A sample:

Cha Seung Baek: Traded to San Diego. Made 20 standard Cha Baek starts, got hurt, disappeared. Still has no reason to smile. Not better.

Wladimir Balentien: Traded to Cincinnati. Was okay, then lost his job. Demoted to AAA, where his OPS is under .700. Not better.

Miguel Batista: Signed with Washington, where he has more walks than strikeouts in relief. That the Nationals are rebuilding makes this doubly hilarious. Not better.

Adrian Beltre: Dominating in Boston with 33 extra-base hits and his usual defense, albeit with a few errors thrown in. Becoming popular for hating when Victor Martinez touches his head. Predictably better.

It's a nice reminder that confirmation bias is the enemy of rational fandom--if there is such a thing.

Also, don't bet on sports.

he fielded it... with science!

Jack Wilson, Seattle's new shortstop, serves up a little science to The News Tribune's Larry LaRue:

“I started to watch a batter’s hands and feet, his elbow and shoulders, his swing pass. Then, depending on your pitcher and what pitch he’s about to throw, you know what the hitter is most likely to do,” he said.

“I got good enough that in Pittsburgh, they let me set the infield defense. I moved an outfielder one time and one of the coaches asked why. I showed him the video of the hitter’s first swing and said, ‘Look at that. There’s no way he was going to be able to pull a ball with that swing.’ After that, they trusted me.”

It was more than study in the field. Wilson read up on the opposition.

“If a guy is in a slump, for instance, what’s he going to try to do? Keep the ball up the middle, go the other way. That’s how you try to get out of a slump,” Wilson said. “Pulling the ball gets you into slumps, it doesn’t get you out. So if a guy is in a slump, it doesn’t make sense to play him to pull.”

Glad to hear Wilson takes the Greg Maddux to the game: study, discipline, maximum effort--a welcome change from the laissez faire style of his predecessor.

Just stay out of Wilson's way when he's heating the Florence flask.



Update: The Times' Larry Stone explains why Wilson chose baseball over soccer--and how the world's game has helped him compete in America's pastime.

a perfect night for baseball

For a late father's day gift, I took Dad to yesterday's game at Safeco. Dad summed it up best. "I feel like I had a night on the town: chauffeured around, treated to dinner and entertained by a three-hour tragedy."

I hadn't planned on the last part, but there it was. On an otherwise perfect night for baseball, with a cool ocean breeze wafting into the stadium, the Mariners got shellacked by Cleveland, 9-0. The game might have slammed the door on their playoff hopes.

At least we each walked away with a Franklin Gutierrez bobblehead.


First, dinner at the Pyramid Brewery. We sat above the busiest kitchen in existence.



Down the third base line, during Cleveland's batting practice.



The view dead ahead.



Take it seriously.



Grady Sizemore, homebody, signs a few autographs before the game.



By the 9th, about half the crowd had disappeared. These lads were happy to grab front-row seats during the fateful inning.

Saturday with the Mariners and Mom

Top of the sixth. Dave Sims announces, "This inning it'll be Gutierrez, Ichiro, and Chavez." Gutierrez stands in. In the Anderson household, the following conversation occurs.

Mom: Is that Ichiro?
Dad: No, it's Gutierrez.
[Gutierrez hits the ball down the third base line and bolts to first. San Fran's third baseman Uribe makes the play, but it's a foul ball. Gutierrez heads back to the plate.]
Mom: Is he out?
Me: No. It was a foul ball.
Mom: Then they should punish him.
Dad: Why would they punish him?
Mom: Because he did something he isn't supposed to do.
Dad, amused: Then they should punish Uribe for throwing it.
Mom: He shouldn't do things that are confusing.
Dad: It's not confusing. Everyone knows what's going on.
Mom: Baseball is ridiculous.

A minute or two later:

Dad, teasing: Here's ol' what's his name.
Mom: Who?
Dad: Ichiro.
Mom: I can't see his face. All I can see is the top of his head. It could be anybody.... He does a dance at the plate. Doesn't he? He does. He was shaking his hips and everything... [Ichiro singles.] Come on, Ichiro. You need to get home or you're no good.

When Dave Niehaus retires, I know who should replace him.

mix it up

Last night the M's beat a pretty good Tampa Bay team behind spectacular pitching by Jarrod Washburn. How did that happen? USS Mariner's Dave Cameron explains:

He threw a 91 MPH fastball with hardly any movement at all (upper right corner), he threw an 89 MPH fastball that rivaled Brandon Webb’s sinker for movement, and he threw everything in between. There’s so much variation in velocity and movement that the pitch description algorithm kind of threw it’s hands up in the air and went on strike.

Just on his fastball, we’ve got a lot of four seamers, a few sinkers, a couple of cutters, a pair of splitters, and a few that are just generically labeled fastball because they don’t fit into any of the aforementioned categories. That doesn’t even include the change-up, some of which are probably actually sinkers, and move like his fastball just with less velocity.

Oh, and he also threw two distinctly different breaking balls, just for good measure

In other words, there was a party on Jarrod Washburn's mound, and every pitch type was invited.

Click through to see the pitch F/X chart that proves Cameron's point.

"choice blindness" and post-hoc rationalization

NewScientist has a recent article about a phenomenon related to the halo effect called "choice blindness."

Rather than playing tricks with alternatives presented to participants, we surreptitiously altered the outcomes of their choices, and recorded how they react. For example, in an early study we showed our volunteers pairs of pictures of faces and asked them to choose the most attractive. In some trials, immediately after they made their choice, we asked people to explain the reasons behind their choices.

Unknown to them, we sometimes used a double-card magic trick to covertly exchange one face for the other so they ended up with the face they did not choose. Common sense dictates that all of us would notice such a big change in the outcome of a choice. But the result showed that in 75 per cent of the trials our participants were blind to the mismatch, even offering "reasons" for their "choice"....

Importantly, the effects of choice blindness go beyond snap judgements. Depending on what our volunteers say in response to the mismatched outcomes of choices (whether they give short or long explanations, give numerical rating or labelling, and so on) we found this interaction could change their future preferences to the extent that they come to prefer the previously rejected alternative. This gives us a rare glimpse into the complicated dynamics of self-feedback ("I chose this, I publicly said so, therefore I must like it"), which we suspect lies behind the formation of many everyday preferences.

Read the whole thing to learn the scope of "choice blindness," and how it points to an everyday sort of epiphenomenalism.

I jinx Verlander; Mariners win

At 8:25 p.m. PST, with the Tigers up 3-0 and Felix looking shaky, Justin Verlander was unhittable. Perfect through the first four frames, he was slinging it at about 97 miles per hour, right on the corners, then dumping in sick breaking balls or changeups, totally baffling the Mariner lineup.

And then I jinxed him.


A reverse curse, voodoo as old as you can do, at least when it comes to sporting events. Within minutes, an inexplicable and precipitous collapse: Beltre doubled, Branyan singled, Lopez singled, Johnson sacrificed, Yuni reached on an error, Gutierrez bunt singled, Ichiro singled, Verlander hurled a wild pitch, and when the dust had settled, the Mariners had a 5-3 lead. Griffey would later score from first (!) on a Beltre double, dancing around a tag, and the M's bullpen would hold the Tigers in place.

Said Bill Krueger of the postgame show, "Something happened to him between the 4th and 5th inning, I'm not sure what."

I am.

an open letter to Ken Griffey, Jr.

Dear Ken Griffey "Junior" Jr.,

I promise in advance not to leak any future "Ichiro and The Kid" karaoke videos to YouTube.

Sincerely,

Me





Update: See? See?!

Griffey is a Mariner, they say

If the latest reports are to be trusted, Ken Griffey Jr. is a Mariner.

I am... unmoved. It's not just the whiplash of yes-he-is-no-he-isn't over the past few days. Nostalgically, I've got nothing. When Griffey roamed Kingdome turf back in the 'day, I wasn't much of a Mariner fan. Geography played the largest role--I lived in Montana during his rookie season, knowing him only through baseball cards--and when we moved to the Evergreen state in the early 90s, I settled on "America's Team" as my team. Atlanta. It was a bandwagon choice, I admit. I was twelve, so I think it's excusable.

It wasn't until I was in my early 20s that I realized that I would bind myself to Washington state for the duration, and so geography redirected my fanaticism. I've been a Mariner fan ever since.

But it's never been about individual players. Free agency precludes that. I may be young, but I'm old enough to remember the waning of the one-hero, one-team era. Kirby Puckett or Cal Ripken types who stayed loyal to the franchise. Those days are long gone, and it saddens me a little that I'm no longer saddened by the change.

Update: More Griffey-blogging, by Emmett O'Connell.

Chris's vengeance is complete

Our "woeful husk of a team" ended up losing 101 games. The resurgent White Sox, though, are headed to the playoffs thanks to a masterful pitching performance by John Danks and a solo shot by future HOF-er Jim Thome. Jr. Griffey even got in on the action, making a great throw to nail Michael Cuddyer in the fifth inning.

Ultimately, Griffey was smart to stay miles away from the radioactive Mariners, even though a lot of fans wanted him back in a bad way. Now we're on the outside looking down. In? That's months, if not years, away.

Chris, congratulations. Enjoy the good times. I'm rooting for your guys now.

Mariners reach 100

Losses, that is.

Congratulations to the Mariners for achieving the abyss for the fourth time in team history.

Nowhere to go but up, right?

Washburn vs. Span

Jarrod Washburn, in a recent series against the Twins, made my favorite play of the season so far, throwing out Denard Span on a bunt attempt. Washburn won that battle, but Span won the war. (Keep watching the highlights that follow to see how.)

vengeance is Chris's

The most beleaguered of all White Sox fans used to be Chris, pictured here.

Last summer, Melissa and I visited Cellular Field when the Sox were in last place, hosting a hopeful Mariner squad. We rooted for the M's amid a sea of depressed Chrises. Seattle won.

This year, Chris enjoys a White Sox team in first place, a joy mitigated only slightly by the Cubs' resurgence. (Last rivalry match went to the Sox.)

We, on the other hand, are cursed with a woeful husk of a team, nearly 20 games out of first, with at least four or five players on the trading or chopping block, all hope abandoned.

Chris has his vengeance. He is not smiling, though. He knows his dark days will come again. Such is the way of baseball.

Mariners decapitated; will filleting follow?

Bill Bavasi's gone, as is John McLaren. Who will replace them? And who's next on the chopping block? Respectively, we go to Jayson Stark for the GM candidates...

• The all-stars (Brian Cashman, Theo Epstein, Kevin Towers): Cashman and Epstein are both in the last year of their respective contracts, so you never know. Towers has done terrific work in San Diego for 13 seasons. But even though he just signed an extension through 2010, there are persistent rumblings that he has lost clout in the Sandy Alderson era and might be willing to listen to inquiries from a place like Seattle. Stay tuned.

• Ghost of Mariners past (Pat Gillick): Gillick has already announced he's retiring after this season. But it's hard not to notice that he's been hedging just enough lately to leave his options open. And he's long had a soft spot for his previous destination, plus he has a home near Seattle and an unusually high level of interest in the state of the franchise. So don't count out a return to some sort of high-ranking position, even though the official title might not read "general manager."

...and Jim Caple for the deadwood:

Sadly, with a 4-4 record and 4.14 ERA, Bedard barely cracks the Top 10 Biggest Disappointments for Seattle. Carlos Silva (he of the 3-6, 5.59 ERA and $48 million contract), Jarrod Washburn (2-7, 5.83 ERA, $15 million left on his contract) and Miguel Batista (3-8, 6.09 ERA) have been dreadful in the starting rotation. J.J. Putz has been ineffective and injured. DH Jose Vidro has a .563 OBP. Catcher Kenji Johjima is batting .224, and not one of the pitchers wants him behind the plate (though none of that stopped Seattle from giving him a three-year contract extension). And Richie Sexson, well, Richie doesn't have an extra-base hit in the past four weeks, but at least his $50 million contract expires in a couple of months.

Much more at the links.

There's certainly no hope for this season, and the next might already be beyond salvaging. Mariners in 2010!

Update: On cue, the Mariners won the first match of the Riggleman Era.

Howard Lincoln is ashamed of the Mariners

Howard Lincoln, chairman and CEO of the Seattle Mariners, at Western Washington University's commencement, wondering aloud how he could possibly inspire a graduating class:

Our team has performed so poorly that you probably don't want to hear me talk about the Mariners.

The self-deprecating line got a (tragic, ironic, soul-crushing) laugh.

Previously, when congratulating WWU's president, Karen Morse, who had introduced him, Lincoln praised her for being able to withstand "unending scrutiny of decisions."

Makes this blogger wonder if Lincoln is starting to feel the strain.

M's implode

Even the batboys and ballgirls are nervous, now.

Armstrong explodes privately:

Team president Chuck Armstrong berated members of the coaching staff Wednesday morning, hours before the imploding Mariners got swept out of a three-game series against the same Los Angeles Angels they expected to unseat for the AL West title.

Later, Armstrong refused to comment on the outburst during a 5-4 loss that sent Seattle to a season-worst 18 games under .500....

"What's said between me and the coaches stays between me and the coaches," Armstrong said through a team spokesman.

McClaren explodes publicly:

"I'm tired of (expletive) losing! I'm tired of getting my ass beat, and so are those guys!" McLaren shouted, jabbing his finger toward the clubhouse at the beginning of an expletive-laced tirade that emphasized his team is trying hard but not performing as it should.

Add to that McLaren's delusion that, in spring training, the staff had "five aces," and toss in a disillusioned Ichiro--"I don't think at this point it is even worth it to answer that question"--and you have the recipe for an all-out implosion.

a lament for the Mariners

Alas! This sodden team is dead,
Adrowned in muck and mire.
For once the other team's ahead,
From Rainier's slopes will surge lahar
To douse the rally fire.




[Tacky tie provided gratis.]

Mariners win! Mariners win!

With a save by J.J., with some pop from Ibanez and Johjima, and with a little insurance from Miguel Cairo (!) they avoided the sweep and beat the White Sox.

Not only that, but, for the first time this season, they came back from being two runs down.

That is as heartening, and dispiriting, as it gets.