I Am The Messenger

Some of you may actually still be paying attention to the Seattle Mariners this season. I myself was very excited for the season to begin, watching the Mariners fair pretty well during spring training. I went to a game early in the season in which we beat the LA Angels. Things were looking very promising. Raul Ibanez was one of the league leaders in RBI’s and Jose Lopez was pretty clutch with the bat this year, something he lacked last year. Even overweight new aquisition, Carlos Silva was off to a fast start going 3-0.

Well, then the proverbial sh** hit the fan. I keep finding myself wondering what happened? When the pitching was great, the offense was non-existant. When the offense was great (which is like, never) the pitching gave up 10 runs in the first 2 innings. Newly aquired Erik Bedard was openly complaining about the way Johjima called games, requesting to be caught by Jamie Burke, then the M’s signing Johjima to a really big contract when he was hitting under .220. First baseman Richie Sexson’s bat is still dead, Vidro isn’t hitting, Ibanez started to slump, McClaren is swearing during press conferences due to frustration, and Betancourt is constantly swinging at crap. Even Ichiro is having an off season…which for him is batting .295ish which I guess is actually pretty good. GM Bill Bavasi was finally canned the other week after many crappy trades that didn’t work out and negotiating several controversial signings/re-signings. I have to be at least a little happy that McClaren was fired, especially when he was having our guys bunt with 2 strikes and 2 outs to try and manufacture runs. Talk about desperate, but also not smart managing.

The M’s might as well face that the season is in the can and start playing for whatever pride they have left. I just have to wonder about next year. Is it time to re-build, or get an actual GM that can handle a 100+ million budget and can get good players to want to play on the west coast…much less Seattle? Unless you’re the Angels or a Nat’l league team, players probably don’t want to play for you if you’re a west coast team.

I will mention a couple of things that I am so glad to see due to the slumping season: 1.) SODO MOJO is finally gone off of the official Mariners site. The whole MOJO catch phrase always sucked, and let’s face it, that Austin powers knock off motto should have never existed. 2.) ‘You Gotta Love These Guys’ is also nowhere to be seen on the site as well…because let’s face it that motto sucked just as badly. And no, we don’t love this disfunctional group of overpaid underachievers. 3.) Maybe we’ll finally see Seattle keeping some of its young prospects instead of trading them away for one hit wonders that don’t even want to play for the M’s. George Sherrill is a good example of a Mariner we traded that wanted to be a Mariner, and a Mariner only. Not to mention that he was superb last season for us, and well, has 25 saves for the Orioles this year. JJ Putz has what, 7, and he’s hurt.

Through all of this punishment that we have to endure this season as fans, maybe we’ll start seeing a change at Safeco as well. I dunno, maybe less white collar and kid based. Sometimes it just feels like I’m hanging out at Chuck-E-Cheese when I’m at the Safe. It’s also annoying how when the Red Sox come to town, the entire stadium is full of Sox fans. Most of these Sox fans are from around here. Why? Cause they’re a winning team and Seattle fans suck. We should be learning from the Sox fans. They had to endure nearly a century of no championship. Why can’t we be a little more loyal like them?

Anyways, I’ll be hanging out at Cheney Stadium, watching our young prospects develope, and hoping our next GM won’t trade the progressing ones aways for garbage.

Megan and I are all moved into the new place. We still haven’t quite unpacked and arranged everything the way we’d like, but it’s coming along. We had internet put into the new place, started changing our addresses with places like the post office and other places we get bills from, and are getting used to being in a new place. I already enjoy not having to go up many flights of stairs to get to our apartment, especially after grocery shopping.

I told myself a few months ago that when gas prices hit $4 that I was buying a bus pass. I did. Today was my first day of taking the bus to work. It’s not too bad of a trip. My morning commute driving took me 25-30 min. The bus takes about 1.5 hours. It sucks having to wake up at 5am now instead of 6:35am, but it’s worth the sacrifice as we’ll be saving a lot of money on gas. Megan will pick me up after work as she works about 15 min. away. The bus is kind of nice to ride in the morning…except when you sit in front of a bum that smells like cigarette smoke, urine, and B.O. from lack of showering for several months.