Baseball sucked when I was a kid. Not the game, though I can see why people are bored with it. No specifically the Mariners. They sucked and they sucked bad. Back in the late 80s and early 90s the Seattle Mariners where the saddest team in baseball. They played in a death trap of a stadium known as the kingdom, and they where as good as a AA ball club. Few kids I knew around my age if they followed baseball liked the mariners. Yeah people wore M's caps but it was few and far between. You saw plenty of A's hats and the occasional asshole with a Yankee cap. Their colors were pretty awful. I mean who the hell wears light blue and gold? And they had guys no one had heard of. If I went over to my grandparents house they would have the Mariners on and they usually where losing. Once we had on the Mariners-Yankees game.I was a self proclaimed White Sox fan cause my dad had got me a white sox hat, but of course it felt kind of weird. I asked my mom about liking the Yankees. We where of course working class, Maynard G Muskie vote loving democrats. She explained that if you where a republican you liked the Yankees and if you where a democrat you liked the Dodgers, but since the Dodgers where in LA you where supposed to like the Mets but the Mets where full of drug addicted thugs and the Mariners sucked so my best bet was to stay out of it all. Godbless my mom.
So I would follow the Mariners casually. Still trying to understand the game. My dad had been a pretty decent ball player in high school but because of his own issues he never reached his full potential. We never played catch but would talk about baseball. I on the other hand played little league and except for my first year, I enjoyed it tremendously . I of course wasn't the best hitter or fielder, but I had speed and a psychotic passion that would of scared the shit out of Bobby Knight. I was the little leaguer that would scream and yell and throw my helmet when I got out. And the player I looked up to was Ken Griffey jr.
If you don't respect or know who Ken Griffey jr. Is , you...well it's better then that we don't talk. Ken Griffey Jr was for one moment on his way to becoming as big as Michael Jordan. The man could do it all. He could hit like Ruth, field like Willie Mays and run like Ricky Henderson. He was strictly speaking the greatest baseball player of the 1990's and probably one of the five greatest of the past 50 years( yeah I fucking said it). Not only was he great but he was a Mariner and he was a Mariner that we developed. He was ours and in a city that gets no respect over our sports teams, he was a man that made people respect us.we weren't good but we had the best player in baseball.
We were truly awful but something started to happen, year after year we got a little bit better. We weren't Oakland with those roided out bash brothers or Atlanta which thanks to Ted Turner was Americas team. No the Mariners were becoming something else. They where becoming a motley crew of homegrown talent like a young less dbag esque AROD, Dan Wilson and Tino Martinez, journeymen like Edgar Martinez ,Joey Cora and Luis Sojo and guys that people didn't think had any potential such as Jay Buehner and Randy Johnson. And leading them was Sweet Lou Pinella, a prodigy of Billy Martin. A man who when he would lose his shit was the most entertaining thing in baseball. And at the for front was Griffey.
In 94 we where on our way to going to the playoffs and Griffey was on his way to breaking Roger Maris's home run record without steroids. That was until the strike happened and screwed baseball up for a period. The next year became something truly amazing.
If you where a kid in western Washington in the 1995, you probably have the same memories as I do. Griffey breaking his wrist and missing all those games, the M's fighting their way into the playoffs, the 20 game wining and the banner during that 20 game winning streak and our playoff run "Refuse to Lose!",the one game playoff with the Angels where we won and fans stormed the field in joy, and us coming back from being down three games to beat the invincible Yankees and then our eventual defeat by the Indians in the AlCS. It was a magical season.
95 was the first year I ever attended a Major League Baseball game. I went with my dad and I remember almost everything about it but I also remember it as a haze of home runs by Griffey,Jay Buehner and Edgar, 100 mile per hour fastballs by Randy Johnson and the deadening screams of the kingdom as fans cheered the Mariners to the playoffs and glory. I know it sounds cliched for a guy to say this about baseball ,but it was one of the best experience of my childhood. Screaming my lungs out, my dad yelling taunts to the pitching coach of Oakland. Yeah it was a religious experience.
Even though the Mariners lost,the 95 season saved baseball in Seattle. Griffey and the Mariners kept the team from going to Florida and gave us Safco Field. It installed a love for baseball for a whole generation of Washingtonians.
But of course this story went south pretty soon. We traded away Tino Martinez a beloved developed talent to the Yankees who used him to win four World Series titles. And even though we beat the Yankees in 95 we couldn't get over the hump. We traded away talent, destroyed our farm system and still couldn't get into the World Series. Finally Griffey left in 00 and after a record 116 win season in 01, Lou Pinella sick of all the bullshit from the owners left for Tampa Bay. Of course by then the only guys left from that 95 season where Jay Buehner, Edgar Martinez and Dan Wilson . And so the Mariners descended into hell.
By then I had moved to New York and took a casual likening for the Mets. But I would dream about the Mariners one day being good. It was painful to watch losing season after losing season. I didn't even know the names of most of these guys. And yes I was given shit for liking the Mariners by all of my friends. But even in the darkness there was a ray of hope. Griffey returned to Seattle and even though they didn't make the playoffs the Mariners were in the hunt and that alone was something to cheer about. But then of course it collapsed again and we had losing seasons and the owners haven't done squat to rectify it. . They've raised ticket prices on fans and haven't put the money into going after free agents. That's why last week blew everyone away when Robinson Cano signed with the Mariners .
People need to understand this doesn't happen for Mariners fans ,it really doesn't . Hell us keeping Felix Hernandez was huge,but going out and winning the top free agent on the market? THIS DOESNT HAPPEN! The fact that we took one of the top Yankees to boot, all I can say is fuck yeah.It's as if maybe the ownership maybe wants to win. I know all of you Yankees fans are like fine you can have him, he screwed up his career, you guys aren't going to win a World Series . And maybe your right, we did get a 31 year old second basemen and well we've seen how the Pujols and Josh Hamilton deals turned out. We may not win this season but it's a shift in the right direction and maybe it will be fun to be a Mariners fan again.
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