Mariners Sadness Top Ten

Dear reader(s),
Recently I found this article on the Yahoo Sports.  I read it assuming it would be good for a laugh or two since clearly there are exactly ZERO "best things about being a Mariners fan" this season.  What made me so furious was that the whole top ten list was so serious, humorless and 100% lacking in originality or entertainment value.  Naturally I had to write up a rebuttal.  Hopefully slightly more fun to read.  Welcome to hell:


Top Ten Ways To Immediately Improve the Seattle Mariners Baseball Team

**note** if you are expecting this to be a remotely tasteful top ten list or anything that should qualify to be read by anyone, you are guaranteed to be disappointed.  Not only that but you will wish you had never read this.  In fact, you may never dare to log into facebook ever again..  Congratulations.  You just checked into the mental illness hotel.  Enjoy your stay.  **end note**

10.  I'll start slow admittedly.  Trade Ichiro.  I know how that sounds but listen to the logic:
Then we can once again call the right field bleachers "The Bone Yard".  Area 51 bothers me.  Always did.  I had a conversation with a person a few years ago that had sat in the right field bleachers.  I said "oh cool you sat in the boneyard!"
the person just stared at me clueless.  No recollection of the great Jay Buhner.  Not many people would even know how to react today to that kind of unbridled thunder in the batting order.  I say more Jay Buhner.  Be it on the tv broadcast or selling himself like a prostitute as spokesperson on car commercials or hardware store ads.  I can't knock him.  He is the bone.  More Buhner.  More Bone Yard.  Unfortunately this means no more Ichiro.  Sor-ry.

 9.  Start selling tickets by the inning.  Baseball equivalent to the hourly rate hotel.  My guess is on average three innings worth is just about enough for any given ticket holder to get the idea that what they are watching is a joke.   Just about the time they realize they can't take anymore, "oh hey good I only paid for 3 innings anyway!" 

 8.  STOP the peanut ban day at the Safeco Field.  I am being serious.  One day at the F'ing BALLPARK my only job was to shake down fans for peanuts like they were sneaking contraband into a prison.  I do not wish to get long-winded on this one.  I will say this in closing.  If you are allergic to ballpark food, maybe you should not come to the ballpark.  Sorry for the simple logic there.  No, I don't care what your rich asshole parents have to say.  Let us eat our goddamned peanuts in peace.  This would never fly in the Bronx.

 7.  Stop picking on Ken Griffey Jr.  If anything pick on the guy that put the LazyBoy chair in the clubhouse in the first place.  If I was a washed up future Hall of Famer that was not in the lineup that day I'd go ahead and take a nap too.  Just my opinion. 

 6.  Fire General Manager Jack Zduriencik.  I'm surprised I don't hear this more often from others.  I have a feeling some of you might agree with me.  This guy couldn't build a little league team.  How dare he not trade Chone Figgins?  I would have traded Figgins for a box of rocks and eaten his salary just to not put Mariners fans through another season of him embarassing the team.  No excuses.  Milton Bradley?!  Eric Byrnes?!  An army of young "hitters" that cannot hit?  You get the idea.  Pathetic.

 5.  Find an owner that cares enough to actually come to a game.  The M's play in Japan and the guy still can't get out of the house?  This is sad. 

 4.  Stop dredging up the retired corpses of players from the glorious 2001 team that didn't even make the world series.  Enough marketing meetings that go something like this:
"Hey how about another 2001 team member throwing out the first pitch...or singing the national anthem?"
"Good idea.  I hear Paul Abbott will do just about anything for a free plane ticket and a $20 McDonalds gift card"
"Fantastic!  Book him!"

3.  Stop broadcasting games on the radio.  Without the late, great Dave Niehaus it is just depressing.  I listened to a few innings the other day.  Ken Wilson?  Really?  zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

 2.  Fire Eric Wedge and hire any random drunken ex New York Yankee as Manager.  It worked well with Lou Piniella.  Too bad Billy Martin is dead.  Lets throw out some names.  Maybe Donnie Baseball wants out of LA.  As long as he is hammered in the post game press conference I don't care who he is.  

1.  More steroids in the clubhouse.  If there is one thing I have learned from sports related steroid scandals of the past it is that chemists are always creating new designer steroids that piss tests cannot yet detect.  That is how they get away with taking them.  The players that get caught taking steroids are the ones that screw up and take the wrong ones that the league is actually testing for.  Health concerns?  I don't care.  If you play for the Mariners steroids are now mandatory.  Whatever it takes to start lighting up the scoreboard more than once every two weeks.  Trust me fans will return, hope will return, entertainment will return.  Who really cares if athletes take drugs?  We're not talking about surgeons or school bus drivers here.  They are entertainers.  Let them entertain us.  Baseball was so much better before drug testing.  Just get me back to the 70's please.

*** For the record I self-editted 90% of the hate from this Top Ten.  You just never know who is reading and the last thing I need is to end up on a Homeland Security watch list.  As if I am not on one already for all the times I have cried for race war and jihad on the internet.  Just being on the safe side.  Believe me I was proofreading and even I was surprised at the level of white-hot full-on five-star hatred I was spewing.  Nobody needs that.  I would have been apologizing for the rest of my short life.  I think I still improved on the original horrible top ten list that inspired the above.***

My Brief Meeting With Dave Niehaus

Dear reader(s),
I hope you find the following semi-entertaining. It was an irrelevant event but in light of recent terrible events I thought someone might find it to be somewhat worthy of a read.

My whole life I have been looking not-so hard for the coldest, darkest, most depressing place on planet earth. I finally found it, and the place is called Safeco Field. It was a cold, damp and rainy friday night in late May 2010 when most folks were just starting to realize that we were watching what was inevitably going to end up being a 100+ loss season. As the 7th inning arrived there were few thoughts running through my head. They included:

"the second that guy takes his eye off his hot dog I'm snatching that sob"
"ignore the voices telling you to push that drunken red sox fan off the balcony to his merciful death"
"should I eat those abandoned french fries over there?"
and
"I cannot wait to get home so I can go back to sleep"

My commute home took a turn for the worse as my "captain" showed up and told me I had wheelchair duty after the game was over. My captain was an older guy, not in the mood for jokes or any childish behavior, so I accepted my assignment muttering only a quick and fearful "yessir". Wheelchair duty was a common and simple task most games. It consisted of getting a cheelchair, finding the fan in need and taking him to his car in the parking garage. On this day it was different. I looked at my slip of paper and noticed something unusual as it said "has own chair" and it did not indicate what level of the parking garage I was to take them to. I decided that was a bonus since that meant I didn't have to get a chair myself. After the game I found my fan and his wife. Right away I knew I was in trouble since I was feeling weak and helpless noticing the size of this guy. I'm not trying to be out of line here in any way but he had his own chair because he was a large dude. Obese to the tune of what had to be in the 400 lb range. i forced myself over to introduce myself and had a thirty second conversation with them that was completely one-sided since the icing on the cake was their apparent mental incapacitation. I did not understand one word either of them said while I talked to them:

me: "Hi there are you Tim (name changed to protect the not-so innocent)"
fan: "(unintelligible garble)...Tim"
me: "Okay I'll be your wheelchair guy after the game is over"
fan: "(unintelligible mumbling...garble...)"
me: "(pointing at the lady with him) are you together?"
lady with fan: "(mumble...drool)...wife"

The game ended and I grabbed Tim and we headed down the elevator to the skybridge that leads from the stadium to the parking garage. I still had no idea where we were going and there was no progress in our efforts to communicate. Finally they pointed to ground level where the buses were and I decided they must be taking the bus, meaning we had to go down the parking garage elevator. This was not good news since the game had just ended and the elevator was packed. The elevator arrived and the doors opened, I was afraid to look up but there was plenty of room for us so I made my move pushing the wheelchair with all my might onto the elevator. Still afraid to look up I saw a tall guy and a shorter older guy standing there in suits. I realized that the tall guy was Mike Blowers and the shorter older guy was Dave Niehaus. Never having met Dave Niehaus before I was clearly excited, but perplexed. I stammered through something about being honored to meet a true legend as I shook Niehaus's hand I looked him in the eye. Dave didn't crack a smile but was polite as I introduced the two handicapped fans I had with me. They didn't know who Dave Niehaus was but I explained:

fan: "(drool, mumble)...announcer?"
me: "That's Hall of FAME announcer!"
fan: "(confused look) (drool)"
Dave Niehaus: "(finally cracking a bit of a smile)

As we got off the elevator I realized that Dave Niehaus doesn't even have a parking spot in the secure private lot. I was instantly insulted by the fact that he had to ride the filthy urine soaked public elevator with the rest of us peasants. Maybe I'm wrong but that is just disrespecting Dave Niehaus. Get this man a private parking spot!. I uneventfully dropped the handicapped people at the bus stop for the special van and went on my way.

The point of this is to say that was the only time I met Dave Niehaus. I never thought too much about telling the story since it was pretty insignificant and unfortunately happened on one of the top ten worst days of my life. However, it is my only way of paying my respects to Niehaus. My first memory of him was listening to him on the radio in 1981 announcing a 6-0 game in the bottom of the 9th with 2 outs. Down six runs there was no hope of the M's winning, but Dave made it sound like the World Series as Jeff Burroughs and Richie Zisk hit back to back solo homers to seal the 6-2 defeat. I had my tape recorder running and listened to him announce those homers probably a hundred times played back. It made me a fan for life. Rest in peace Dave. The world is that much more unbearable without you in it. I'm honored to have met you one time. We will all miss you that much more on opening day when we turn on our radios and your voice is not there. Just sayin'. Screw Dave Sims. It's gonna be a long 2011 season.
Shawn