The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly
“If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant’s life, she will choose to save the infant’s life without even considering if there are men on base.”
- Dave Barry
Ordinarily, I only write one column a year about baseball. It’s a self-imposed discipline, like eating only one peanut M & M. I have the nagging feeling that if I allowed myself to write about baseball as much as I want, I would descend into the Valley of the Shadow of Cliché that is most sports writing.
This, however, promises to be an unusual year, especially for the Mariners fan. Therefore, I am throwing caution to the winds, rushing in where angels fear to tread, and boldly going where no one has gone before. You see? It’s happening already.
I grew up in a small town in South Florida where the Milwaukee Braves took spring training each year. That was the team that used to be the Boston Braves and is now the Atlanta Braves. Milwaukee now has the Brewers and Boston has the Red Sox. That is the strength of baseball: Tradition!
In the late 1950’s, the Milwaukee Braves ruled the National League the way Saddam rules Iraq: sheer terror. Joe Adcock, Johnny Logan, Del Crandall, Wes Covington. Don’t recognize any of those? How about Lew Burdette, Warren Spahn, Eddie Matthews and Hank Aaron? The only thing that kept them from dominating baseball entirely was the Yankees. The epic battles those two teams waged in several World Series helped make me a baseball addict at a very tender age. And, of course, I developed a fine contempt for those slickers in pinstripes. I have now been a Mariners fan for the entire 26 years of their existence. My disdain for the Yanks remains steadfast. I wouldn’t hate them so much if they weren’t so damn good. So often.
A lot of the Mariners fans seem to think that après Lou, le déluge. Certainly, we’ll miss Sweet Lou’s Oscar-winning tantrums unless new manager Bob Melvin is a lot more volatile than he appears. In addition to his movie-star looks, Melvin is a former catcher. Catchers-turned-managers have had a pretty good track record lately. Mike Sciosia and Joe Torre come to mind.
There’s no doubt that Melvin has a solid, veteran team to work with. Veteran, meaning that they are getting a bit long in the tooth. They looked and played tired toward the end of last season. GM Pat Gillick made some trades during the off-season that should beef up the bench. If Melvin can keep the ancient Mariners healthy and rested, they should kick some serious ass. That’s the good.
Now for the bad. Umpiring has always been a source of high blood pressure for fans and players alike. That’s because it is based on judgment. At one time, that judgment was founded, in theory, on a fairly consistent set of rules. The strike zone was well-defined and known to everyone with the slightest familiarity with the game. No longer. It now seems to be as fluid as a political promise.
One game, the zone will approximate the size and shape of the state of Idaho. The next game it will be more like Tennessee. This is unfair to everyone. The pitchers have to spend the first three innings of each game finding out where a particular umpire’s strike zone is. By the time they have found it, it is often too late. Same for the batters. They have no idea what they need to swing at until their last at-bat, if then. When you see the batters, pitchers, managers and announcers from both teams expressing astonishment at what is and is not a strike, there is something seriously wrong. It is time for Major League Baseball to exert some of its generally misused authority and insist the umpires adhere to some consistent standard. Even Idaho is OK as long as we know what to expect.
And finally, there’s the ugly. It was truly painful to watch the game’s best designated hitter, Edgar Martinez, try to run last year. ‘Gar is no speed merchant even when he’s healthy. He blew out a quadriceps early last season, missed about a third of the games, and wasn’t close to posting his usual stats. Watching ‘Gar chug around the bases provides comic relief when he’s not obviously in pain. On the other hand, Poppa Mariner actually stole a base last season. That should surely spell the end of some poor catcher’s major league career.
You may well be subjected to yet another column about baseball if the Mariners have a good year. God knows, we need the distraction of baseball given the current state of the world. After what we’ve been through lately, we also deserve a few peanut M & M’s. About a pound or so will do for now.
9:14:47 PM 
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