Fuck.  Now I'm sick.  I woke up this morning with what felt like a canteloupe in my stomach.

It might have been the refried black beans we had with dinner.  Or it might be the Seattle sports fans, cursing me for my vitriolic attack on the Seahawks yesterday.

All right, I give!  Seattle's a great sports town with a proud history!  Jim Zorn was a rock star!  Steve Largent was a king among men!  The Seahawks were robbed at the Super Bowl!  Mike Holmgren's a genius! 

Now put down the voodoo dolls, you flannel-wearing sorcerers. 
 

11:01:42 AM    

So the Seahawks went to the Super Bowl.  It was exciting for the city.  This was a team that had never even been considered a contender.  In one commentator's words, the Seahawks for decades "defined mediocrity" in the NFL.  Suddenly, they became a powerhouse team, the best team of their conference.  Shaun Alexander was the league MVP.  Matt Hasselbeck was being fitted for his milk moustache.  They were bigtime.

But then they lost.

So the best thing to do would be to look to the future, right?  Talk about the future Super Bowls that this team inevitably will see, the sudden promise of the team, the fact that Seattle fans no longer posed with bags on their heads.  Right?

Well, sure, but first they have to blame the referees for losing the game.

That's not strictly true.  They're not actually blaming the refs for the loss.  But they sure are making a lot of noise about bad calls.  At the welcome-home party held at the taxpayer-funded Qwest Field, according to the Seattle P-I, Mike Holmgren cracked that he was ready for the Steelers, but he "didn't know we were going to have to play the guys in the striped shirts as well."   Other players complained about penalties they were charged with.

And to their credit, Michael Irvin, convicted felon and all around crazy guy, has said on record that "there were some bad calls.  Yes, they have a beef."

The local news is playing up the "we wuz robbed" angle.  I saw a local news program flashing the NFL hotline for officiating complaints.  That's classy. 

Let's be clear.  I'm a very late comer to the Seahawks bandwagon.  I didn't even follow the team until near the end of the season, when I saw they had the best record in their conference and I started hearing "Shaun for MVP" whispers.  I still would have rather seen the Broncos in SB XL, playing anyone. 

But this is disappointing.  The Seahawks had their chance on the biggest stage in football, and to bellyache about the officials instead of being proud of their accomplishments just looks amateurish.   And I don't care if there were a few bad calls.  I don't even care if only a couple of people were making the complaints.  (One of those people happens to be the coach, so that adds a whole layer of legitimacy to the complaints.)  Any professional athlete knows that when you play well enough to win, what the officials do makes no difference.  If you play well enough to win, you win regardless.

Mr. Holmgren knows this too.  When you go onto a football field (or hockey rink, or baseball diamond, or whatever sport you like) you are ALWAYS playing against the officials.   The referees are always an unpredictable asset.  Sometimes they make calls that help your side.  Sometimes they go the other way.  But you play to win, and if you are triumphant, it's not because the zebras let you win, it's because you won.  The officials are never on your side, just like the weather is never on any team's side.  It's your job to overcome these unpredictable factors.  Seattle just put one more nail in their coffin, the mostly undeserved one but it's theirs regardless.  If you look closely on the side of the coffin, you can just make out the words:  "second-class sports town." 

12:59:55 PM    

A remarkable thing happened yesterday in the football world.  The Denver Broncos and the Seattle Seahawks, the only two NFL teams I really care about, both advanced to the conference championship games, one step away from the Super Bowl.  Denver just finished shutting down the (favored) underdog New England Patriots, and Seattle took apart the Washington football team (who, until they change it, will not have their team's name listed on this blog).  If everything goes according to plan, these teams will meet in three weeks on Ford Field in Super Bowl XL.  (That's Super Bowl Forty, people, not extra large.)   

I lived in Colorado during my teens, and my family stayed there until the mid-90s when, unexpectedly, we all uprooted and relocated to Washington state.  (Okay, well, my father moved out first.  And when I moved out here, I dragged my brother with me.  So maybe it wasn't so unexpected.)

When I watched the Broncos at first, they weren't a great team.  They were good.  After all, they had been to three Super Bowls (losing all three).  They had a remarkably talented quarterback, John Elway.  They had a pretty good supporting cast, with occasional standouts like receiver Vance Johnson, linebacker Karl Mecklenberg, and the good-but-easily-forgotten Sammy Winder.  But they could never quite make the leap from good to great.

And then I - we - moved to Seattle.  And then, a few years later, something happened.  The Broncos got a new coach, Mike Shanahan, and suddenly developed a running game.  They picked up a diminutive but powerful running back, Terrell Davis, who quickly proved himself one of the greats. 

They rolled to two impressive Super Bowl wins in 1998 and 1999, powered by the twin threats of Elway and Davis, and offensive weapons like Rod Smith and the human bruise, Ed McCaffrey.   And then Elway retired.  The Broncos tried to find the quarterback of the future, auditioning Gus Frerotte (no!), legacy QB Brian Griese (bust!), Steve Beuerlein (who?) and then finally settling on journeyman scrambler Jake Plummer.  Meanwhile, Davis continued to play, but in 1994 he was forced into an early retirement due to his disintegrating knees. 

New running backs continued to put up dazzling numbers - Mike Anderson, Clinton Portis, Tatum Bell.  Denver was still a good team. Not great. But good.  A contender, as they say.  No one expected them to be a serious power this season, but somehow Plummer found his stride, the running game found a rhythm by rotating two running backs, plus impressive backup Ron Dayne.  

Now I'm going to say something to upset Seahawk fans.  When I got here, I didn't care much about the team.  I didn't think much about them at all. They didn't have a history like the Broncos, they didn't have a history of success, and they were also-rans.  Who were their stars?  Brian Blades?  Eugene Robinson?  Chris Warren?  Never heard of 'em.  Joey Galloway?  Eh.  

The only thing that mattered to me was that they were in the same division as the Broncs. This meant that at least twice a year, they would play Denver, and at least once, Denver would come to Seattle (which meant it would be possible to see Denver play a live game - Mile High Stadium typically sold out for years in advance.)  Seattle fancied itself to have an intense rivalry with the Broncos.  (Funny - Denver always thought that their bitter rival was Oakland.)  

In 2002, the Seahawks jumped conferences, which meant that Denver wasn't coming to town anymore.  But something else changed around this time.  Their running back Shaun Alexander, who had always considered himself a superstar, suddenly started acting like a superstar.  The revolving quarterback door (anyone remember Jon Kitna, quarterback of the future?) had resolved itself in the person of Matt Hasselbeck.  And somehow, this season, mostly unbeknownst to me, they coalesced into a powerhouse team.  

Seattle and Denver do have one thing in common - a regional fan base.  Denver is the only football team in the Rocky Mountain region, and fans come from all across the region, from as far away as Montana and Utah.  Seattle is the only team in the drizzly Pacific Northwest, so they draw fans from Oregon, Idaho, and  even Alaska.  So they're bound to get that elusive cowboys-and-loggers demographic that the NFL has always coveted. 

So what happens if both teams make it to Super Bowl Xtra-Large?  Neither team has a guaranteed ticket - Seattle's got get past a good Carolina team, and Denver's got to take out Pittsburgh, the team that took down Peyton Manning and the almost-but-not-quite-invincible Colts.  But what if it happens?  

I'm going to make all the Seattle fans mad again.  I've got to go with my Broncos.  They've got a half-dozen players still on their team from the Super Bowl days, and they know how to win.  They dismantled New England, the defending champions.  They look like they're ready to take it all.  Seattle looks good, but my heart is with the Broncos. 

1:42:58 PM    

Understatement of the week goes to Chisox pitcher (and Seattle Mariner castoff) Freddy Garcia, who missed game 2 of the ALCS playoffs on Wednesday because he was watching his daughter being born. On the subject of the miracle of birth, he said:

Ah yes. It's "pretty good." A "really good experience." His cup truly runneth over.

(Let's just hope Ms. Garcia also thought it was a "really good experience." After all, she's going to be the one with blood tricking out of her you-know-what for the next 4-6 weeks.)

Kudos to Freddy, though, for recovering well enough to pitch a complete game victory in game 4. I was barely able to drive two days after Oliver was born.

7:04:39 PM    

The Mariners have been underwhelming this season.  They've been purging themselves of suspected causes:  Randy Winn is gone.  Bret Boone is gone.  Ron Villone is gone.  And they've got no hope of a playoff berth.   They desperately needed some reason for fans to stay interested, something on which to pin next year's hopes.

Meet Felix Hernandez. 



The line from last night:  eight innings, 94 pitches, five hits, six strikeouts.  Zero walks.  Zero runs.  I watched part of the game, and Hernandez may very well be the best pitcher on the team right now.

6:54:21 AM    

Don't miss the always-reliable Larry Stone's piece in today's Seattle Times on the fine art of baseball chatting. Not chatter - the incessant "hey batta batta" that the outfielders keep up during the game - but chatting.  Conversation. "How's your wife?"  "Where's a guy get a good steak in this town?"  The constant conversations between umpire and outfielder, or first baseman and runner, or pitcher and coach, that permeate the game. It makes for fun reading.

During a stint with Houston, [Tigers pitching coach Bob] Cluck racked his brains for the right thing to say to former Astros pitcher Mark Portugal after he gave up three home runs on three successive pitches against the Reds - each one setting off a pyrotechnics display at Riverfront Stadium. Houston manager Art Howe directed Cluck to go to the mound, so he came up with this mood lightener:

"Hey, Porchie, the guy with the cannon called. He said, 'Slow down, I can't reload that fast.' "

Concluded Cluck: "He laughed. It loosened him up, and he went on to win the game. Sometimes, one of the big things a pitching coach does is slow somebody down."

Baseball is the only game that allows this kind of ... well, idle... chatter. There are lots of breaks in baseball. It's a slow game, a lazy game in the best possible sense of the word. Nobody's in much of a rush to get through the game. It's summer, everybody's out in the sun, why hurry things along? On the other hand, have you ever heard about Tracy McGrady and Kobe Bryant trading shopping tips or discussing restaurants during a foul shot? How about in football, witnessing the center and nose guard asking after each other's wives? Forget it - if they talk about each other's wife, it's a conversation that'll never get reprinted in a newspaper.

Also in today's Seattle Times was a nice sidebar on the top ten moments in chatting history on the diamond. I'm a little disappointed, though, that they didn't see fit to mention Detroit semi-legend Mark "the Bird" Fidrych's conversations with the ball between pitches. They always seemed to have a warm relationship.

1:24:47 PM    

There are two players in baseball that I consider drop-everything players:  Ichiro and Barry Bonds.  These are the guys who, when they're up to bat, you stop eating, put down the newspaper, stop whatever you're doing to watch them.

Ichiro, it's helpful to remember, is also a stunning defensive player.  And yesterday, he proved it yet again with a breathtaking catch where he literally climbed the wall.  And yes, I know "literally" is overused, but look, folks, he literally climbed up the wall, spun around with his foot on the wall, caught the ball, and fell back to earth. 



Check out the video for yourself here (low-speed) or here (high-speed).  The Mariners lost yesterday, but who cares?  Little league kids across America will be imitating this catch for years to come. 



7:19:46 AM