Accidental Mariner

The night before I left Seattle, and I’d just spent the best part of a day walking the city, through Capitol Hill, Queen Anne and the UW District. I met up with Janica after work and decided that we still had enough energy to go watch another game before I went home.

The Monday had been an off-day between two home series following the 2-1 series win over Texas and I had been hoping in the weeks before flying over that this could be a Felix vs Santana matchup. At least, before the various rainouts and snowouts occurred it was entirely plausible but the rotation gods were not in my favour and instead I got Jeff Weaver against Ramon Ortiz, two guys each with a park-adjusted ERA+ of less than 80. If anything, at least, I was guaranteed some runs.

We bowled up to the rightfield ticket point to view the stadium layout and pick somewhere to sit. We weren’t likely to fork out for the expensive seats from Saturday but wanted a decent view still. Whilst trying to make up our minds we were approached by a woman and her son:

“Would you like some tickets for the game?” she asked
“Erm…”
“Only my husband’s firm gets corporates and we’ve got four but there are only two of us”
“Oh right… how much are they?”
“Just buy us a beer”

This was now becoming uncanny - I’m about to enter my third baseball game without having paid for a single one! Rather than good karma on my part, I’ll sensibly put this down to the good nature of the wonderful people of the region, or maybe the positive air that surrounds SafeCo Field that encourages others to be generous and charitable. The seats, as it turned out, were about 2 rows back and 10 seats wide of the ones we had three days earlier, and boasted an impeccable view from behind the Twins’ dugout. I could smell Torii Hunter. Not that you’d want to, but you could.

Due to the weather-interrupted start the to Mariners’ season this was only Weaver’s second start for Seattle, coming off the back of shelling seven runs in just two innings in Boston a week earlier. This game wasn’t to be his crowning glory either, conceding the same number of runs but managing to spread them over six innings instead. I have to say that I really felt for him out there that night, though. He got himself ahead in the count so so frequently but failed in the execution - he was 2-0 against six of the 29 batters he faced yet only struck out three all night.

Despite managing ten hits in the game, the Mariners’ timing was pitiful. The two runs scrored were solo homers to lead off the 1st (Ichiro, pitch one) and 6th (Lopez, pitch three) innings. Seven of the ten hits were with nobody on base and four were with two outs. Even I know that batting like that doesn’t tend to earn all that many runs.

What struck me was the crowd’s fickle reaction in the face of an uphill struggle. Hunter hit a grand slam in the 5th inning to extend the Twins’ lead from 2-1 to 6-1 and already punters were ready to make their move - by the end of the 7th inning, once Ichiro had squandered a chance with two men on, the attendance had almost halved.

I insisted on staying to the bitter end. A combination of blind faith and a refusal to turn my back on a team I’d not long bound myself to. How much I have to learn, eh?

So that’s it for another year - unless the Mariners make a miraculous run to the playoffs, I shan’t fly over again this season. I have but some shop merch and my mlb.tv subscription to tide over my addiction until next time, whenever that may be. But it will be.

P3 W1 L2 (0.333)

I arrived in Seattle on the Thursday and my friend Janica (who I’d met at the Magic Numbers gig 12 months ago) showed me around Seattle for a day and a half before we headed to the Saturday game against Texas, who the M’s had lost to the night before.

In the preceding year I’d grown into the sport and this team, acquiring my own personal heroes along the way. To see these guys having watched them do their stuff fifty times before is entirely different to trying to take it in absolutely cold. I knew what features distinguised Ichiro from Beltre, and that Jamie Burke’s start was his Mariner debut, and I was genuinely excited, and indeed proud to be able to cheer on individual players rather than just the team generically.

Janica had bought us tickets in advance, and how incredible they were - about ten rows up, directly behind the plate and within spitting distance of the action. Carly and Matt also made it to the game and sat out in the centre field bleachers.

The starting side was pretty regular with the exception of Burke’s start. Trying to take everything in at once was simply impossible and I can’t believe how quickly the action passed.

An innocuous two and a half innings passed with only a hit apiece, before the Mariners sprung into life - Lopez squeezed a single up the middle and was doubled to third on Burke’s six-pitch debut at-bat. That microchosmic at-bat was enough to grip me and I was fixed on the action, the first time I saw two guys on base and appreciated the context. Ichiro was then HBP to load the bases with no outs and the scene for drama was set. And it’s not as if I was expecting a run either, I’d seen this side double play and strike itself out enough last season to know better than that, but this was at least a real chance, not least with Beltre next up.

Texas conspired to give away three runs on two errors on groundballs that might each have been DP balls. The difference between a huge inning for either side was immediately obvious. Despite seeing all nine batters come to the plate in the inning, Texas squirmed their way out of it with four runs on the board.

The next inning I got my first homer as Beltre took one from under his nose out to left to score two. I’d get three more before the game closed as Guillen went deep late on to confirm the 8-3 scoreline to sandwich two Texas homers including one by Sammy Sosa who was on his amble towards the 600-mark. Brandon Morrow closed it out with three strikeouts to nail the Rangers’ coffin and conclude an amazing day.

In retrospect it wasn’t that the M’s were particularly good, but that the Rangers were spectacularly bad to present four runs and write themselves out of the game with some terrible Vincente Padilla pitching.

Afterwards we hit a bar across the street for some food and drink, and an opportunity for me to blather anything I could about baseball and the team in a pathetic attempt to validate myself amongst those for whom this was just another game.

This was it though, I’d confirmed my association with this team now. No going back.

P2 W1 L1 (0.500)

One year on and I’m returning to Seattle for more - more of the brilliant place, to catch up with some great people I’d met at the gig 12 months previous and to see some more Mariner baseball, having picked up an mlb.tv subscription to watch games in the ‘06 season.

En route I’d planned a stopover in Chicago - to break up the journey but also an excuse to see a new city and to catch some different teams. I arrived on the Tuesday afternoon with the plan to go to a gig on the Thursday night and catch a Wednesday afternoon game - Astros visiting the Cubs. An NL game, an opportunity to see a special park and some famous players.

Then, it started. The snow began to fall on the Tuesday night and seemingly didn’t stop until the mid-morning, by which time Wrigley field had managed to freeze over and became unplayable. Gutted.

I still travelled to the ballpark so that I could at least say that I’d been. It was desolate, though, with only a few guys in the local bars on a Wednesday afternoon and a lone team coach outside waiting to farm the Cubs players off to an airport for a roadtrip. Whether they managed to get anywhere I’ve no idea - most of the flights out of O’Hare that day had been cancelled and I was thankful that my onward to Seattle wasn’t for another 24 hours.

Instead I went back across town and to view the White Sox’s Comiskey Park for an even bleaker picture. Where British football grounds are being relocated and re-build cheaply in outer-town locations on industrial estates, much the same is happening here. The stadium is located in a pretty rough area of town and, with the rain pouring it was pretty miserable to walk around. In fact, you can’t even do a full circle as there’s a fence up that prevents you getting back where you started, so I had to re-circle back again. Neither Cubs’ nor White Sox’s shops were open and I couldn’t get into either ballpark to see anything. For shame.

The mood lightened somewhat on the Wednesday evening though, as I hopped the short walk from my hotel to the grim ESPN zone bar to get some food and take in the opening stages of the Mariners’ game at Boston, and the fated Matsuzaka vs Ichiro matchup. I was easily the only person in the whole bar cheering Mariner plays and after they took the lead I made an exit after five innings to catch the remainder from my hotel before heading out again to a gig.

I’d have loved to see that afternoon game, but seeing Felix almost no-hit the Red Sox  made up for it a long way, and I finished up totally wasted that night.

Awesome.

So, here’s the story of my accident:

In April 2006 I took a holiday on the US West Coast to see some shows that The Magic Numbers were playing in the lead up to their appearance at that year’s Coachella festival. I’d not long changed jobs and it was a well-timed opportunity to see another part of the world.

Until now I’d been to America twice, once in 1988 on a family holiday to Florida and 6-months previous to New York with some friends to see some gigs in Jersey City and NYC. The trip I’d outlined took me to Seattle (2 nights), Vancouver (1 night), Portland (1 night) and San Francisco (2 nights), and keen as I was to take in some culture beyond just the gigs I was heading for I fancied seeing some sport too.

With the basketball season coming to a close and neither SF or Seattle having soccer teams to speak of I was left with the idea of trying to fit in a baseball game somewhere along the route, either on the night of my arrival or the night I got to SF. Seattle would be playing Detroit, SF were hosting the NY Mets. The latter was more appealling with both sides being supposedly bigger names in the sport and hosting bigger stars, not to mention my likely fitness to attend each game following the trip over. Even in retrospect, I picked the wrong game - SF ended up on the wrong end of a 9-7 result in a game that went to extra innings after Barry Bonds pinch-hit a two-run homer in the 9th inning. What an introduction to the game that would have been!

Despite having woken at 4am to catch my flight and landing in Seattle 19 hours later at around 3pm PT, somehow I found myself in my Seattle Centre hotel room surprisingly alert and ready to occupy myself. I took a cab to SafeCo field on the offchance that I could get a ticket on the gate to a Saturday evening game.

I only had half an hour’s grace before the first pitch once I’d arrived and joined the queue at the left-field ticket booth, waiting ignorantly to ask for advice from the seller. Within seconds I was approached, I presumed by a tout.

“Do you want a ticket?” she asked.
“Yeah, I’m just queuing for one” I said
“Well I’ve got a spare”
“Erm… okay. How much?”
“Oh, nothing, a friend of ours hasn’t shown up”
“Excuse me?”
“You can have it, it’s paid for”.

What an introduction! I was being offered a free ticket and it removed both my wait for one and also the decision of where to sit. The seats, as it turned out, were on the top level behind the plate, ideal for appreciating the perspective of how everything was playing out.

I’m ashamed to say that I cannot remember the names of the woman or her two male friends who displayed this generosity, but I do remember that she was from Connecticut and one of the guys from California, and that this was part of a weird meet-up they’d planned. I tried not to disturb their enjoyment too much, aside from asking occasional stupid questions as the game proceeded.

Truth be told, it was a pretty poor game for a total novice to watch, low scoring as it was. Detroit came through 2-0 winners although I remember very little aside from being informed that I’d missed the only home run of the game in the 8th inning when I’d made my single trip away from the action to grab some food.

Having revisited the box score I found that there were 16 strike outs, Detroit had 10 runners left on base and Ichiro recorded two outfield assists at home, one of which being a double play. Man, I need to revisit those on mlb.tv. The whole game the Mariners managed a paltry two hits and two walks, compared with the Tigers’ ten and four respectively.

It mattered not, though, that the home team lost. I was still fixed to the action and the stochastic processes taking place before me. As I made my way out of the stadium at about 10pm I was faced with the most stunning backdrop out towards the portside and the Puget Sound as the set sun hit the sky. So inspiring it must have been that I ended up walking all the way back to the hotel, a full 26 hours after waking up 4,800 miles away.

P1 W0 L1 (0.000)