TONIGHT SEATTLE CELEBRATED “THE KING” AND HIS “PERFECTO” OF AUGUST 15TH

It was so thrilling to watch the game at Safeco tonight.  Thirty-four thousand people were given KING tee shirts and big golden K cards and the whole stadium was filled with people who were happy to be there.  For a change, the whole crowd was into every pitch.  Even the people out in The Pen were paying attention.  There was a huge roar every time Felix went onto the field—on his way out to warm up and on his way in to the dugout.  Each time, he raised his hat and waved to the fans.

When the game started, everyone was hoping that he just *might* pitch a 2nd perfecto, but the very first batter got a single, so that was out of the question.  No worry, though.  He went on to pitch a super game.  He gave up a few hits and that one run, but he struck out players again and really, really enjoyed the way the crowd was treating him.  They not only shouted for K’s as they usually do, but they chanted his name in more than one occasion.

Wedge pulled him in the 8th to let Ludcke come in and shut down that inning, but he did it so that Felix would be able to leave the mound and the crowd could give him a standing ovation again.  He waved his hat again, and it was clear that he was very emotional about the whole thing.

The team was exceptional behind him.  Travon made 10 outs in left field last night, and then tonight he had to run a long ways to the foul line and dive to catch a ball that would have landed in fair territory.  He lit on his belly and slid in the dirt.  It had to have torn up his hand and arm.  Poor Brandon Ryan, who is either the top or next to the top defensive short stop in the majors this year, made not one, but TWO fielding errors.  So as Felix was leaving the game, he went over and patted Ryan on the back and told him to forget it.  That’s baseball.  (I am paraphrasing.  I can’t remember what Felix said in his post-game interview.)  But the point was that Ryan had been so good behind him so many times, Felix didn’t want Ryan feeling too bad about his errors.  I loved that, and so did the fans.

The really neat thing is that we have some power hitters now.  Eric Thames, whom we got from Toronto (thank you, Rosie—I’m sorry you lost him, but I’m so GLAD we have him)—anyway, Eric got another home run tonight.  He got a homer and a triple last night, and then a home run tonight.  We had other runners on when Jesus Montero came up.  He hit one either 438 or 538 feet (into the 2nd deck deep in left/center field) and scored 3 runs. 

ROOT Sports has been completely superior in their treatment of this perfect game.  They had multiple interviews and spent a lot of time replaying various plays and events.  They did an absolutely WONDERFUL shortened game where they relived the perfecto by showing only the 3rd strikes on the players and the outs as they were made, then showed the final where Felix pointed to the sky, and lifted his foot in the air in that now famous pose.  Then they replayed all of the after-game interviews and commentary.  It was just out and out great of them.   I have to find a way to either e-mail them or send them a snail mail letter of commendation.

Now I have to go post in the Seahawks blog because Pete Carroll today changed the name of the Quarterback who is going to start the game in St. Louis Friday.

Then I want to post in the Dawg Haus blog because I worked in the storage units today and made a purchase!  Busy, busy, busy day!

I Received a Message from Go-2 Guy!

I am so far behind the rest of the Technical World!  So much happens on my new iPhone and because I am still so uninformed, much of it goes unnoticed in my goofy life!  So no one will know how surprised and thrilled I was to find that I had not one but TWO messages from my Radio Hero, Go-2 Guy, Jim Moore.


If you are my friend, you know how insane my love is for both the Mariners and the Seahawks, and if you have any memory left (unlike me) you will recall that my car radio and the ones in the kitchen and my bedroom are permanently set on AM 710ESPN, the best sports station in the northwest.
I started as a fan of Brock and Salk who used to be on in the early afternoon.  But when a man returned to Seattle who had been on another station when he was here before, he was given that slot and Brock and Salk were moved to a morning show.  Brock was once the QB at the UDub and Mike Salk came to us from Boston.  He’s a huge fan of the Red Sox and Bruins.  I love their football talk—but I digress.


Since my present lifestyle has me awake till the sky turns  blue, I can’t listen to them any more, so happily for me, I found the Kevin Calabro show.  His co-host is the man I love!  He went to school at Washington State and is as avid a Cougar fan as my brother is a fan of the Oregon State Beavers.  Kevin calls him his Go-2 Guy, and he is just special to me.  He has a warmth and sense of kindness about him in the things he says and the way he says them.  And a GREAT sense of humor which is frequently disarmingly self-deprecating.  I love a man who can laugh at himself.  It shows that he knows he is not perfect.  None of us are, but a lot of men haven’t figured that out yet. <I’m grinning as I type.>  But he also has to have confidence in who he is so that he knows people are laughing with him and not at him.  And he has a neat laugh!  He and Kevin are like a City Mouse and a Country Mouse—if Mice can golf!


Kevin is a basketball master.  He called all of the Sonics games  back in the day when they were champions, and he is now the best  man in the country to call an exciting game.  He paints the game with magic in his words.  He, too, can make fun of himself and he and Jim trade barbs and jokes and I often find myself laughing out loud.  It’s okay in the kitchen, but when I am driving or when I am working in the yard, passing cars and my neighbors probably think I’m nuts!  I didn’t realize how hooked I was on their show until I made the long drive to see Dick and JD in California.  Losing our ESPN signal was dismal.  I managed to find other ESPN stations in Oregon and once I got out of the Siskyous, I found some country stations in California, but I never did find a good sports station after he moved to Ukiah.


Man—how can I get so far off base?  I’d be picked off in a heartbeat on the diamond.  I started by mentioning my message from The Go-2 Guy.  I had called the station last week from the car.  OnStar has never dropped a call for me before, but there is always a first time!  When I called back to explain what had happened, I was told that they were “winding down” so I wouldn’t be able to speak any more.  I didn’t think anything about it until I noticed they were still giving the phone number for people to call in.  My feelings got all bent out of shape, so I wrote a cry-baby note to ESPN (Dick knows how much I hate to text!) and my Hero replied!  And of course, I didn’t even SEE it until today.


I HAD been reading their blog on Facebook, though.  They asked us to post what trades we were willing to make prior to the deadline at the end of July.  I posted my same philosophy—NO trades--wait it out.  These kids are good and getting better.  Let us have a losing year this year and look at the good stuff.  Then next year we can watch them go!  Then, after I had hit the POST button, I remembered what I had wanted to tell them when I lost my call.  Some crazy fans had been writing that they were willing to trade King Felix for a lousy bat.  I reminded them that if you are building a BODY you don’t cut the HEART out.  Felix is the heart of this team.  It would make no sense to lose him now.  I hope they will mention that tomorrow.


In the meantime, I have downloaded a new offline bogging editor and I am trying to figure out how it works.  If I can get that done, this should post to the web.  If not, I start all over.  Oh, goody!

KYLE SEAGER IS MY MAN OF THE HOUR!

It is well after midnight, and I am feeling such guilt for not having posted for days.  The young M's are still fighting their inability to hit with power, and for a very long stretch had gone without a single hit with men in scoring positions.


The Detroit Tigers are here now and Dougie Fister pitched for them tonight.  He was his usual brilliant self, but because he is returning from a fairly long stint on the D.L. he was on a pitch count.  He left the game with a 2-0 lead, but their regular closer wasn't available and the poor dude who came in just didn't have any command tonight.  I can feel empathy for him because *we* have been in his shoes.  Ahhh, yes--more than once.


At the bottom of the 9th, there was not a LOT of hope, but I never give up till the last ball is pitched, and tonight that paid off.  He walked two men and then there was a wicked passed ball.  Finally, John Jaso got a nice long fly and little Moonie scored!  It was just a super way to end a game and to have our 2nd win in a row! 


Sadly for us, we will be facing the Buzz Saw known as Verlander tomorrow night.  Shall we pray?  LOL 

The guy who is bringing all the excitement lately is one who surprised me--Kyle Seager.  I had erroneously thought that we managed to pick him up as the scouts were watching Dustin Ackley, but from what I am hearing and reading, he had his own scouts from the beginning.


What is so enlightening about Kyle is how he spent the off-season.  He had spoken with Wedge about things he could do to make himself more ready for this season and then he methodically carried out all of the suggestions.  He was on the KC and Go-To show on ESPN yesterday afternoon, and I loved hearing about his work through the winter.

He has played all around the infield and some outfield, but he is really good at 3rd base.

Shannon was talking about how Felix felt about him after Kyle's first spring training in '11.  She said that Felix called Kyle a special hitter because Kyle had been able to hit Felix' splitter.  He said that none of the guys from the big team were able to hit it, so he was impressed.  He told Shannon to watch this kid.

On the stats sheet for the M's tonight, Seager is in 4th place for average, but 2 of the men ahead of him haven't had as many games or as many at bats.  Neither Liddi nor Jaso has had as many as half the at bats Kyle has had, so in reality, Seager is 2nd to only Ichiro.  His average is .289, his on base percentage is .319, he is slugging at .495, but his OPS leads the team by far at .805.

I like him best at 3rd base, although he has been equally good at all the positions he has played so far.  He is also fast on the bases. I like this shot of him beating the throw home in Texas.

I hope he makes it to the All Star game.  If he continues at this pace, his stats may get him some votes from outside of Seattle.

Batting averages are in need of an Intensive Care M.D.

Last year, I called Kevin and Go To Man on ESPN and compared our new team members to puppies.  I had in mind the large breed puppies who spend their first few months growing into their big paws and learning to manage their growing bodies.  They are typically noisy, boisterous, chewy and quick to repent with big brown eyes when they find they have strayed from what we want them to do or expect of them.  They wobble when they run and they fall down a lot, but they are so happy and so full of love that your heart goes out to them in spite of their puppy short-comings.

Sadly, it quickly became evident that neither of the guys knew anything about dogs!  The only puppies they could imagine were toy breeds with ribbons in their hair and yappy little faces.  It was NOT the image I had wanted to impart!  I won't even go into the ridiculous few minutes they spent in identifying what breeds the various players might be.

My original intent had been to get them to lay off the constant criticism of the kids and have them spend more time enjoying the fun they bring to the games now.  I think at least GoTo has reached that point this year, but the rest of the fan base has not.

At first, I thought Seattle was condemned to criticism and complaints on all fronts when I found the same whining or bitching about the players and their poor quality of play in both the baseball and football fan forums.  But as I got online to follow Matty and Jake in Tennessee, I found that there are die-hards there, as well.  I find them tripping over each other as the M's are going through these few losing games.

Today I did some searching out batting averages because the main source of fandom's pain appears to be because Wedge is allowing the guys to remain in the batting order who are struggling at the plate.  So far, we have only Ichiro and Kyle Seager hitting over 300.  Both Liddi and Montero are in the 290s so I count them as almost 300s, as well.  The majority of them (6) are in the 200s.  Not good.  But the ones who are strugging in almost a death throe are Figgie (.198), Smoak (.184), and poor Brendan Ryan at .125.  In his press conference, Wedge said that he was a patient man and he wanted to give them a good chance, but they had to break out of it soon to justify getting playing time.

A poster whose ID is *domeking2* (and who must be a pretty good dad because he had left his son watching the ballgame while he was getting dinner) posted this today.  I think it is really cute.

"I have another heartwarming family story to tell.  Gather round.  So I left my oldest son in charge of watching the game while I made dinner.  Then I hear this awful noise coming from the TV room.  I rush in and say, "Hey!  What was that terrible noise?  Sounded like a loud sucking noise."  My son says calmly, "Oh, dad, that was Chone Figgins' average going below .200."    Kids nowadays."

Isn't that cute?  Clever kid!  Hope he will post some positive things when he gets his own account.

We have a good hitting coach, and on the days that the guys are not in the line-up, they are working in the cage during their days.  Smoaky has been working at shortening his stride and he is getting good wood on his hits.  He has had 2 long ones that were caught on the warning track.  They  were mere feet from sailing over the fence.

I think the most painful things were 2 plays that I think ended up being called errors.  A pop-up in today's game hit one of the high wires in the support of the roof of the domed stadium.  It was deflected.  Both Alex Liddi and Dustin Ackley were making an attempt to catch it.  Alex was backing up and lost sight of the ball.  So did Dustin.  Dustin was calling out to Alex, asking him if he had it.  Alex misunderstood and thought that Dustin wanted to catch it.  As a result, it fell on the ground.  Much bitter comment from their "fans."  (gag me!)

Then Michael Saunders, one of the hardest working kids on the club who spent his entire off-season shortening his stride and improving his hitting, had a home run ball deflect off of his glove.  He jumped for it, failed to catch it, and ended up falling to the ground on his back as the dwxyz ball sailed over the fence with the eventually winning run.  He later said he can't tell what actually happened--just that he thought he had the ball.

As far as I'm concerned, I am going to focus on the fact that Kyle Seager, who hit his first major league home run as a rookie last year here in Tampa Bay, hit TWO MORE today.  In fact, he was responsible for batting in ALL of our runs for today.  Before this game, we had gone THIRTY at-bats with men in scoring position and had failed to get a single hit.  THAT was bad.  I prefer to focus on the fact that we scored the first 3 runs and we had 2 home runs in the game.  This is definitely an improvement over last year.

I am worn out so I am not going to edit this as I should.  At 2:35 a.m. I am ready to go lights out for tonight.  The M's play at 9:30 in the morning so I need to get to sleep!  I hope they can win tomorrow!

Four UP and Four DOWN

I love the 2012 Mariners!  They are young and exciting and so full of hope. I won't say that they wear their hearts on their sleeves, but they have honest, open faces.  They are willing to show happiness and frustration equally.  I think that they genuinely care for each other and I think that is the driving force that binds a team.

We have been fortunate to have escaped major injury until this week, and now it has struck with a big hammer.  Miguel Olivo had just hit a home run in two games in a row.  The guys were saying that he was hitting his stride, and we knew coming into the season that he had spent extra time in the off season getting himself ready to be a big cog in the wheel this year.  It looked like it was beginning to pay off.  I have not had the heart to dig into the coverage of the problem so far, but I did see Shannon's comment asking who we felt should catch during his period on the DL.  I am hoping that Wedge will allow Montero to do *some* catching, but I hope he won't have it all dumped on him at once.  John Jaso was hitting 300 when he was playing in Florida.  He was catching and having regular at bats.  I think he would be well-equipped to carry part of the load while Jesus learns his own staff and starts to learn the hitters, at least in his own division.

If it were up to me, I'd give each catcher a set of pitchers and have them get into serious concentration on catching those guys only.  Knowing how a guy throws and what he wants to throw can go a long ways in the comfort zone, and I believe that that translates to the success zone.  If they move from one guy to the other, they lose that chance to build serious familiarity.

Our one saving grace may be that Wedge was himself a catcher when he played.  He has also built a team like this before.  He did the same thing with Cleveland.  I hope that means he will succeed with us, too.

This road trip has been dumfounding.  They were able to sweep Detroit and won 4 games in a row.  Then they ran into the Buzzsaws in Toronto and again here in Tampa Bay.  It is si painful seeing them being turned away at the plate the way they are.  They are putting some good wood on some of the hits--but they are being caught, and that's the rub.

With Olivo's injury, they have called up Mike Carp instead of a 3rd catcher.  I hope he will be able to help them climb out of the hole they are in.  He was hitting well last year and had a good start prior to his injury this year.  That would, indeed, be a blessing!