IN A LITTLE OVER THREE WEEKS, we’ll know if the ’00 Seattle Mariners will have turned out to be the Real Thing or just another of baseball’s classic El Foldo squads (like certain Red Sox, Cubs, and Angels squads over the years).
I don’t know which outcome to root for.
If the Ms win the AL West title (and if they do, it would be a more meaningful win than their ’95 win against a crash-and-burn Angels team), many observers here and elsewhere would interpret it as one more symbol of our formerly-fair city having finally Made It on the bigtime level. Perhaps annoying, but still a spot of pride of some sort for an ol’ Nor’wester such as myself.
If the Ms end up snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, not even making the wild-card slot in the playoffs, well, it’s not like Seattle will go back to being the little log-cabin outpost some outsiders thought we were as recently as five years ago. But it might, just might, provide even a momentary dose of humility to some of the boosters and hustlers and self-proclaimed kings of the world we’ve got ’round here these days.
(Of course, a Microsoft antitrust loss would be much more effective in that regard, but that’s not even a possibility for a few months.)
Still, there’s a lot to admire about how the Ms got at least this far this year.
The Ms were born in 1977 of a lawsuit against the American League, brought after the Pilots left town after one season. For a decade and a half, they played the way many Americans thought of Seattle–as a quaint little outfit populated by lovable losers, not to be ever considered real champ-caliber players but to be admired as one would admire a cute child who tried really hard to do something grownup.
They played in a thrifty but inadequate “multipurpose room,” a la high-school plays performed in a “cafetorium.”
They relied not on “fundamental baseball” but on gimmicks to please supposedly ignorant crowds. Especially cheap home runs to a short right field.
Eventually, their farm system yielded a superstar who was great at just those kind of home runs–and was a spectacular acrobat at defense as well. This ace hitter, Ken Griffey Jr., was soon joined by an ace pitcher, Randy Johnson.
They made lots of spectacular plays and caught a lot of spectator attention, helping the team get enough support to finagle its way into a govt.-subsidized outdoor palace. But, as Griffey himself complained while he was asking to be traded last winter, one or two superstars can make some great SportsCenter highlight reels, but they don’t make a winning team.
So the Ms let Griffey go, after having already let Johnson go. But they didn’t trade or bid for replacement divas.
Instead, they kept most of their remaining better players, and carefully added good players to fill holes in the lineup.
The result: A new “classic” team for a new “classic” ballpark. A team that lives and dies on “fundamental baseball”–defensive plays, relief pitching, clutch base hitting–rather than on superstar pyrotechnics.
The ’70s-’80s Mariners were a clumsy but adorable small-market team.
The ’90s Mariners were a team that tried too hard to be “world class” without the resources to make it at that, in a town that was doing the same.
The ’00 Mariners are a real team. They win by playing together, and lose when they don’t. With the partial exceptions of Alex Rodriguez and Rickey Henderson, they’ve got athletes, not celebrities. They’re as close as you can get in bigtime sports to the indie-rock aesthetic.
A “Seattle Scene” team, if you will.
TOMORROW: Multiplex Bankruptcy–coming soon to a theater near you.
ELSEWHERE:
