This Is How I Feel

I miss my Dad so much. All the time. But the intense grief is overwhelming and sneaky, enveloping me in its sharp teeth and blackness when I neglect to look over my shoulder.

I’ll be brushing my teeth and I can’t breathe or stand it hurts so bad.

It hurts so bad.

It soaks through my bones and spreads from my heart until I feel it so intensely a part of me that I grab on and hold it close because I need it.

Then as quickly as it came, I’m left alone with dried tears and the haunting ache I’ll feel forever.

And I return to my regularly scheduled life. A life that’s happier than it’s ever been.

For The Rest Of Us!

“I got a lot of problems with you people! And now you’re gonna hear about it!” – Frank Costanza

I hope no one takes this post to mean that I don’t like Fan Fest. Because I do. It’s awesome and baseball-y and the sort of connection with the fans that teams should do more of. It’s especially great for kids, and we all know those little bundles of sunshine are the future baseball fans of Seattle.

However, based on the Pineda trade and Prince signing, Mariner Land needs an outlet for their collective frustrations. An airing of grievances if you will.

Hence, I present to you, Fan Festivus.

Of course, the most important part of Fan Festivus would be the Airing of Grievances. Each player, coach, and key front office personnel would gather around the Fan Festivus Pole and be subjected to the fans letting rip their emotions. This would go both ways and the players, coaches, and front office personnel could let rip their frustrations with the fans. It would be cathartic and heal the wounds of a fan base that has along felt betrayed by the Organization.

Also, it’s really fun to tell people how you really feel!

Any aggression still left over from the Airing of Grievances would be unleashed in the Feats of Strength. What Mariner fan out there doesn’t want to wrestle Chuck Armstrong?!

(Naturally, the Seattle Police, King County Sheriffs Deputy, Washington State Patrol, and National Guard will all be fully deployed to deal with the crazies and rabble rousers.)

Then, the roof would close over the angry, exhausted Mariner masses. The crowd will declare it to be a Fan Festivus Miracle. And we’ll walk away into the night, happy and satisfied in a way that buying free agents could never make us.

Prince Fielder and the Needing for Something

“Give me something to believe, cuz I am living just to breathe, and I need something more to keep on breathing for, so give me something to believe.” – The Bravery

I should love Twitter. I’ve met some great friends on there, I’ve been able to find the 14 people who really actually like the Mariners, and I’ve been able to con a few of them into reading my sporadic internet postings.

But today, once again, I really really hate it.

Because even though Prince Fielder is in Texas, he’s in Seattle. This is a thing that can only make sense on Twitter.

I see the Tweet about him being here, and even though I know better, even though I’ve been on the merry-go-round before, I get that stupid little spurt of excitement and start thinking, what if?!

I don’t even know if I want Prince Fielder here. The only thing I know I feel about him, is that I’m tired of hearing about him. And Scott Boras (who is either overplaying his hand, or has some evil genius strategy that’s gonna get Fielder $100 zillion dollars a year). I wasn’t even going to type a single word about him because all there is to say right now is kicshkwshash (that’s white noise).

But, this isn’t about Prince Fielder at all.

I just want &$*@#^$% something to happen!!

Anything worth that stupid little spurt of excitement! Anything to make the offseason more bearable and endow us with the false hope we need to survive the winter! The Texas Rangers won the pennant, the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim won Albert Pujols, the Houston Astros get to switch divisions, and the Oakland Athletics, well, I guess they’ve had a sucky offseason too.

It’s less than a month until Pitchers and Catchers and I’m already dreading the season. I want a new player to get all excited about and Aaron Heilman just isn’t doing it for me. So unless Edgar Martinez is going to unretire and spend a few years loafing around in left field in order to improve his chances at a Hall of Fame induction, I’m totally fine with overpaying some overweight slugger and watching his power numbers plummet at Safeco Field.

Just doooo something!

UPDATE: Not more than 30 minutes after I posted this, news broke that the Mariners traded Michael Pineda for Jesus (Montero). Jack Z listened to me!!

Eulogy For My Dad

This is the eulogy I read at my Dad’s memorial service yesterday. It only skims the surface of what he means to me, but I hope it gives even a small bit of perspective into what an amazing person he was.

When I was 7, my Dad took me to a Mariners game against the Red Sox. It was one of the first games I ever went to and this one was extra special because it was just me and my Dad. And because it was lunch box night. The game went into extra innings and my Dad told me a story about how the Red Sox once played a game that lasted so long they had to come back the next day to finish it. My 7 year old self thought that meant if the game lasted long enough we would get to sleep at the Kingdome. Needless to say, I was quite upset when he made me leave before the game ended. I’m the sort of baseball fan that would never leave a game early, and I periodically pointed that out to him over the years.

The lunchbox is still one of my favorite pieces of Mariners memorabilia.

That was the beginning of my baseball obsession. My relationship with my Dad grew as we watched thousands of games over the years. We would go to several games a year, where he taught me to keep score. That blue scorebook we toted to every game is an invaluable record of our time together.

When the Mariner’s broadcaster Dave Niehaus died last year his family talked about how overwhelming it was to hear how much he meant to fans. To them, he was just their father, husband, and friend. Having heard from all the people that my Dad meant so much to, I know exactly how his family felt.

It’s amazing how much influence he had on so many people. To me he was just my Dad and he is so much a part of me, and not just genetically, that I wouldn’t be myself without him.

In addition to baseball, I also shared his love of history. I loved talking to him about what I was reading and hearing his perspective about events of long ago. He was a devout Abraham Lincoln fan and I sincerely hope he’s been talking old Abe’s ear off for the last couple weeks.

My Dad was my favorite person to talk to about politics and current events. When you read a lot of history you learn not to overreact to small things and I’ve found there are very few people with the breadth of knowledge and thought process to intelligently talk about these things.

He did everything he could to encourage me in doing things I loved. He drove me to countless riding lessons and horse shows. Shuttled me and my friends to all those gymnastics practices and meets. And when I had my heart set on going to college on the east coast, he was encouraging and supportive. Going to UMass was one of the best things I’ve done in my life and I owe him so much for making that happen for me.

At every change in my life, he was there with intelligent perspective. The talks we’ve had have shaped the way I see life and the way I think about it. At one point, I was complaining about something or other and he asked me, do you want to whine about it or do you want to fix it? Naturally, I wanted to whine about it. But I’m learning to ask myself that question and asking it is the most valuable guidance he gave me.

My life is finally coming together and I’m sad that he won’t be there to see how it turns out. Because I loved, admired, and respected him so much that nothing was more meaningful than hearing him say, “I’m proud of you.”

Occupy Nintendo!

“New car, caviar, four star daydream, think I’ll buy me a football team.” – Pink Floyd

The more I learn about the business of baseball, the more disgust I feel towards the system that sustains baseball. Such a beautiful sport with such an ugly structure.

As fans we want to believe in the “organization” – the owners and executives, the scouts, coaches, and players. We want to believe that they all want to produce a winning product at the Major League level.

The more cynically inclined among us are apt to believe that’s not true.During my formative years, I remember some talking head mention how teams like the Kansas City Royals and Minnesota Twins managed to turn bigger profits than winning teams by keeping payroll low and playing just well enough to keep attendance levels steady year to year. Makes total sense when you don’t have the money to outspend your competition.

In my wizened maturity, I know that there are many ways to make profits look like losses and perform trickery with facts and figures, so even though I’ve always kept this information in the back of my head, I’m suspicious of this type of reasoning.

That one Mariners beat writer that we all love to hate posted a story last Sunday about the Toronto Blue Jays and their 10 year ascent to mediocrity. The team has made no effort to win and has concealed its lack of effort under a veil of trendy excuses, all in an effort to leverage the Blue Jays for other business ventures.

At various points throughout my baseball fandom I’ve fallen prey to the anger and betrayal that is only natural when the realities of baseball’s economy present themselves. It’s at this point that I think wistfully about the good old days, when it was a game, and all that nostalgia. It can be difficult to keep in mind that baseball has never been pure; before steroids and conglomerate owners there was gambling and fixed games.

From a business perspective it makes sense these owners don’t really want to win. You don’t accumulate the requisite billions to own a sports team without constant leveraging and investing. And even though some owners might view their teams as a toy they’ve earned with their hard work, I’ve always had a hard time believing all owners felt that way.

So what we have is a system where fans are pouring their energy and devotion into a team that not only may never win a championship, but that passion and reverence is being wasted on a team that has no desire to even try.

Sign me up for season tickets!

It’s the 99% vs the 1%; fans vs the owners and players. As such, the Mariner fanbase’s Occupy Wall Street is the Fire Nintendo movement that sprung up last season thanks to a healthy mix of passion and frustration (and Twitter).

Many people have shook their heads at OWS and Fire Nintendo. They’ve been told to get jobs and lives, been called dirty hippies and crazy idiots. The problem isn’t that these protesters don’t get it; the problem is that they don’t know what else to do. Fire Nintendo has had as much success at changing Mariner ownership (and ousting Chuck Armstrong and Howard Lincoln) as OWS will have on changing the country’s economic system.

Here’s where I want to tie this up in a nice feel good bow so we can all happily spend our money on baseball teams trying to be the averagest they can be. What I think is, if it bothers you that much, stop going to games and buying merchandise. I’ve done my part as far as economics goes by not buying houses I can’t afford.

I suppose a baseball fan could also start supporting only winning teams. Bandwagon jumping may be considered abhorrent behavior, but it could make good sense if you want to feel good about where your fandom dollars are going.

Another option is to realize you are getting something for your money : a Major League Baseball team (at least when the Yankees and Red Sox come to town). And if you got a variable rate bazillion dollar mortgage for the McMansion of your dreams, at least you got to live in a pretty cool house for a while before your life was ruined by the big banks that wanted to be paid the money they spent on your habitat.

As for me, I’m going to continue going to games and continuing hoping that someday the Mariners will be contenders. But that won’t stop me from complaining and whining. I am an American, after all.

The Mariner’s beat writer we all love to hate extolled fans not to make excuses on behalf of the team. I can see the fantasy of a vocal and powerful fanbase persuading owners with more pressing interests than winning to abandon their nefarious plots against us virtuous fans.

But these excuses, for some of us, are the only way we can still enjoy baseball.

Taste the Turkey

There are plenty of real things to be thankful for this holiday season. Life. Liberty. The pursuit of happiness.  But what I really want to do right now is gloat about how baseball is better than every other sport.

I’m looking at you, NBA, with your drawn out lockout and pending lawsuits. Ha ha ha.

And you, NFL. Sure, you got your shit together before the season began, but you still cried like little entitled brats. If the lockout hadn’t been resolved, y’all would probably have your own branch of the Occupy Wall Street movement. (The NBA players would join, but they’re afraid for the safety of their gold chains.)

The NHL (sorta) recently had a work stoppage as well, but no one cared.

I’ve been seeing lots of whining about the new MLB CBA. It’s bad for this, it’s bad for that, ruin and damnation and havoc.

Whatevs.

Baseball will continue to be played for the next five years. As far as unreal life things go, there is nothing I could be more thankful for.

RIP Greg Halman

“For of all sad words of tongue or pen,/ The saddest are these: “It might have been!”” – John Greenleaf Whittier

I mindlessly scroll through my Twitter feed as I wake up in the morning, only ever expecting to see remnants of late night conversations and columnists rambling about free agency. Little pieces of information that are essentially meaningless.

It’s rare that my bleary eyed skimming results in shock, nausea, and sadness.

Contrary to the title of this blog, baseball isn’t life; it’s just one of the many things that make life wonderful.

I feel a little sad now that I didn’t pay more attention to Greg Halman. I try not to get too attached to prospects lest they fizzle out in disappointment.

That we’ll never know who this charismatic, intelligent, talented kid could have been as a baseball player is as meaningless as most morning Twitter chatter. But for someone on the verge of a wonderful life, it’s a tragic denouement.

Trading Heroes For Ghosts

It seems natural to just blame the internet. Or the media or the American public for being so invested in this TMZ culture that exposes every ugly ounce of humanity.

By now, it should be easy to watch the people we admire crumble and crack into tragic rubble.

Philandering politicians, corrupt corporations, Ponzi schemes. Legendary college football coaches who positively impacted so many kids ending their careers with the scandal of hurting many kids.

But it’s not easy, and even if it has become expected, it still generates the kind of shock that boosts tv ratings and tabloid sales.

It’s sad that it’s so rare when someone lives up to hero status.

A year ago yesterday, the most admired man in the northwest died. The voice of our childhoods, our summers, our innocence. When Dave Niehaus died there was an incredible amount of emotion and sadness at losing such an important part of every Mariner fans’ life.

And a strange thing happened during all the remembrances.

No one had a single negative thing to say about him.

I have to admit I’d always wondered what he was like when he wasn’t behind the microphone. Most public figures have difference public and private personnas.  To hear from his family and friends, through all the stories they told, that he was exactly the same in real life as he was on tv, made losing him all the more poignant.

In the midst of all this news about admired people losing their hero status, I’m taking comfort in knowing that there are ordinary human beings who positively impact countless people and never lose their luster.

Thank you, Dave.  Thank you for not only being the voice that you were, but for being the genuine person we all thought you were.

Random Nostalgia: Snap Throws and Pudge Rodriguez

I’ve been a baseball fan long enough now to have watched the full career trajectories of some pretty great players. Most of these players started out or reached their primes in the mid to late 90’s, the time when I was just becoming a full fledged, dyed in wool, never gonna give you up baseball fan. My Dad used to talk about how Willie Mays played a year too long and how the last year of his career was just a tormenting look at an incredible player who could no longer display Major League talent.

I’ve started to see that myself. The most striking example was Ken Griffey Jr.  The swing just wasn’t as free and sweet. He gimped like an old man. He looked old. He couldn’t hit worth sheeot.

If wasn’t for those hugs and tickles I’m not sure he would have been a contributing member of the team.

Every so often something happens in a game I watch now, or my mind takes a thought path, that brings me back to something that happened in those halcyon days of my youth. I love these flashes and memories because they brush away the current grime and let me reminisce fondly on the polished players I watched when I was young.

In Game 5 of this year’s World Series Yadier Molina made a snap throw to first base. My Dad looked over to me and asked, “Remember when Pudge Rodriguez used to make those snap throws?”

In general, those have always made me nervous because it seems like so few catchers can throw them accurately enough to be worth the risk. For some reason when I think of snap throws I see the ball squirting past a crouching Mariner first baseman and down the right field line into foul territory.

But in that second I could see Pudge making that throw blink-and-you-miss-it quickly with sniper deadly accuracy. Just, *whoomp* and a runner leaning the wrong way is left trotting slowly back to the dugout, hanging his head in shame.

It was just never smart to run, much less lean, on Pudge.

I remember enjoying playing Texas in the mid to late 90s. Back in those days, the Mariners were always contending for the division title and most years Texas was the most dangerous rival. The games were fraught with consequences for the division lead, a type of game I can barely remember playing now. But I also loved watching Pudge. I supposed I didn’t enjoy the destruction he wreaked on the Mariners’ running game (such that it was in those days), but I appreciated his skill. Even to a novice baseball fan, it was overwhelmingly clear that his work behind the plate was extraordinary.

Pudge really is one of the greatest defensive catchers in the history of baseball. Especially that arm. He’d throw down to third, he’d throw down to first. And stealing? There’s baseball wisdom (or, you know, Fox commentators) that says you steal bases on pitchers, not catchers. Either the pitchers he caught were just that good, or Pudge made up for it.

The thing I always forget about him, because I love good defensive catching so much, is that in addition to being amazing behind the plate, he was no slouch at the plate. Catchers have a tendency to be good at either defense of offense. It’s so rare to see one who is so incredibly talented at both.

Pudge, I hate to see the end of your career and how the years of catching have worn you down. But you are the epitome of everything a catcher should strive to be.

The Coward’s Revenge

“Caught a lite sneeze, dreamed a little dream, made my own pretty hate machine.” – Tori Amos

If you’re a baseball fan, you hate the Yankees.  Unless, of course, you’re a Yankee fan, in which case you have some issues that require the assistance of a mental health professional.

It’s a long standing tradition, this Yankee hatred. The kind that imbues multiple generations and may, in fact, be necessary for the sustentation of life itself.

It’s like the tiny corner coffee shop hating Starbucks.  Sure, you can hire bikini barristas, but the pomp and circumstance (and desperation) just doesn’t compare to the inherent sexiness of the coffee shop that all coffee shops want to be.

All baseball fans want to win, so winning begets hate. One team’s win is another team’s loss. And at the end of baseball season there is 1 winner amongst 29 losers. And the winning team, ostensibly has a better chance at free agents and improvement due to increased revenue. More winning for them, more losing for other teams, and blah blah blah.

It’s like in order for a team to win, other teams must experience dismal defeat and downfall. You can’t win because you win, you win because someone else fails.

So much negativity must be bad for the soul. It’s like the opposite of the power of prayer. Maybe if Mariner fans could spew enough vitriol into the universe against the other teams in the AL, we’d be in the World Series instead of the Rangers.

But we’re not. And I haven’t exactly be helping the cause since I just can’t seem to generate one cold-hearted thought toward Arlington’s Boys of (Never Ending) Summer.

I genuinely like the team.  I love Adrian Beltre. It’s awesome to see Nolan Ryan as an involved owner. I have family I’m quite fond of in Texas. I just don’t get the requisite abhorrence to be considered a “real” Mariner fan by certain segments of the fan base.

After all, the Mariners did not lose because the Rangers won. Maybe when the Mariners finally do climb out of the AL West basement and play meaningful games in September, when the  Rangers success will directly be a result of Mariner failure, I’ll be able to breathe some fire toward the Southwest.

Then again, this is the team that paid ridiculous money to Alex Rodriguez. And really, living with THAT is punishment enough.