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News, Sports

The Mariners Give Seattle Hope Just When We Need It

If your Twitter feed includes many Seattle sports fans, Wednesday night was a scroll through Hell.

In the moments after the Oklahoma City “Zombie Sonics” Thunder advanced to the NBA Finals, the anger came in a flood. And those are tweets from professional writers! As you can imagine, those from regular folks were even more colorful. Happily, at this bleak moment, our town’s baseball team–if you’ve forgotten, they’re called the Mariners–look like they just might be emerging from a decade of irrelevance.

In a nine-game road trip over the last week-and-a-half against three of the best teams in the American League, the Mariners went 5-4 and scored 66 runs. A 21-8 romp over defending AL champs Texas was the highlight, the most runs scored by a team all season. (The Mariners also had a perfect game pitched against them this year, so they own the best and the worst team offensive performances in MLB. Baseball is weird!) The happy portent of the road trip wasn’t just that so many runs were scored, but who scored them–the outburst was powered by the Mariners’ young hitters. In the nine games:

–1B/DH Justin Smoak had 3 homers.
–C Jesus Montero had 12 hits.
–3B Kyle Seager drove in 10 runs.
–CF Michael Saunders hit .487.
–2B Dustin Ackley scored 9 runs.

None of these guys is older than 25!

Don Draper watches the 2002-2011 Mariners

The last 11 seasons of Mariners baseball have been ugly. No playoff appearances, six last-place finishes, two 100-loss seasons. Not to mention the off-field problems: disastrous trades, horrible drafting, awful free agent signings, and plummeting attendance. Still, there have been glimpses of competence. The Mariners won 88 games in 2007, and 85 games in 2009. But that success wasn’t sustainable. The best hitters on both teams were older than 30–expensive veterans whose salaries were rising as their production was diminishing.

In 2012, the Mariners’ best hitters are young. They’re getting better and they are under team control–that is, they aren’t eligible to become free agents–for several more years. The future, for the first time, seems bright. Cue Jimmy Cliff.

Saunders especially seems to have turned a corner after being one of baseball’s worst hitters last season. Check out these charts USS Mariner ginned up, showing how successful Saunders has been at that toughest of all batting skills, hitting the ball to the opposite field.

This weekend, Saunders and the rest of the Mariners get to measure themselves against baseball’s best team. The Los Angeles Dodgers come to town for the first time since 2000, for a three-game, Friday-to-Sunday series. I’m going Friday night–seems like a better idea than sitting at home thinking about the Thunder.

Sometime next week, the 45-year-old franchise that was the Seattle Supersonics will compete in just their 4th NBA Finals. The man who took the team to Oklahoma City could well end up hoisting a championship trophy. For Seattleites who rooted for the team in their 41 years here, it’s a tough pill to swallow. Here’s hoping the resurgent Mariners can make it go down a little more smoothly.

News, Sports

Seattle’s Best Sports Rivalry Ever Starts Saturday

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"The Timbers Army" courtesy of blackedoutfriction on Wikipedia

If you’re a 34-year-old Seattle sports fan like me, you’ve never been part of a pro sports rivalry. Seattle hasn’t experienced anything like Yankees/Red Sox, Packers/Bears, or Celtics/Lakers. Until–just maybe–now. Saturday is game one of a renewed soccer rivalry between the Seattle Sounders and Portland Timbers.

Our town’s rivalry shortfall is mainly Portland’s fault. While we Seattleites have supported three major league teams since the 1980s, the Patchouli City has lagged behind, hosting only the NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers. And while the Sonics and Blazers had some good battles in the late 1970s and early ’80s, the rivalry flagged by the time I was out of diapers. During most of the next three decades, the two franchises danced an unfortunate tango–when the Sonics were good, the Blazers were bad, and vice versa.

And the teams had an odd knack of missing each other in the playoffs. The Sonics played the Blazers in only one playoff series after 1983, a span in which they played the Lakers and Rockets four times, the Jazz three times, even Sacramento twice. NBA regular season games, probably the least thrilling of any of the five major sports, aren’t a place for rivalry to crop up. And, of course, with the Sonics now in Oklahoma City, any potential rivalry is kaput.

The Mariners have never had a natural rival. When Major League Baseball interleague play rolls around, and teams are attached to their “geographic rivals,” the Chicago Cubs play the Chicago White Sox, the Houston Astros play the Texas Rangers, the Kansas City Royals play the St. Louis Cardinals, and the Mariners play…the San Diego Padres. Is it even possible to hate San Diego? Seahawks had some good battles over the years with the Oakland/L.A./Oakland Raiders, Kansas City Chiefs and Denver Broncos of the AFC West, and more recently with the St. Louis Rams, but none of these blossomed into serious rivalries.

It all changes Saturday. Unlike regular-season basketball, which is played with the urgency of your average cricket match, soccer’s one-game-per-week format permits players to go all out in every game, and fans to build up anticipation for each match. And other than the Sounders’ first-ever game, Saturday’s match against Portland is the most anticipated in this franchise’s history.

This rivalry isn’t exactly new (it even has its own Wikipedia page), but was ignored by the average fan when the Timbers and Sounders were playing in U.S. Soccer’s second division. Now, with both teams in MLS, and both drawing sellout crowds, the excitement is back.

To edify yourself before Saturday’s 8 p.m. match at Qwest Field (which will also be televised on ESPN2) consider reading this slightly outdated but still relatively pertinent article: A Guide to Hating the Portland Timbers, which I wrote for Seattlest in 2007. The comments section, full of vitriolic and profane fan sniping, is really the best part.