Tag Archives: seattle

News, Sports

How Bad Are The Mariners? We Survey The Decades.

Image: Seattle.Mariners.MLB.com

I’ve been attending Seattle Mariners games, six to a dozen a year, since 1976. Back then the team was so bad they handed out free tickets to high school kids who got a qualifying grade point average of 3.00. In 1979, the smart kids got savvy enough to pass on this generous offer forcing the Mariners down to 2.75.

In the ensuing three decades I’ve seen some good baseball, but on balance, it’s been a consistently bad product on the field.

But I’ve never seen as hapless a team as I saw yesterday, July 17th, at Safeco Field. The final was the Texas Rangers 3, your Seattle Mariners 1. For the record, in a four-game series, the Mariners scored just two runs. Two. As in one, then two.

Now consider that for a moment. I’ve seen games in the ’70s and ’80s with some players so unknown Bill James can’t get a big enough sample to put into his massive encyclopedia of baseball. I’ve seen losses that would send you screaming into the night. I’ve lived through Mike Schooler, for heaven’s sake.

I lived through the Dick Williams years. Sat in awe at the incredible managerial tenures of Del Crandal (93-131 record), Chuck Cottier (98-119) and Jim Lefebvre (does anyone remember the Lefebvre Belebvre bumper stickers? Well, I had one).

And yesterday was the worst game I’ve ever seen the hometown nine play.

It wasn’t just that they lost, I’ve seen plenty of losses. It was how they lost. They got good pitching from Blake Beavans who gave up three runs. They’ve had great pitching all year, really.

It’s just they can’t hit. I mean, hell, we all know that. But yesterday was different. Not only couldn’t they hit, for three innings they couldn’t get the ball out of the infield. Soft grounders fell like rain. (Which was also falling, for the record.)

Texas Ranger pitcher Mitch Moreland, a .500 record on the year, had a career day. He tossed 106 pitches in 7.2 innings, but only had 83 at the end of seven. Twice he pitched less than 10 pitches an inning, and got three grounders to short each time.

The Mariners weren’t just bad. They were barely professional. Few balls were hit with power. It was pop-ups and soft grounders all afternoon.

Most fans can probably understand the need for this team to rebuild and the need to bring up young players and watch them mature into stars. But the Mariner product on the field wasn’t just inept, it was boring.  The stadium was as quiet as a funeral service with the crowd cheering only when the Mariners scored their lone run, and when news about the FIFA Women’s World Cup played on the big screen.

The team’s leadership must have known it was going to be bad. The whole game was filled with mindless distractions like electronic hat tricks, hydro races, dancing grounds crews, and some lame base-stealing bit with a kid rushing onto the field, grabbing a base and running back through a door in the outfield. All this stuff plays a lot better when you don’t look at the last three guys in the order and realize that the highest batting average is .202. Maybe they should have put the kid in. At least he can run.

I don’t demand instant change. But I demand a product that at the very least draws some scrutiny when they are on the field. And I know players go into slumps, but season long slumps may indicate a stunning lack of talent. The manager Eric Wedge keeps talking about the young kids getting a good sample size of opportunities at the plate. Fair enough. But we are in July and pretty soon that sample size is gonna start looking like a pink slip.

Have you ever really watched paint dry? I mean really watched it? Because, you know, it changes colors and the brush strokes slowly disappear and the wall starts to get a nice even color. Compared to yesterday’s game, drying paint looks pretty damn good.

Eats, Food

Beecher’s Puts a Hold on Flatiron for NYC Opening

Flatiron, the once and future cheese

Cheese-o-philes have been eagerly awaiting the opening of Beecher’s New York City location for both the obvious reason, and because Beecher’s was going to roll out a new cheese named Flatiron which, we concluded at an earlier tasting, is God’s gift to Audrey.

Flatiron, made from milk produced in upstate New York, is a crumbly, creamy, sui generis delight, and Beecher’s plans to sell it only in New York, ever. The first batch is supposed to go on sale there about two months after opening. (Here, Jet Blue.)

Just during the celebratory opening, Beecher’s had thought to sell a Seattle-made batch both in New York and in Seattle, as a way of letting locals in on the excitement, but after a taste test, owner Kurt Dammeier put the quality-control kibosh on that idea. Good cheese, but not what he had in mind as Flatiron. Since Beecher’s does not introduce a brand-new cheese very often these days, he’s not interested in “close enough.” The world will have to wait a little longer.

On the other hand, you don’t really need to wait to enjoy the Beecher’s cheeses that exist. Down at the Seattle Beecher’s, you can shop the whole line, as well as the Cheesemaker’s Corner label, for one-off cheeses with outlier flavor profiles or textures. If you catch our drift.

News, Sports

Seattle Companies Export Humor, While Portland Puts a Bird On It

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What I wouldn’t give to be a Portlandia writer. You sleep till 2 p.m., then pull up The Oregonian on your iPad, and see, for example, that a Portland insurance company is having an employee art show. Look: A “whimsical” bonsai tree made out of wine corks! Cut, paste in to Final Draft, write in a cameo for James Mercer, episode finished. Honestly, finding material for that show is about as hard as finding seagull shit at Ivar’s Fish Bar.

Meanwhile, here in Seattle, we are doing real work. Now, neither the Seattle Sounders nor Portland Timbers score many goals, but they are sure scoring with my funny bone! (Note to editor–Ew! Please rephrase.) Check out these high-larious commercials:

First, here’s the Timbers’ extremely Scottish coach, John Spencer, in an ad for Alaska Airlines:

And now, Sounders’ forward Roger Levesque in a spot that’s part of the team’s “Make a Date with a Sounder” campaign.

Ha! I happen to prefer the Portland commercial, but wanna know a secret? It’s really Seattle that’s bringing the funny in both cases. Seattle-based Wong, Doody, Crandall, Wiener did the Timbers’ spot, and Seattle-based Wexley School for Girls did the Sounders campaign.

Sorry, Portland, but you’re better at being the butt of jokes than actually making them. I kid! I kid! We love you guys! Powell’s! Street food! So much brunch!

News, Transportation

Amtrak Plans for More Seattle-to-Portland Trips

King Street Station (Photo: MvB)

By 2017, Amtrak Cascades should be making six round trips between Seattle and Portland per day, up from four trips daily now. That’s possible in part because of an extra $15 million the federal government is disbursing for a Port of Vancouver project–from a pot of high-speed rail money that Florida refused.

“The $15 million, along with $18.3 million in matching funds from the Port of Vancouver,” reports The Columbian, “will pay for a separate track for freight rail cars carrying shipments into and out of the port.”

Anyone who’s taken the train to and from Portland has waited for a slow-moving freight train to clear the track–this spur line is supposed to reduce delays by 40 percent while tripling the Vancouver port’s rail volume. Without work to reduce that congestion, you can imagine new Cascades trains simply piling up behind delayed trains in front, like buses caught in gridlock.

Amtrak had also asked for $10 million for preparatory studies to deal with its mudslide problem–this winter, more than 100 mudslides affected passenger and freight rail service. (To extrapolate, in December 2010 sixteen mudslides affected 90 train trips.) Even with Amtrak’s generous on-time window (trains can be from ten to thirty minutes late and qualify as “on-time”), only about 62 percent of its trains arrive on time.

The mudslides aren’t helping at all, but Amtrak has no money to fund the environmental assessment needed before any work could actually being. Funds disbursed from the Florida allocation, however, went primarily to “shovel-ready” projects. So, Catch-22.

“While disappointing, our total share of ‘HSR’ funding ($781 million) remains impressive relative to our population size,” says Seattle Transit Blog, “and it speaks well of WSDOT’s preparedness in seeking these grants over the past three years.”

A commenter adds that, “The mudslide issue is as much an infrastructure issue as it is a liability issue,” referring to the legal requirement that passenger trains wait 48 hours after a slide. If WSDOT and Amtrak can get that rule amended, then a huge part of the problem is already dealt with.

Arts & Entertainment, Music

Florencia Composer Daniel Catán Dies, Suddenly, at 62

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Daniel Catán

Mexican composer Daniel Catán died suddenly in his sleep this past Saturday. He was young, 62, and no one I talked to could account for his death, no one even knew if he was sick.

If he was best known for his opera for Los Angeles Opera based on the Italian film Il Postino, Seattle Opera audiences no doubt remember him as the composer of Florencia en el Amazonas which had its Seattle debut in 1997.

As it happens, I was working in the public relations department at Seattle Opera at the time and got to know Daniel and work with him. It was a seminal moment for the Opera, one of the first newly commissioned operas done under General Director Speight Jenkins, who co-commissioned the opera with Houston Grand Opera and Los Angeles Opera.

Catán, in town to promote the opera, was always kind, charming, and surprisingly candid and frank. (In the Los Angeles Times, Mark Swed simply calls him a “mensch.”) He was always available to meet the press and, better, always had something interesting to say.

Waiting outside the KUOW studios for an appearance, the producer came out to prep him.

“What should the host say is your profession?” The producer asked. “Are you a musician, dramatist, composer?”

“I am an opera composer,” he said.

The producer laughed then quickly realized the laugh was a serious social blunder, apologized, and led Catán in to the interview. It was funny. “Opera composer” seemed anachronistic, like saying you made typewriters or buggy whips.

But he was an opera composer and a fine one at that.  Some Seattle Opera staff members were worried that it would be hard to sell tickets to Florencia, (it’s usually harder to sell tickets to new works) and it did start off slow, but by the end of the run there were people clamoring for seats. The opera had caught the public’s imagination and word of mouth drove sales. It was so popular, Speight brought it back a few years later and people loved it all over again.

Dawn on the Amazon in "Florencia en el Amazonas" at Seattle Opera. Photo ©2005 Rozarii Lynch photo

Even for an opera composer, Catán was a bit of an anachronism. Where other composers of his generation went for discordant or “contemporary” music, Catán favored lush, romantic scores. He claimed Erich Wolfgang Korngold, an unabashedly romantic composer who scored Errol Flynn swashbucklers in the 1930s, was one of his idols. But Catán wasn’t old-fashioned or nostalgic; his music was packed with emotional fire and, particularly for Florencia, he worked in instruments like the djembe or Peruvian pan pipes. His work was praised for its romanticism and his return to romantic music may have, in time, led to a resurgence of similar music. (Seattle Opera’s last new commission Amelia had gorgeous, romantic music by Daron Hagen.)

He was in other ways a distinctly modern composer who took as his source material the writing of Octavio Paz for Rappaccini’s Daughter, the works of Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez, and the writer (Oh, writers!) of the screenplay of Il Postino. Written for Plácido Domingo and commissioned by Los Angeles Opera, Il Postino was a massive hit. I can only hope that it arrives in Seattle in the near future.

Catán’s death at such a young age is an incalculable loss. He passed away in Austin, Texas, where he was working on the score and libretto for an opera based on Frank Capra’s 1941 film Meet John Doe. It beggars the imagination how he could have made an opera out of that relentless lump-in-the-throat movie, but if anyone could do it, Catán could.

He knew how to find his way to the heart of any story.

Food, Restaurant

Surveying Seattle’s Burger Shack Renaissance

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In the 1960s and ’70s, Seattle earned a reputation as a top-notch burger haven. Burger shacks like Turbulent Turtle and Red Robin served up burgers with a dizzying mix of embellishments, and Dick’s Drive-In and Daly’s cooked up an honest, tasty lunch at prices everyone enjoyed.

Sadly, that first generation of patty pioneers now lies moldering in redeveloped graves. A few years ago, Daly’s closed to make way for an Eastlake development that has been stalled by the economy. It’s now just a vacant lot. Earlier this year, the original Red Robin on Eastlake closed, the last link to a glorious past for what is now, basically, a mall-only restaurant. Only Dick’s remains, still serving the best burgers for the dollar in the city.

Thankfully, Seattle is in the midst of a burger shack renaissance and The SunBreak Lunch Team (not just for breakfast anymore!) has spent the past few weeks scouting out the new players.iBurger and Shake (8000 Lake City Way N.E.) just opened. Housed in a beautifully restored 1930s-era gas station, it’s a welcome addition to the lunch landscape in Maple Leaf. We ordered the Cheeseburger and the Hawaiian Burger with chicken. A blueberry shake and an order of fries rounded out the meal.

The burgers are 1/3-lb. of 100-percent ground chuck and are delicious. Lettuce, onions, and tomato were crisp and fresh. The chicken was a large portion, well cooked but not dry. The shake was fresh blueberries mixed into soft-serve ice cream. The fries were crinkle-cut and disappointing. Prices were reasonable, with burgers in the $4 to $7 range. The two of us ate a good meal for $16.

About a mile south, Primo Burgers (6501 Roosevelt Way N.E.) is serving up the best Hawaiian burgers in Seattle. A tiny storefront, Primo is decked out in classic Gilligan’s Island fashion, but the food is first rate. I tried the King Kamehameha burger and no one I’ve tried has a better Polynesian patty. Fries are acceptable and so is the price, with burgers in $4 to $6 range. The only downside is a lack of parking nearby.

In two locations in Seattle and Monroe is Burger Madness. We stopped by the 4th Ave. S. location. All burgers use a fresh, never-frozen, 1/3-lb. patty, though you can substitute a 1/4-lb. patty or a chicken breast. There are 15 burgers on the menu, with a full range of embellishments. We tried the Jack Daniels, smothered with fresh grilled onions, mushrooms, pepper jack cheese, and smoked bacon, and the Fire Alarm, with grilled jalapeno, a nice spicy sauce, and pepper Jack cheese. Both were beautifully cooked and tasty. Again, Burger Madness doesn’t allow the condiments to overwhelm the flavor of their fresh meat. Shakes were ice cream, and they offer a dozen fresh fruit varieties. Fries were crisp.

Burger Madness does have one interesting variation. Most of the burgers are in the $4 to $6 range, but you can add an extra beef patty for a buck. And you can add as many patties as you want. The Stack ‘em High option might be a lot of fun, but you can also take it too far. The walls of the Seattle store are filled with photos of the brave souls who took it all the way to 10 patties or more. The current champ, listed on the site, is 14 patties.

During our search for the strange and the new in Seattle burger shacks, we were directed to head over to Ballard and hit up Lunchbox Laboratory.

A self-described “tiny, non-descript building,” located at 7302-1/2 15th Avenue NW, the Lab lived up to its designation as home of burger science. The large, varied menu features a dozen burger options or a build-your-own-burger option. Lamb and chicken options are available as is a larger selection of boutique sodas.

Perhaps it was the build-up, perhaps we caught them on a bad day, but we were underwhelmed. We had the Smoker, which was piled high with grilled onions and bacon. Piled too high as it turns out. The mix was incredibly salty and tended to drown out the taste of the burger, which was a shame because the Lab uses ground ribeye. The meat flavor should leap from the bun, but it doesn’t, overwhelmed by grease. (We had the 1/4-lb. option, though you can also get a 1/3-lb. patty.) The mad scientist approach led to a grease-spewing tower of a burger that is probably most successfully eaten in a trough.

On the good side, the fries are fresh cut and come with your choice of salts, from pepper bacon to sea salt and pepper. For our money, the best fries on the tour. It’s expensive–two burgers, two Mexican Cokes and two fries was over $30–but very popular. The line was out the door the day we were there, and they can sell out before their closing time.

Our tour ends with a trip to Red Mill Burgers. There was a short debate among the team as to whether we should include Red Mill. After all, there is little doubt that the Phinney Ridge institution (N 67th and Phinney Ave., with a second location in Interbay), serves some of the best burgers in the city and the country for that matter; it frequently shows up on Best Burger lists at the national level: “One of the 20 Hamburgers You Must Eat Before You Die,” say the Oprah Show and GQ.

There are a dozen burger varieties on the menu all using 1/4-lb., flame-broiled patties. Chicken and veggie options are available. We tried the Verde Burger featuring fire roasted Anaheim peppers, jack 
cheese, lettuce, tomato, red onion, and the famous Mill Sauce, and the Blue Bleu Cheese N’ Bacon Burger, with crumbled bleu cheese, pepper bacon, lettuce, tomato, and Mill Sauce.

Simply perfect. The flavor of the meat is heightened by the embellishments, not drowned. Crisp, fresh ingredients right across the board. The fries are fresh cut and the shakes are handmade and wonderful. Malts, thank goodness, are also available. Prices are both reasonable and justified based on the flavor and presentation.

The burger is an American food and it’s remarkably resilient. Just when you think you’ve seen it all, someone rises up and adds something just a little bit better, or clears away the garnish (or garbage) and lets the flavor shine through. In the case of Red Mill, though, we’re reminded that if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.