Still, I somehow managed to convince the fags, artists, and pinkos who run this paper to let me write something positive about the Mariners, and what you're about to read is not some anti-baseball rant. No, this is an honest-to-goodness baseball article. A pro-baseball article. An article about a boy in love with a game. Dan Savage, this paper's faggy editor, agreed to let me, one of his heterosexual underlings, write a pro-baseball piece provided he could write the headline. Please ignore whatever title that über-fag stuck on top of this piece.
And now, my premise: Baseball, glorious baseball, is the greatest sport in the world. For non-fans (and Stranger editorial hacks), this statement undoubtedly forces eyes to roll. After all, baseball can't solve world hunger. Baseball is not Proust. The players are overpaid, the owners are greedy, the sport is too corporate, etc., [insert more whining here], etc.
For true baseball fans, the game encompasses all that is pure and pretty and meaningful. Indeed, for seven months of every year, baseball is life itself, and unlike other sports, baseball engages beyond simple spectacle. Unlike football, which is nothing more than heavily padded bodies colliding, or basketball, which is stifled by whistle-blowing refs and overpowering ogres like Shaquille O'Neal, baseball is equal parts smarts and skill. The mental showdown between pitcher and hitter (fastball or changeup?), the rotation of hitters (lefties vs. righties, power vs. movement), the positioning of players on the field--this game is more chess than sport.
When baseball is played right, the union between physical skill and mental strategy is at its pinnacle. And while this statement may make me sound like a pretentious blowhard, I offer a case in point to defend it: Ichiro, the Mariners' reigning American League MVP/reigning Rookie of the Year/reigning Japanese baseball stud, the man who so saturated the Seattle media market last year. About the size of a nickel (5'9", 160 lbs.), Ichiro is the perfect baseball player--quick, powerful, patient, smart--and anyone who saw him play last year, whether he was outrunning a throw to first for an infield single or gunning down a runner at third from deep in right field, had to be stunned by his playing. Fluid and confident both at the plate and in the field, Ichiro has the ability to single-handedly change the course of a game. (This fact was demonstrated perfectly during last year's American League Championship Series, when New York Yankees skipper Joe Torre intentionally walked Ichiro throughout the series. With men on base, Ichiro was hitting .445, and the simple threat of his bat making contact with the ball was more than enough to send the defending World Series Champions cowering--at least until they clobbered us 12-3 in game five and ended our season.)
Still, for all my blubbering, the game of baseball is not as perfect as Ichiro. The New York Yankees still try to buy the World Series, and, yes, the games are too long (an average of 3.5 hours). Owners do blackmail cities into building new stadiums (at least our stadium-that-blackmail-built is beautiful), players make too much money, and aging sports scribblers still complain ad nauseam about the designated hitter. There is a labor strike looming on the horizon, and Bud Selig--Major League Baseball's nefarious commissioner--keeps barking about contraction, which would eliminate at least two teams and generally create havoc. In fact, there may not even be baseball in 2003.
But at its purest, baseball can still create myths. It is still America's game. Monday, April 1 marks the beginning of the season--the long, lumbering 162-game trek--and as I diddle this article toward its conclusion I can barely contain my excitement. Needless to say, I am the only one in my office who feels this way. The Mariners--my team, our team--are about to take the field, and for many of us, life is about to have meaning again. To some this may be sad--after all, it's just a game--but anyone who loves baseball understands. From October until April a part of us is missing, but once Opening Day arrives, all is right in the world.
For the fans of every baseball team except the winners of the previous year's World Series, Opening Day demands introspection. Outside of the hellish urban sprawl of Phoenix, people are asking themselves: What the hell happened last year? Why didn't we win it all?
For Mariners fans, that question has special weight, since the team did so well in '01. Hardball gurus at the Triangle and the Comet are pondering this question: How could the Mariners be the best regular-season team in baseball--in baseball history!--and not win the World Series?
116 wins.
When the Mariners won 116 games last year, they didn't just tie the Major League record for the most wins in a season; they tied 1906 record set by the Chicago Cubs. This means, of course, that the Mariners are doomed. Doomed, doomed, doomed. Had Ichiro and company won 115 or 117 games, they would have been fine, probably riding that Sodo Mojo through the postseason to a championship. But 116 wins tainted the Mariners with Cubness, a form of loserhood as virulent as Ebola.
The Cubs are to losers what Hamlet is to tragedies, Everest is to mountains, and George W. Bush is to illiterate frat boys: the ultimate, the epitome, the quintessence. The full litany of Cubs Loserhood would fill this entire issue, but let me just give you a note or two: In 1906, the Cubs lost the World Series to the vastly inferior Chicago White Sox. The Cubs have not won the World Series since 1908. This is the longest championship drought for any original team in any professional league. The Cubs have not even been to the World Series since 1945. The Cubs have had exactly five winning seasons--none consecutive--in the last 30 years.
"What the hell," as Jack Brickhouse (former Cubs broadcaster) used to say, "any team can have a bad century."
What awaits the Mariners now that they're infected with Cubness and are, without a doubt, about to embark on their own bad century? The Cubs followed their 1906 postseason disappointment by winning the next two World Series. But does any Mariner fan want that kind of magic if the next 90-odd years will be loss after loss after loss? After loss after loss after loss? After loss?
My prediction: The Mariners come in second to the Oakland A's, beat the Yankees in the first round of the playoffs, and then trounce the A's in the American League Championship Series. Then the Mariners will lose the World Series to the National League Champion... Chicago Cubs. BILL SAVAGE
