Blowers now works in the Seattle Mariners broadcast booth and before last night's game against the Blue Jays, his partner asked for his "Pick to Click." Not only did Blowers choose infielder Matt Tuiasosopo as his player of the game, he predicted that the rookie would hit his first major league home run. In his second at bat. Off a fastball. On a 3-1 count. Into the second deck.

Take a guess what happened next. (And then listen to the call.)

Tuiasosopo's line: 1-4 with a HR (1, 5th inning off B. Tallet 0 on, 0 Out, 3-1 count) Spooky. You do not want this guy in your fantasy league.

Call Of The Year [My Northwest Mariners Blog]

Yes, that is Seattle manager Don Wakamatsu proudly showing off a seventeen-pound salmon he caught earlier this week. But will this photo be enough to assuage the doubts of a certain cynical team elder statesman?

"I think I saw the price tag on it," [Ken] Griffey [Jr.] said.

Jealousy will get you nowhere, The Kid. Here's hoping the bitterness didn't affect Griff's enjoyment of Wakamatsu's prized catch, which he generously made part of the team's post-game meal.

Elsewhere in the American League, Jim Leyland left a half-finished pack of Marlboros on the clubhouse buffet table. No word yet on whether this was a reward for the Tigers' six-game division lead, or if he simply misplaced them.

Mariners manager Don Wakamatsu lands 17-pound salmon [Seattle Times]

*****

Good morning, fellow labo(u)rers! What say we spend this beautiful late summer day relaxing and steeling ourselves for the winter months ahead?

I think my basset hound has been reading my mail.

A barbaric yawp over the retractable rooftop: You'll hear time and again that Safeco Field, which is less a stadium than something Boeing forgot to pack up when it skipped town, is "the best of the retractable-roof ballparks." Leave aside that this is like calling melanoma the best of the skin cancers. Why does Seattle even need a $70 million retractable roof for its $517 million stadium? "The Mariners needed a roof for their ballpark due to Seattle's notorious rain," according to Baseball Pilgrimages, a common refrain. But do they?

Here, for the sake of comparison, is a chart of New York's average precipitation:



Cleveland:



Chicago:



And now, Seattle:



The baseball months in Seattle are significantly drier than those in Cleveland, Chicago or New York, three cities with newish, roofless ballparks. Safeco's roof is a costly and utterly pointless gimcrack. A "25-million-pound action toy," the architecture critic John Pastier has called it, not to mention a "waste of money" and a "waste of space." The rest of the stadium is more or less plagiarized from all the other ye olde ballparks of the 1990s, which, as we've noted before, are retro only in the sense that Medieval Times is retro. For lack of anything else, then, the roof has become Safeco's sole defining characteristic. Think Wrigley, you see ivy. Think Fenway, you see the Green Monster. Think Safeco, $517 million Safeco, and what do you see? An exercise in large-scale, rigorously engineered public masturbation. My oh my.

In the tank: Glance over some of these giddy headlines in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer from 1999, the year Safeco opened:

"Safeco's field of dreams is 105 days away from becoming reality"

"Success with flush at the new ballpark" (an actual news story in which we're actually informed that the toilets actually do flush)

"It's my stadium: Safeco workers talk about their experiences"

"Safeco: The tingle tells you it's working"

"Not a bad seat in the house"

"My stadium's better than your stadium ..."

"Modern marvel"

These stories came after the stadium had been built and, I suppose, could be chalked up to a relatively harmless spirit of civic boosterism. But consider what came before, when the Mariners first began shaking their sorry little tin cup in the public square. From Field of Schemes, by Joanna Cagan and Neil deMause:

In Seattle, for example, after voters had narrowly defeated a proposal to build a new stadium for the Mariners baseball team in 1995, The Seattle Times — which had provided free ad space for the pro-stadium campaign — first editorialized that this represented "a striking affirmation of the region's commitment to baseball ... half of King County voters would tax themselves to keep the team there." (That slightly over half had voted not to tax themselves wasn't deemed worthy of notice.) The next day, the paper ran a front-page story headlined "Stadium Not Yet Dead," in which it suggested ways that the state government could go ahead with the stadium despite the popular vote. One month later, the state legislature would do just that.

The same press corps that never tires of unearthing minor-league boondoggles in massive federal spending bills is the same one that, with rare exception, happily rolls over whenever some local baron floats the notion of a gleaming new ballpark built on the public dime. A horrible new stadium goes up; the taxpayers are on the hook for years; but it's all OK, because some sportswriter up in the press box looks out at the emerald expanse and starts to feel a little tingle.

The view from the stands (everything sic'd):

We were once sitting out in the left field bleachers and my out-of-town aunt was hit on the leg by a home run hit by Miguel Olivo. She didn't bother to get out of the way or try to defend herself in any way whatsoever. She then demanded that the boy who had wound up with the ball give it back to her (which he did) and then, while the ushers and paramedics were attending to her (you should have seen the bruise the ball left), she ordered the ushers to go get the kid who she'd taken the ball back from a free t-shirt from the souvenir stand (which they promptly did). Morale of the story— it's easy to boss people in Seattle around. (Andrew R.)

I took my dad to an M's game at Safeco a few years ago. He's getting up there in age, in his 70s with a bad hip. But he likes baseball and I thought he'd still have a good time. So we sit down in our seats about 100 yards away from home plate. And every time the M's aging Edgar Martinez comes to bat, the guy next to my dad yells in the loudest voice of all time right into my dad's ear, "EDDDDDDDDD-GARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR! EDDDDDDDDD-GARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!" Maybe that chant was moderately worthwhile back when Edgar was still good and when everyone else in the stadium was yelling it (like "YOUUUUUK" in Boston). But when Martinez sucks and you're the only fucker left yelling his name and there's a 70-year-old man right next to you who is visibly flinching, then SIT DOWN AND SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!!!! (J. Davis)

True story — The Washington Nationals were in town to play the Mariners and Elijah Dukes was the starting Left Fielder. I watched the game with a die-hard Mariners fan and was able to tag along and get his "partner seat" for season tickets, which was right behind Elijah Dukes. Unfortunately, there was a fan who brought her kid to the game. Fortunately, my friend and I noticed this and decided to give Dukes the business about his underage love and "You dead, dawg" without swearing. Apparently that wasn't good enough for the mother, who, after the bottom of the third inning TURNS AROUND and tells us she doesn't want her daughter to hear any of that stuff. Now, we have not said a swear word the entire night and the kid is obviously too young to pick up on any language, but the mother wanted to protect her child's delicate sensibilities. My friend then said "Well, I'm a season ticket holder, where have you been all season?" to which this person said "Oh, well I've been a season ticket holder for years and I've never heard anyone say things that are as horrible as you've said." Right.

By the way, eventually Elijah Dukes told my friend and I to "shut up, bitch." Great times. Except the Mariners lost and got swept. (Keith)

I actually just got back from Seattle so all the wonderfulness of the park is still fresh in my mind. There are many things that stick out: the annoying train right by the stadium, the overly lengthy hat trick and boat race, the alcohol reinforcement, but what really made me think "this stadium sucks" has to be the fans. I dedicate this to the fan behind me who pointed to the White Sox dugout and stated "look over there, there are a bunch of White Sox fans at the game today, they're all sitting in the front." (Kristina)

Okay, the mere mention of Safeco sends chills down my spine. I worked briefly for an internet company that was HQ'd in Seattle. This was in 2000 and within hours of being hired by said firm I realized it was merely a racketeering scheme run by senior management to go public and sell a lot of worthless stock before all of the venture capital circled the drain. You know, the business model of just about every internet startup of the time.

Our CEO was big on sales force teambuilding to the point that every waking hour you spent on a trip to the home office had to be filled with some group effort. He decided early on that Mariners games would be the perfect outing so he hinted strongly to our national sales manager that all of us should attend. Of course he and senior management had no interest in attending but we were essentially coerced into spending every free night of more than a few business trips at a Mariners game. On our dime, too and since we were being paid reasonably well the group always sprung for the most expensive seats. I not only had to act enthusiastic, I had to get all fired up because "man, we're gonna get to see A-Rod" He hadn't yet signed his laughably absurd deal with the Rangers so he was still wallowing in collective mediocrity with the M's.

If this was Fenway or Wrigley, I wouldn't have minded killing time watching a bunch of infantile steroid freaks putting on some of the most insufferably dull tedium ever presented as entertainment. But it wasn't, it was a sterile, soulless, corporate hunk of plastic coated with a veneer from Pottery Barn. By the third inning, I would start wandering the stadium to try and find something of merit. Because the stadium was deliberately several blocks from any place that served food or beer, you had to wait on long lines to spend a fortune on "sausages" and "microbrews". The yuppification of even getting shithoused as an option to get through this torture was ruined to the point of rendering it inoperable. I once stumbled into one of numerous Mariners apparel outlets only to find dozens of middle age women diligently combing through the racks in search of some bargain sale item. You might as well have been in a department store on a Saturday afternoon.

These journeys really impressed upon me that professional sports in the US really is no longer about anything going on on the field. It's really just a corporate beer garden designed as an alternative to some big budget action film, or theme park or shopping mall or some sort of mindless "family" entertainment in which the goal is to placate your offspring with as much food as they can ingest and to acquire some more cheap, shiny stuff from China that no one really needs.

How soon before they blow up Safeco? (Ghost of Zelmo Beatty)

It's hard to rip on Safeco for fans who remember the travesty that was the Kingdome, but whoever decided to put a god damned train track through the stadium, with the idea that a train horn blaring into a canyon of people would be a good idea, should be shot. (Erik H.)

Safeco's twin failings are the lack of diehard fans and domineering fun police. Fans of the Red Sox, Yankees and Blue Jays (making the trip from Canada) regularly overwhelm polite Seattleites. The sellouts help the Mariners' bottom line; this team won't sell out many non-bobblehead games the rest of this season. And all those pink Sox hats radicalize Mariners fans to actually make some noise and occasionally get out of their seat when something exciting happens.

We have our outliers, though. One in particular was a guy in the front row of the left field bleachers at a Red Sox game last year. With just a glance him, you'd have trouble figuring out his loyalties. He wore a brown-on-brown argyle Yankees hat. He had tattoos on each elbow–the right for the Yankees, the left for the Mets. But he wore an orange Ichiro jersey from the All-Star game in San Francisco. While he lacked fashion sense and integrity (three teams?), he did cause a ruckus on behalf of the Mariners. The third base line seats had a virulent strain of Red Sox Nation–they cheered Jason Varitek as he trotted out for Bartolo Colon's pre-game warm ups. All we $14 seat fans had in our arsenal was the guy in the front row. He argued with the Sox fans in our section and single-handedly tried to turn every "Let's Go Red Sox" fan into a "Let's Go Mar-i-ners" one.

Actually, he did that double-handedly, because he pounded on the corporate signage right in front of our seats. That proved to be his downfall. As the M's mounted a comeback in the bottom of the ninth, the Safeco Field ushers told Yankee-hat that he had to leave. A county sheriff was brought in, yet rows of fans around him chanted "Let. Him. Stay." When he asked the sheriff why he had to leave, he heard back "Because I said so." Way to go, police! As he was escorted out onto the narrow concourse, he shouted out his last words: "tell all your friends."

Now, my friends, you all know. (Brad Iverson-Long)

Photo via ArtBrom's Flickr account.

Next up: The Boston Red Sox's Fenway Park. Got any horrible experiences to share? Send them to craggs@deadspin.com.

McOwen, who plays for the Class A High Desert Mavericks, has shattered the California League record and now has the eighth-longest hit streak in minor league history, and the best since 1954. Obviously, only one major leaguer has had a longer hit streak, but McOwen still needs 16 games to match Joe DiMaggio's best effort—61 games for the Pacific Coast League's San Francisco Seals.

Oh, and longest hit streak in minor league history? 69, dude! Joe Wilhoit supposedly did it for Wichita back in 1919, but they didn't even have calculators back then.

Minor Leaguer's hit streak reaches 45 games [Mariners.com]
Jamie McOwen's 45-Game Hit Streak, Day-By-Day [Bus Leagues Baseball]

SI plops the burly, surly-looking Branyan in its All Unexpected Team:

Kind of the hitting version of Aardsma, right down to finding his best success as a major leaguer in Seattle. Branyan had flitted through five organizations over the previous three years because he was a left-handed Rob Deer: Awesome power, awful batting average, too many strikeouts. But he did hit 12 homers in 132 at-bats last year for Milwaukee at a time when the Brewers assistant GM was Zduriencik. So when Zduriencik became the Mariners GM, he thought it was worth the low-cost ($1.4 million) risk to add power to a team that needed it badly, and he made Branyan the first free-agent signing of his administration.

It was a risk worth taking. Branyan is still striking out a bunch, but he has toyed with a .300 average and his 21 homers are already the second-best mark of his career. Zduriencik saw awesome power, and as if to prove it Branyan became Bunyan: He's the first man to hit the Mohegan Sun Bar at the new Yankee Stadium.

******

Good morning. Today is the day for more commenting commotion: the system will be unveiled around noon. We can all fight through the process together. Should be glorious.

Ichiro is apparently happy for the first time in years, and if the News Tribune's Larry LaRue is to be believed, this has a lot to do with Ken Griffey Jr. and his magic fingers:

Ichiro Suzuki spreads a towel on the carpeted floor in front of his locker, lies on his back and begins doing stretching exercises. From Ichiro's blind side, Ken Griffey Jr. pounces, gets his hands deep under Ichiro's armpits and digs in with his fingers.

Ichiro's laughter is almost childlike – genuine and uncontrolled – and after about five seconds he screams the magic word to make Griffey stop.

Junior stands up, walks back to his locker and sits down. Ichiro lies quietly for a moment, letting his body relax, then goes back to stretching as if nothing had happened.

[...]

"He's the only teammate I would ever let do that. In Japan, all relationships are respectful, so no one would ever do that to me," Ichiro said. "If someone else did it here, I'd probably punch them in the face."

Their relationship is secure enough that Griffey can offer frank appraisals of Ichiro's looks:

Each day when Ichiro enters the clubhouse in street clothes, Junior goes through a five-point rating process.

"I'd wear that shirt," he said in Denver. "The pants, no. That belt? No. Shoes? Yeah, I might wear those. But that man purse? No (bleeping) way. You're 2-for-5 today."

And then there are all the long, lingering looks into each other's eyes:

Griffin, the trainer, said walking through the clubhouse in that final hour before a game, Ichiro and Junior can be a bit unnerving.

"Sometimes they'll each be at their locker, just staring at one another," he said.

Ichiro, at 35, is putting up the best numbers of his career, a fact that some attribute to that reliable chimera, clubhouse chemistry. It's a lot of nonsense, of course, but there's something intriguing about the idea that Ichiro is hitting a robust .360 because he at last has a teammate to tickle him.

A happier Ichiro? Mariners can thank Junior [News Tribune, via Enjoy the Enjoyment]

Griffeymania has already firmly gripped the region; the Mariners sold 16,000 tickets on Thursday alone, and Griffey merchandise is jumping off of the shelves and into people's arms of its own accord. After a 102-loss baseball season, the Buzzsaw that is the Washington football Huskies, and the loss of both the SuperSonics and Holmgren's mustache, folks there are yearning for some Auld Lang Syne.

But here's Seattle resident and current Zucker Media Group VP Jimmy Shapiro checking in to remind us that there was another side to Griffey.

When I worked for KJR, the sports radio station in Seattle, we were always trying to get Griffey on the radio station, but to no avail. It never made sense that he wouldn't come on the radio station. There was nothing bad you could possibly say about Griffey as he was the best player in baseball. We just wanted to talk to the best athlete in the city and give the listeners a chance to hear from him. Griffey wasn't having that, but we had to keep on asking him to come on the station or we wouldn't be doing our jobs.

I'm not sure if it was 98 or 99, but it started to get real contentious. We kept asking him and he kept turning us down. So our Mariners' sound guy decided to record his response to the interview request. The first day he cussed out the sound guy. The next day he said, "I'll do an interview with KJR when you suck my big black motherf–kin cock." Sorry, tempting, but that didn't happen. We replayed his first day's response multiple times on the radio and the Mariners were furious. They threatened to pull all of our media credentials if we replayed another Griffey interview request response. Unfortunately, his fellatio request never made it to the airwaves.

Now Griffey is back and it will be interesting to see if he's lightened up and will do some interviews for KJR. I certainly hope so as the city is going crazy over him returning to the Mariners.

There are some other good interview clips in the same post at Sports Radio Interviews.com, including Chipper Jones' take on the Griffey-to-Braves situation on WXQI:

"I would rather he waste somebody else's time instead of ours. We could have been working on a deal for something else and been using our time more constructively."

Yes, unfortunately due to that they had to settle for Tom Glavine.

Settle Down Seattle, He's Not The Griffey That You Remember [Sports Radio Interviews]

The cleverly titled "What happened to our teams?" lets Duff engage his inner W.C. Heinz and spout off about the Seahawks (Jim Mora is a rocker! Kinda cool!); the Washington Huskies (None of the top high-school kids want to come here); the Sonics (Gone forever! Bullshit!).When he talks about the Mariners, though, is when it really gets interesting. He shares this amusing anecdote about a little run-in he had at one of his concerts:

I ran into Tony LaRussa at one of my gigs last spring and he was dismayed that the Mariners had passed him over a few months earlier.

“They passed you over?!” I exclaimed.
“Yeah, it’s too bad, I would have loved the gig.”

Tony LaRussa had just won a World Series with the Cardinals! We need some good management, and I hope they do the right thing this off-season. If not, I suggest we all boycott. Shit, Sweet Lou left because management wasn’t allowing him to do his thing as he saw fit.

So, what's more alarming out of this conversation:That Tony LaRussa really wanted the Mariners job, that LaRussa uses the word "gig", or that he's at a Velvet Revolver concert striking up a conversation with Duff? Nothing is processing.

What Happened To Our Teams? [Seattle Weekly]

And it was a clubhouse in need of some direction, given the problems engulfing it as the season came undone. When it came to Ichiro, who got off to a typically slow start in April and part of May, the internal turmoil nearly hit its boiling point. "I just can't believe the number of guys who really dislike him," said one clubhouse insider. "It got to a point early on when I thought they were going to get together and go after him." The coaching staff and then-manager John McLaren intervened when one player was overheard talking — in reference to Ichiro — about wanting to "knock him out." A team meeting was called to clear the air.

That's from part II of a series on rebuilding the Mariners by Geoff Baker of the Seattle Times, who also points out that the Ms are the first franchise in major league history to lose 100 games with a $100 million payroll. At 58-100, the Mariners have quietly built the worst record in baseball, outstinking even the Padres (61-97) and Nationals (59-99). With four games left, the Mariners have a chance tie the franchise record of 104 losses set in 1978, the second year of their existence. More reachable: 1980’s 59-103, or 1983’s 60-102. And those three teams combined probably didn't have a payroll of $100 million.

And with team president Chuck Armstrong already ruling out high-priced free-agent acquisitions this winter, the pending free agency of main power threat Raul Ibanez and trade talk involving Adrian Beltre, it doesn't look good for 2009.

It's all been a strain even on the irrepressibly optimistic U.S.S. Mariner, who had this to say today:

I know I’ve tried to skate through the year a little, not spending too much time staring into the abyss, looking for bright spots like Morrow’s progression, or Ichiro’s play, but I paused after the game tonight and thought about the scope of this disaster for a while. The more I think about it, comparing how the team fell this far that it’s competing with those early expansion years, the more I wonder what I’m doing following this idiocy.

The Sonics are gone, the Seahawks don't look so hot ... even Frasier Crane is no longer around to talk residents down from the ledge. Not a great year to be a Seattleite.

It was Sept. 17, 1920, to be exact, when Bobby Veach of the Detroit Tigers and George Burns of the New York Giants did it, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. I'll give you a minute to dig out both of those baseball cards from your collection before I continue.

Beltre homered in the second, had a run-scoring single in the fourth, doubled in the seventh and tripled in the eighth. He also had another single, missing a six-hit game when he grounded out in the ninth. Seattle beat Texas 12-6. Drew singled in the first, tripled in the third, homered in the fifth and had a ground rule double in the seventh. He also finished with five hits. It was the first-ever cycle at Chase Field.

And, of course, only Drew's really meant anything. Arizona beat St. Louis 8-6, keeping the Diamondbacks 2 1/2 games ahead of the Dodgers in the NL West. LA beat San Diego 5-2 on Monday. Seattle, meanwhile, is 29 1/2 games behind the Angels in the AL West; not quite mathematically eliminated, but close.

How rare was Hernandez' slam? He says it was his first home run since Little League; which I guess they have in Venezuela? And did I mention that it came off of Johan Santana? (the grand slam, not the Little League homer).

“My approach? Just swing. I closed my eyes,” said Hernandez. “I was happy and I was thinking that’s all I need — four runs.”

More fun facts: It was the first home run by a pitcher in Mariners history, and the first grand slam by an AL pitcher since Cleveland’s Steve Dunning did it against Oakland’s Diego Segui on May 11, 1971, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. Hernandez sprained his left ankle while covering home plate on a run-scoring wild pitch. Carlos Beltran slid hard into his feet, and caught him with his spikes. X-Rays were negative and Hernandez should make his next start.

• Snakes ... Why'd It Have To Be, Snakes? Arizona's Dan Haren won his duel with Josh Beckett, throwing seven shutout innings and striking out five to win his fifth straight start, 2-1 over Boston. Chris Young's double and Chris Snyder's groundout each brought in a run for the Diamondbacks.

• Expect A Beanball War! Don't forget that the Yankees play in Pittsburgh tonight for the first time since the 1960 World Series, and Bill Mazeroski will be throwing out the first pitch. Very cool.

• Wizard Cat Defensive Player Of The Day. Dan Haren, Arizona Diamondbacks. Using catlike reflexes — rare for a pitcher — Haren serves notice to Boston's Coco Crisp not to attempt a bunt in his jurisdiction. Of course he enjoys the luxurious feel of the lawn a little too long, and cannot double off the runner at second. Oh well, Wizard Cat still gives this play: Four wands.

Contact Wizard Cat at Wizardcat@live.com