Category: Bloggin’ in the dirt

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This news is too damn real

It was that moment. That surreal moment.

You wake up, take a break in the real world from that novel you’re writing… and the real world creeps right into the novel, or the fiction creeps into the news, or what the hell just happened? 

Amy Carnell comes up on the page. And she comes up on the TV screen. But not for the reason you’d think. The former youth soccer sensation, later an exec with the Sounders and the Seattle Reign, alleges sexual abuse twenty years ago by her youth coach.  


Carnell’s story featured by Hana Kim, Q13
At top: Creeper. (Seattle Times/Amy Carnell)

Continue reading “This news is too damn real”

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Naz Carter’s no-look pass

Naz was the story.

It was a pump-fake, behind-the-back, if-you-blinked-you’d-miss-it kinda story.

Still, like too many other stories, he was the story. All about him. His lost promise. His choice to leave the team. A great opportunity in a new country. Those high flying dunks we’ll never see again.

Carter: see ya. (Lydia Ely, UW Daily)

And like too many other stories, the victims were lost in the ether. They weren’t the story. Their pain, their confusion, their newfound status as targets of threats and accusations — none of that was the story. Until one of them stepped up and said something. Because nobody else, not those whose job it was to say something, not those whose job it was to protect her, nobody else was going to say anything.

So this post won’t be about him. This post is just a bunch of baffled questions. Continue reading “Naz Carter’s no-look pass”

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Mariner playoff rosters!

Here we go!

Twenty-five guys, a perfect postseason roster, fill the ranks of this year’s playoff teams’ 40-man rosters. Plus a former Mariner ace on IR, another who chose not to play under Rona Risk, and a couple honorable mentionables. Some of these guys are “who?” …and as of this writing, just 24 hours into the postseason, a few have already gone south on Elimination Street. But laugh as we may at them now, they each took their season farther than Jerry’s Boys from Dave Niehaus Avenue. Read ’em and wonder. Click the names for stats and such. Continue reading “Mariner playoff rosters!”

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Ex-Mariner of the Year: Early Leader

“You’ve got a great case there,” says my own Adult Son, which bears eerie similarity to the name our buddies at Lookout Landing pinned on Daniel Vogelbach even before he first filled the clubhouse doorway at Safeco Field.*

And boy could he fill a doorway. An even six feet, he weighed in at two-fifty and immediately endeared himself with his teammates when he reenacted Chris Farley’s Chippendale routine on Rookie Night.

Now THAT is a Large Adult Son.

Continue reading “Ex-Mariner of the Year: Early Leader”

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Chalky Topps cards and miracles

I’m on the corner in front of Katterman’s Drug Store. They took one look and ran me out after I paid at the register, caked in dust and sweat from an afternoon on the diamond.

So now here I am. Debating.

Do I rip open this pack of Topps in the August swelter? Risk pissing Mom off even worse than I know she is? I’m late already. Why not take a look? Or do I hop back on my bike, sprint home, beg forgiveness, bolt up the stairs, and take refuge in the bathtub?

One foot on the pedal, I straddle the seat and… no. No! I gotta see who I got. The waxy wrap falls away. Funny, the bubblegum feels like cardboard, and the cards smell like bubblegum.

Tom Who? Why do they fill these packs with rookies?

Continue reading “Chalky Topps cards and miracles”

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The more you know…

Review:
Missoula, Jon Krakauer
Know My Name, Chanel Miller

The more you learn, the more you know. Turns out, the more you know… the more you know you don’t know.

There comes a time when reading a book spins you around and drops you breathless in the dust. This kind of thing just makes you humble.

Humble, like it made me think, “man, I’ve put seven solid years of energy and drive into my own book, honing it, making it real, this tale of broken trust, devotion, manipulation, violation, and, oh yeah… baseball… seven years of watching characters appear on the page, seven years breathing life into them, feeling with them as they play and love and hurt and die, seven years, and I still don’t know jack.”

Continue reading “The more you know…”

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Courage… Step by Step

What Is a Girl Worth?: My Story of Breaking the Silence and Exposing the Truth About Larry Nassar and USA Gymnastics – by Rachael Denhollander

Available from Amazon in hardcover, Kindle version, and audiobook.
Or from your local library.

The specifics of what he did… Horrendous. Enraging. It’s all laid out in the book. The callous disregard for the well-being of the very athletes he was famous for treating. The brashness to violate girls right there in the exam room with their mothers a few feet away. The manipulation of their minds to believe he was doing nothing wrong, that they were twisted if they said something about it. The sheer numbers of girls and women he assaulted. Continue reading “Courage… Step by Step”

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Sex Ed and the Senator

It was the sign. That’s what did it. That, plus this one kid I know…

Everything else was pretty innocuous. Like he intended. Without the sign, Senator Ron Muzzall’s Legislative Review might have earned no more than a quick once-over on its way to the recycle bin.

But there was the sign. And then there was the email.

Ron Muzzall is a Republican serving Washington State’s District 10, appointed in 2019 when his elected predecessor had to step down. Seems like a decent guy. A Whidbey Island farmer and businessman, and a stand-up community member.

And Senator Muzzall thinks sex education grooms our children like a predator. Continue reading “Sex Ed and the Senator”

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Another day in gym class

“I mean, it was fifty years ago, so…”

The old guy’s eyes are tired. Exhausted, desperate, like it’s fifty years of poison.

I sip my beer and try to stay calm. “Why does that matter?”

“C’mon, it’s just the way they did things then.”

“They say the same thing about slavery. OK. Does that make it right?”

“Well… well, hell no. But nobody ever complained, nobody ratted him out to their parents. If it happened to me, I mean it didn’t, but if it did, my parents and the school principal and everyone else would be like, ‘hey he’s a teacher, that’s his job, you shouldn’t have screwed up, and you wouldn’t have gotten it.’ And everyone else knew it too.”

Photo cred: The Atlantic

“Gotten it? What’s ‘it?’” Continue reading “Another day in gym class”

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Your 2019 Ex-Mariner of the Year is…

Pitchers and catchers report to Mariners camp in just eight days. Winter wasn’t so long was it? Over here at Playin’ in the Dirt we spent the offseason deliberating how the hell to come up with a winner. A man fully representative of the perils, glories, and heartbreaks of ex-Marinerdom. A man fit to join our grand pantheon, a man worthy of the title Ex-Mariner of the Year.

A look at our past awardees:
2016: Mike Montgomery
2017: Munenori Kawasaki
2018: Mike Marjama

“When it’s over for me, would I be hanging on with the Ross Eversoles?”
– RIP Jim Bouton

We’ve lost track of how many beloved ex-hometown favorites are out there, still dancing on basepaths somewhere north of the Ross Eversoles. But just a few stood out, for us, in 2019. Continue reading “Your 2019 Ex-Mariner of the Year is…”