Maybe Mary was joking, or maybe she just didn’t want her picture taken. Or maybe she was serious. Either way, Mary said it would cost us. As well it should. Mary’s a big deal around here.
So we never took her picture.
She plopped down next to us, 2 rows behind the Mariner dugout, in Peoria’s 80-degree heat. Dave and I had beers and brats in hand. I was snapping pics and texting my family when she came down the steps to her seat.
I focused on the brat. That was before we met Mary.
“I’m Bill, this is Dave.”
She reached to shake hands. “My name’s Mary. I’m 90 years old, and I’ve had season tickets to Spring Training since they opened this park 30 years ago.”
The 2020 Ex-Mariner of the Year announcement was all set for February 2021. It was a campaign marked by the deepest dive we’ve ever taken here at Playin’ in the Dirt. We searched MLB postseason rosters… added a Ross Eversoles bracketfor guys still gripped by the game somewhere you’ve never heard of… an offshore bonus bracket for ex-M’s in foreign lands… we even put in a special folksong bracket for Ex-Mariners named Abraham, Martín, and Juan. And Robi.
So there we were, a year ago, ready to unleash the big announcement. Seriously. It was ready to go. No, teacher, the dog didn’t eat our homework. It was something way worse.
Absolutely, totally, unequivocally not the Ex-Mariner of the Year. (Bellevue Breakfast Rotary)
It was #thatman. Kevin Mather. Voldemort.He Who Shouldn’t Even Have Been Named Again here on these pages.
It’s cheesy, really. A whole book of cheese. We love cheese. With baseball in particular, our weepy overwrought technicolor memories of perfection are just… well yeah. Cheese.
But I gave him the book anyway. And now I’ve had it longer than he did. It was Father’s Day 1996 when he got it from me. With love. Says so right there in my red scribble on the title page.
Tonight’s serving with cheddar please.
It was the June after I took him hobbling up the Kingdome steps to the last MLB game he’d ever see in person, the ALCS opener against Cleveland, when Bobby Wolcott, in the only postseason action of his short career, walked the bases full with nobody out in the first inning. Right about then Dad might have said “well shit, let’s go home” before Bobby found himself and worked the next seven frames for the W.
And it was still a few years from those same Indians sending us a special gift in the form of Jose Mesa, whose two seasons in Seattle were defined by an ERA over 5.00 and by my father’s habit of screaming at the TV that goddammit if they were going to pay any random SOB three million plus to just serve that shit up, why the hell didn’t they let him, Kirby Walker, do it for half that much at 82 years old?
Those are just the kind of cheesy stories that fill the pages of Mudville Diaries. Minus my dad’s endearing profanity of course. People’s best and worst memories of baseball. Verbal imagery. Classmates, teachers, teammates, opponents, brothers, sisters, moms, ballparks, balls, gloves, heroes and goats. But the recurring theme, bang, there it is again, is Dad. And again. And again.
And my dad left the bookmark right at the page where I put it, all those years ago. “Dad, read this” it still says, in that same red scribble. It’s the page that stood out from the cheese. The page that held, for me as I read it in that bookstore, what’s real about men and kids and a game that, like Santa Claus, stays magical for only those lucky few who hold on and believe it to be so. My dad was one of those guys.
Still there after 26 years.
And under that bookmark, still there where I left it on Father’s Day 1996, with love, are these words from Gene Carney:
He was bigger and stronger then And you knew he could knock you over If he really wanted to cut loose He lobbed at first And as he threw harder You knew he was testing you Seeing what you were made of today Noticing how you handled the stings Watching how you backpedaled When he tossed infield flies He made you run Firing one wild high or Bouncing it past your dive Maybe so he could rest up some Maybe so you could rest up some So the game could go on Till dinner time or till dark Or till one of you Grew up
Did we really have that game of catch every day? A couple times a week? Once every season? Once, ever? Did we really, ever? …does it matter?
He was 90 when we lost him. It still hurts after fourteen years, a fresh, jagged blade in the ribs whenever I have big news to tell him, advice I need from him, a ballgame I’d like to share with him.
Or when I just need a game of catch. Cheese and all.
It was just Joe Buck and John Smoltz covering the World Series, talking about the amazing Braves and all the adversity they faced on their way to glory. As it happened I was on my way out of the room on an urgent matter when Buck said what he said, so it didn’t quite register as anything more than normal between-pitches blather.
Matter of fact it was this blather right here: season of hardship for the Braves, blah blah here they are poised to win the World Series, blah blah lost this guy to injury, blah blah then Marcel Ozuna suspended for domestic violence, but the hits just kept on coming…
Yes, we got us a front runner. …but he stands on the brink as we write this.
It’s a week into the postseason, but it only took us a day to wonder just what the hell is going on. The box score of the Yankees-Red Sox wild card game contained exactly zero ex-Mariners on either squad. For a couple of teams that regularly feature former M’s like Varitek while we slobber over bums like Slocumb… wait, we digress.
…this guy. But you’d think so, right? After four days of turmoil from the Bellevue Breakfast Rotary to youtube to a curious fan named Eric Hess (@SeattleSunDvl) into the Twittersphere to OMG he didn’t really say that to #ByeFelicia for a guy at the top of the Mariners power pyramid – after all that, he seemed like the obvious pick. For sure… now that he’s an ex-Mariner.
But the Ex-Mariner Committee had to put the whole thing on pause, even with the contest decided and the announcement prepared (spoiler: Caribbean Series Champs). It’s just gonna have to wait.
The page is brown. It’s fifty years old, of course, half a century since I slid a buck and a quarter of lawn mowing money across the counter in Jess Ruttles’ Port Gamble General Store, when Mom turned her back to grab a couple cans of chili. Half a century since a book changed me forever.
No filter. The page has faded but the final words of Ball Four are as true as ever. Copyright – the late Jim Bouton.
It’s brown with age, and it’s brown from flipping to the end countless times in those fifty years.
“…would I do that? When it’s over for me, would I be hanging on with the Ross Eversoles?”
Do you think, when Jim Bouton wrote those words, paused, held his pen over the paper, deciding what to write next… Do you think he knew they’d lead into the greatest closing line of any book ever?
Our home team boys packed up their stuff and left town in September. But 25 ex-Mariners didn’t go home when the 2020 postseason started. Instead, gracing the rosters of new squads, they girded their respective loins for a World Series run. Only one would earn the ring. But would that be enough to garner the coveted Ex-Mariner of the Year (Xmoty)? Let’s revisit the top candidates.
Felix: You think they do this kinda stuff in Atlanta?
Alert and devoted reader Steve from Spokane suggested way back in August that the opted-out Felix Hernandez was a fabulous candidate for Xmoty honors. But Steve, we said, Felix didn’t even play this year. Took himself off the roster. It was the Rona. Exactly, said Steve. And if Atlanta goes deep in October without him, doesn’t he deserve recognition for staying the hell out of the way? Great point, Steve. The Braves went on to lead the NLCS 3 games to 1 but coughed up the series to the Dodgers. How might that have played with the King in the house? Steve seems to know the answer. We’re not so sure over here.
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!”
“You’ve got a great case there,” says my own Adult Son, which bears eerie similarity to the name our buddies at Lookout Landingpinned 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.
I focused on the brat. That was before we met Mary.
