Jon Wells - Shipwrecked: A Peoples History of the Seattle Mariners

SHIPWRECKED

A Peoples History of the SeattleMariners

Jon Wells

EPICENTER PRESS

EPICENTER PRESS

Epicenter Press is a regional publisher ofnonfiction books about the arts, history, environment, and culturesand lifestyles of Alaska and the Pacific Northwest.

Publisher: Kent Sturgis

Acquisitions Editor: Lael Morgan

Developmental editor: Dan Levant

Proofreaders: Katrina Pearson, PatrickLagreid

Indexer: Sherrill Carlson

Cover design: Elizabeth Watson, WatsonDesign

Text design: Stephanie Martindale

Printer: McNaughton & Gunn

eBook: Marcia Breece

Smashwords Edition

All photos by Jon Wells, 2012 Grand SalamiPublishing, unless otherwise credited: Maury Wills and ReneLachemann, National Baseball Hall of Fame Library, Cooperstown,N.Y.; Dave Niehaus courtesy of Marilyn Niehaus; Ken Griffey Jr. andSr., John Cordes/Icon SMI; Tino Martinez and Mike Cameron, DavidSeelig/Icon SMI; 2000 ALDS celebration, Mike Nelson/AFP/GettyImages; Ichiro batting, Damen Jackson/ Icon SMI; Ken Griffey Jr.with teammates, Jesse Beals/Icon SMI; Jesus Montero, MarkLoMoglio/Icon SMI; author photo with Dustin Ackley, MattBrignall

Cover Photos: front cover -- Ken Griffey Jr.slides home safely in a 1995 game against the California Angels,2012 AP Photos/Barry Sweet; back cover -- Cartoons: WoodysBelieve It or Not, Life Without Junior, and Mariner Market cartoonsdrawn by Tim Harrison, 2012 Grand Salami Publishing

Text 2012 by Jon Wells, all rights reserved.No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in aretrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means,electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,without the prior written permission of the publisher. Permissionis given for brief excerpts to be published with book reviews innewspapers, magazines, newsletters, catalogs, and onlinepublications.

Library of Congress Control Number:20129324477

Print ISBN 978-1-935347-18-7

Digital ISBN: 978-1-935347-20-0

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Printed in the United States of America

To order single copies of SHIPWRECKED, mail$15.95 plus $6 for shipping (WA residents add $1.90 state salestax) to Epicenter Press, PO Box 82368, Kenmore, WA 98028; call usday or night at 800-950-6663, or visit www.epicenterpress.com . Find us on Facebook.

This book is dedicated to the two mostsupportive people in my life, my mom and my wife Michele, and alsoto Dave Niehaus for inspiring me to write about baseball.

TABLEOF CONTENTS

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PREFACE

This book is the culmination of sixteenyears spent covering the Seattle Mariners baseball teamprofessionally and watching their games as a fan.

I moved to Seattle in September 1994, duringthe baseball strike that canceled that years World Series. Whenthe strike was settled and baseball returned in 1995, I beganattending Mariners games at the Kingdome on a daily basis.

I quickly realized something incredible that unlike the cities Id lived in for much of my firstthirty-three years, in Seattle you could actually go to everysingle game. Getting to and from a game in cities such as New Yorkand Los Angeles was an ordeal that might take up to six hours.Before I moved to Seattle, I would typically get to one or twogames a month.

In Seattle, there wasnt as much trafficheading to the games and I found that if I timed things just right,I could park for free two blocks from the Kingdome.

Even better, because the Mariners at thetime had one of the best-hitting teams in the league and some ofthe worst pitching known to man, their games were typicallyslugfests. While the baseball purists surely hated it, if you likedthe long ball and enjoyed high scoring games, this was anintoxicating place to be.

And 1995 was a very special season. TheMariners had never made the playoffs before and in fact had onlyfinished above .500 twice in the teams eighteen-year history. Butthere were other forces at work that year, as the teams ownersdeclared that they would put the team up for sale if they didntget a commitment for a new outdoor stadium. If they didnt get thatstadium, in all likelihood the team would move out of Seattle.

The possibility of the Mariners moving was aforeign concept for me. Id never before had to think about thethreat of my hometown team moving out of town. The Yankees andDodgers had been entrenched in their cities for decades, each witha large following of fans who had grown up rooting for thoseteams.

What I found incredible in my first year inthe Northwest was the opposition the Mariners faced trying to get anew stadium. I found it unfathomable that there was a well-fundedgroup, Citizens for More Important Things, that existed solely tooppose using public funds to build a baseball stadium. Not onlythat, but a significant number of people in the area were of themindset that we dont need baseball and let them pay for theirown stadium.

This was shocking to me. In the cities Idlived in before coming to Seattle, it was a given that the teamswould remain forever. Yet here I was, in my first year in a newcity, going to every game of my new favorite team, but realizingthat if the Mariners moved, Id probably have to move too. I wasntgoing to remain in a city that didnt have a major-league team.

In August and September that year, as theMariners were closing in on the California Angels in the AmericanLeague West, I was at the Kingdome for every single game. Nightafter night the Mariners won and night after night, or so itseemed, the Kingdome scoreboard would inform us that the Angels hadlost yet again and that the Ms had pulled a game closer to firstplace.

It was the greatest experience in my life asa baseball fan. Support for the stadium, which had been lukewarmearlier in the year, increased significantly as the Ms keptwinning. On the night of the stadium election, September 19, theMariners came back from two runs down in the ninth inning to tiethe score against the Texas Rangers on an improbable home run byDoug Strange, a player whod hit just one home run the first fivemonths of the season. The Ms won the game in the eleventh inningand with that kind of momentum, it seemed the stadium vote wasdestined to pass.

The vote narrowly failed, but after theMariners won the A.L. West in an exciting one-game playoff over theAngels and then defeated the Yankees in the first round of theplayoffs, there was finally enough political support locally forthe team to get their new stadium.

While I had spent the 95 season as a fan, Idecided shortly after that season ended that I wanted to get moreinvolved and set about to create a game program that would be soldoutside the Kingdome before all Mariner games.

My reasons for publishingthe game-day program, which we called TheGrand Salami, named after the signaturecall of the Mariners legendary broadcaster, Dave Niehaus, werenumerous.

First, the Mariners were putting out theirown game program just three times a year. Because I went to morethan three games a year and figured other fans did too, I saw aneed for a program that came out more frequently. Second, theMariners program provided no information of substance on theopposing teams. Unlike teams with more baseball tradition, the onlyinformation the Ms provided about players on the visiting teamswas a list of names and uniform numbers on their scorecard. Seattlebaseball fans deserved better.

Most important, I believed there was a needfor an outside voice, someone to question what the Mariners weredoing, whether it be commentary about the players or the team, orabout whether management was doing right by the teams fans. I wasshocked after the 95 season when the Mariners traded one of theirbest players, Tino Martinez, to the team they had just beaten inthe playoffs the New York Yankees.

While Mariner fans were understandably angrythat the team would trade Martinez to the Yankees since attendancewas on the rise and a new stadium was being built for the team, theMs said they couldnt afford to pay Martinez. It was an outrage,yet the media covering the team went along as if it was justbusiness as usual, that the Mariners were always going to operateas a farm team for other teams in baseball, trading away their bestplayers when they became good enough to earn a large contract.Baseball fans in Seattle had proven in 1995 that theyd support ateam that won; the local politicians had done their part to get theMariners a new stadium. But it didnt seem like the team waskeeping its end of the bargain.