Ghosts of the ‘95 Mariners

October 10, 2009

A couple days ago I came across a post on Crosscut by Feliks Banel with the above title, talking about the division playoff game with the Angels and the ensuing ALDS, and how Griffey being with Seattle in 2009 revitalized those memories. Feliks is a communications and radio/TV specialist with a blog, I Still Love Radio. I clipped the following excerpts from his Crosscut post and got permission from him to post the resulting story here:

You had to be there. To really understand how much this city responded when the Mariners made it into the playoffs for the first time in 1995, you had to have been here to feel the palpable shift after 18 years of bad baseball.

The Mariners’ late season ascent that August and September is a fond memory for many people who, like me, don’t even consider themselves sports fans.

The business and culture around Seattle baseball — from the romance of Emil Sick’s Pacific Coast League Rainiers, to the single-season backroom shenanigans of the Pilots, to the years of anonymous struggles and threatened sales of the pre-1995 Mariners — had always been far more fascinating to me than anything happening on the field.

But all that changed, officially, on October 2, 1995 when the Mariners played the Angels in a one-game tiebreaker to decide which team would go on to the division series. A win for the home team would send the Mariners to their first post-season play in franchise history.

On that particular day, I was working for the Business Volunteers for the Arts (BVA) program of the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce. The game took place right in the middle of “The Art & Technology Symposium” that BVA was producing at Intiman Theatre. My memories of the crude “technology” on display that day may as well be in sepia toned prints — it seems like a century ago. That the game was taking place at the same time was also pretty distracting, and only a few people carried cellphones in 1995, and the cellphones were only, well, phones. I remember stepping out into the Intiman courtyard several times during the program to get updates from a now-forgotten attendee who was in touch by cellphone with someone attending the game at the Kingdome.

There are legends in many cities about how you could walk through town on a summer night in the 1930s and 1940s and not miss a word of the local baseball broadcast as radios played from each house. While taking a walk through Wallingford during game five of the Mariners-Yankees division series, my wife and I couldn’t hear any of the play-by-play (it was October in Seattle, after all, and windows were closed), but we did hear simultaneous whoops coming from houses in all directions each time the Mariners did something good. It’s one of my most vivid memories of feeling like a Seattleite, feeling really connected to the city.

Though they would ultimately lose to Cleveland in the American League championship series, the ’95 Mariners had erased years of scorn and derision, and had set the city afire.

By Feliks Banel

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THE BEST SIX WEEKS OF MY LIFE

October 8, 2009

“I’m sitting here in Pioneer Square, and I’m eating a Luis Sojo Burger. This is unbelievable. I think I’m going to cry. And I better take it all in, because I know this will never happen again in my lifetime.”

For those of you who weren’t there in 1995, you will never understand what that season meant to the city of Seattle and to the people who grew up following the Mariners. Because I’m not exaggerating when I say this. That season changed everything. EVERYTHING. Everything that is good or bad about Mariners baseball all came about because of those epic six weeks in 1995. If the Mariners hadn’t made that playoff run, in the manner that they did, at the time that they did, I doubt they would even still be here today.

My backstory as a Mariner fan is a little bit more personal than most. You see, I wasn’t one of those “The New M’s!” fans who jumped on the bandwagon when Ken Griffey Jr. showed up in 1989. Nor was I was one of the “Refuse to Lose” fans who suddenly showed up in 1995. No way, sir. I was a diehard. My brother and I were Junior Mariners going all the way back to 1981.

I was 7 years old in 1981. And that was the first summer that my parents signed me up to be a “Junior Mariner.” Have you ever heard of the Junior Mariner program? Of course you haven’t. The Mariners only had about 7,000 fans a game back then. They were the most ridiculous franchise on the face of the Earth. But my mom signed me up to be a Junior Mariner in 1981, which meant I got a package in the mail containing a crappy plastic batting helmet, a 99 cent batting glove, and free tickets to 8 games during the 1981 season.

Oh, and they weren’t the good games, mind you.

No way.

The Junior Mariner (aka free) games were the ones against the A’s, the Rangers, the Indians, and the Twins. Good lord. Did you ever watch a game between the 1981 Mariners and the 1981 Twins? Of course you didn’t, no one did. I swear, they had so few fans in the stands those nights that they probably would have let me pitch.

So anyway, that’s my backstory. I grew up as a Junior Mariner, my family attended between 20-30 games in the Kingdome every year of the 80’s, and I grew up learning to love a team that in no way was ever going to amount to anything. Seriously, do you know what the highlight of my childhood was as a Mariners fan? The fact that one time we scored 7 runs in an inning against the Yankees. I had never seen this before. Seven runs in an inning? By the Mariners? This feat boggled my mind.

Remember, Al Cowens was considered our “cleanup” hitter back then. As an 80’s Mariner fan, you learned not to expect much.

Through it all– good and bad– I was there in the Kingdome for everything. I sat behind the stupid plexiglass in left field. I fell in love with players like Todd Cruz. I thought Mickey Brantley was going to end up in the Hall of Fame. I convinced myself that you could field a contender with players like Greg “Pee Wee” Briley. Heck, I still say that 1989-90 Erik Hanson was one of the best pitchers of all time.

Year in and year out, I was there, and I loved my Mariners. I followed them with a passion. I was so passionate about them, in fact, that after a particularly frustrating loss in 1989– followed by me smashing a bat into a wall– my mom suggested I might want to attend some sort of anger counseling class. She said my life depended far too much on if the Mariners won or lost that night. And do you know what? She was right. I literally had days of my life where I was pissed off just because Mike Schooler blew a save in the 9th the night before. The Mariners were all I ever thought about when I was a teenager.

As you can guess, I had an unhappy childhood.
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A Non-Fan’s Memory

September 16, 2009

I am not a sports fan, not of any sport, not in any way. I suppose 1995 made me a fair-weather fan of Mariner’s baseball, though. My fondest memory of that fall was being in the Fred Meyer’s store in Lynnwood during one of the playoff games, and instead of the normal Muzak on their PA system, they had placed an open mike next to a radio and the entire store boomed with the Mariner’s announcer’s voice. It was a surreal experience, in that one felt very connected to everyone else in the store, connected by the common experience we were sharing.

By Mark L. Norton

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Bad Planning, but in the End a Good Time…

August 30, 2009

My wife and I were on an anniversary cruise to the Bahamas during the Yankee series, due to travel on the water we were only able to catch game two and game five on the TV. We were a very small majority on this boat. Other than me, my wife, her cousin from Minnesota (converted for the trip from a Twins fan) and a family of 5 from Walla Walla, the rest of the cruisers were Yankee fans.

When the Yankees went ahead in the top of the inning, I got very mad and left our room for the fantail of the ship. At the bar a Yankee fan commented that the M’s had two runners on and Edgar coming up. I ran into the inside bar and joined my little band of M’s fans in front of the TV. When Edgar lined the ball down the left field line I turned to the gang and said, “At least we’re tied again.” When I looked again, Junior was rounding third and I knew we had won.

Unfortunately I did not get a chance to hear Dave Niehaus do the call live (National TV), but every time I hear it now I get goosebumps…

(To make matters worse for me, I had a chance to go to the Angels playoff game (co-worker had seats 4 rows behind homeplate), but since I left on my vacation the next day, my boss was a little unwilling to let me go.  To add insult to injury, radio reception in our building sucked.  Once again I never got to hear a classic M’s call (Everybody Scores!!!!!).

By Grant Kenn

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Emmett Watson on the ‘95 Mariners

August 18, 2009

A little bit ago I picked up Digressions of a Native Son, Emmett Watson’s old collection of some stories about Seattle. I’d heard of Watson, and thought of him as the standard-bearer for the old, pre-Microsoft, pre-Amazon city: the time when Boeing was the corporate king of the town and practically no one knew about Starbucks. Anyway, reading through the stories, I noticed a preoccupation with sports and baseball in particular, including tales about Watson’s boyhood days rooting for, covering, and, briefly, playing for the Seattle Pilots. So I went on to look for what the booster of Lesser Seattle had to say about the Mariners’ ‘95 run.

Here’s most of his column from Tuesday, October 17, the day the Mariners lost the ALCS to Cleveland:

Invincible Summer: It’s Here At Last

For all these turbulent baseball-nutty weeks, I have sat by my window and watched the crowds pouring toward the Kingdome. Sometimes, I admit – sentimental slob – to shedding a tear or two.

You see, I live in Pioneer Square. I can see these crowds, full of joy and hope, chanting our victory slogan, “Refuse to Lose.”

They carry placards and defiant homemade signs. They wear baggy shorts, cutoff jeans, baseball caps on backward, carrying seat cushions and backpacks, bringing their own food to the games because they can’t afford a Kingdome hot dog.

There are young moms and dads, a lot of them pushing baby strollers. Some chip in and travel proudly in horse carriages.

I’ve lived among these people, I know them. All during those dreary, losing years when their hopes were betrayed by dumb management and penurious owners, these people were there – always hoping for a better break.

Watching people in those awful, draining years, cravings crashed, expectations bamboozled, you think of Albert Camus, the French philosopher, who once said: “In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” The invincible summer. It has finally come to these loyal, happy people going past my window to the Kingdome. Joy just radiates up from the sidewalk at First and Jackson.

Millionaires may own baseball, millionaires may play it, but the working people, men and women, make the game possible.

Because baseball is a game of hope, it is also a game for losers. Good teams often lose more games than they win. Yet fans stay loyal. Hope is the pursuit of happiness, isn’t it? What else is there?

It is the game for every guy who lost a good account. It is the game for waiters who get stiffed. It is the game for every guy who goes to work for short dough at a job he hates.

It is the game, as Jimmy Breslin once wrote, “for every woman who looks up 10 years later and sees her husband eating dinner in a T-shirt and wonders how the hell she ever let this guy talk her into getting married.”

We are up in the clouds with euphoria, and our kings and heroes are named Edgar and Tino and Jay and Junior and Mike; our guardian angel is a giraffe-tall, turkey-necked, scowling, tired-armed fellow named Randy Johnson.

This mostly naive, silly thing called baseball has given us a close-knit, intimate kind of community hope. And there’s always next year.

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The Falling Kingdome Tiles

June 27, 2009

On the afternoon of July 19, 1994, four tiles fell from the Kingdome roof down into the stands behind home plate. More specifically, at about 4:35, three hours before the scheduled game that night against the Baltimore Orioles, a 32″-by-48″ fiberglass tile dropped 180 feet as some of the Mariners players were stretching on the field. The three other tiles fell later in the day.

Coach Sam Perlozzo said: “I was walking from our dugout to the Orioles to talk to Chris Sabo when our players starting screaming that the roof was falling in. I thought they were kidding.” Ken Griffey Jr. said he was asleep at the time: “I’ve always told you guys I could sleep anywhere and through anything. I was in the clubhouse asleep and never heard a thing.”

Griffey had this to say about the situation: “They canceled the game for that? Hey, nobody was bitching when the roof was leaking and I was slipping and sliding out there in center field. Just put a sign at the gates saying ‘Enter at your own risk’ and let ‘em come on in.”

Randy Johnson made a prediction: “One way or another, we’ll get a retractable dome here.”

The Mariners went back out on the field within 45 minutes to take batting practice, only leaving the Kingdome after being ordered to do so: King County officials told the Mariners their safety was at risk. Afterward, general manager Woody Woodward reminisced: “Once in Dodger Stadium, we were playing and there was a boom behind me in the infield and it turned out someone had dropped a bag of flour from an airplane. It scared the hell out of us, but can you imagine if it had landed in the stands?”

One Orioles fan from Baltimore, Hilton Bosies, had taken Amtrak trains 3,500 miles to get to Seattle and watch the Orioles play the Mariners. He made the short walk from the station to the dome, got his tickets, and then had to watch as the game got cancelled. Of course the Kingdome closed down for the rest of the season, so maybe Bosies wound up going down to California to watch the Orioles plays the A’s and Angels. Or maybe he turned right around and got on the train back to Baltimore.

All 40,000 of the 15-pound tiles were removed within two weeks, and two of the workers removing tiles were killed on August 7 in an accident. The Kingdome managers said hundreds of people called up asking to buy a tile, but since the process of removing them consisted of just letting them drop 200 feet or so to the floor, they weren’t in any shape to sell as collectibles. Much of the urgent work of removing the tiles (which cost $51 million) went for naught, because the major league baseball strike started on August 12, 1994, shutting down Mariners baseball for the rest of the year.

Once the tiles were removed, the news broke that right at the start of the Mariners’ season, the Kingdome, King County, and Mariners officials all knew that the tiles were in danger of falling. They made some stopgap repairs and inspections, but failed to make the comprehensive inspection that was needed, and that would have cancelled at least one Mariners game, probably the home opener.

That September, after the baseball had stopped, a report to the King County Council said the county lost $9,444 for every Mariners game at the Kingdome. So the irony is that having the Mariners hit the road, and then having games from mid-August onward cancelled by the strike, saved the county hundreds of thousands of dollars in game-hosting costs. The Seahawks, on the other hand, generated $144,392 for the county with every home game.

Of course, eventually the Mariners and Seahawks got their own stadiums, and the tiles were just a weird episode in the saga of Seattle sports. You have to wonder what would have happened if the tiles had fallen during a Mariners game and killed one or more people. Instead of being a footnote in Mariners (and Seahawks) history and an embarrassing episode in the life of the Kingdome, the falling tiles would have instigated a full-blown scandal. The officials in charge would have been guilty of criminal negligence for letting the risk of the tiles falling go uncorrected.

We would have seen the demise of at least one major politician (Gary Locke was King County Executive at the time, so you have to figure he never would have become governor), an even longer shutdown of the Kingdome, and an end to the careers of everyone with responsibility for maintaining the stadium. The Mariners might easily have left for Tampa Bay for the 1995 season, and that’s where this story impacts the ‘95 team.

The entire story of that season wouldn’t exist if the tiles scandal had become a tragedy and pushed the Mariners out of the Kingdome for good, not just for a month in 1994. Also, the home opener in late April was the first game at the Kingdome since the tiles fell, and between the tiles and the strike,  people had a couple good reasons to lose their allegiance to the Mariners and stay out of the Kingdome. It helps explain why it took so long for the place to start filling up as the M’s made their run for the division title in September. And, legend has it that the Mariners’ month-long road trip to close ‘94 created a bond between the players that helped fuel the surge in ‘95.

On that last point, Mike Blowers said: “We really had fun. It was like college again-sort of that us against the world thing. The tiles were huge for us. It brought us together.”

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Randy Johnson at Safeco

May 27, 2009

Randy Johnson’s start at Safeco Field last Friday night for San Francisco was probably his last in Seattle.  I got to the game early, hoping for a Felix Hernandez bobblehead (which didn’t happen), but also to see Johnson warm up before the game. I figured it was the last chance I’d have, and a lot of others figured the same way: the crowd was five or six deep all along the Giants’ bullpen.  We didn’t get to see the bid for 300 wins that was supposed to make Friday’s game uniquely compelling, but standing in the crowd pressed up against the pen, waiting for the Big Unit to make his appearance, that didn’t really seem to matter. Most everybody was there because of what Johnson had done in Seattle, not because the cumulative digits with Houston, Arizona, etc. had turned over enough times to put him within grasp of the 300-victory club.

This wasn’t the playoffs or a crucial late-season game, but the excitement around the bullpen was at that sort of level as Johnson first tossed the ball in the outfield, then slid open the gate and made his way into the pen.  Really meaningful Mariner games have been scarce ever since 2001, but Randy was going to give us one even if he got ejected in the first inning. No matter what happened in the game, this would be our last chance to see him up close, so it’s no wonder the stairs leading down to the bullpen were jammed, you saw cameras everywhere, and we craned our necks through the crowd to get a better glimpse. Not even the dour and usually efficient Safeco ushers were able to really manage this crowd.

As Randy threw, one guy who looked a bit like Jay Buhner kept yelling “Randeeee!,” hoping for a wave or glance from Johnson; he didn’t give it. We’ve all heard about the Big Unit’s game face, but I’d never seen it up close.  Separated by a few rows of people, what comes across most clearly is what he doesn’t do: look over at us or the field, or up at the sky, or into the stands, or say anything, sniff the air, take care of an itch, motion at anything other than the catcher.  It’s just him, the ball, the pitching motion, and a catcher’s glove. The “Randeeee!” guy said as much to me when I admitted that yes, I wanted the Unit to win and leave Seattle with a bang. I think we were all hoping for at least a 10-strikeout game, and with luck, a no-hitter.  The Mariners could make up the loss sometime later: getting a game closer to .500 in late May just wasn’t as important as Randy Johnson coming back and delivering something memorable for his audience.

Johnson stopped throwing, faced the bullpen wall, took his cap off. It took a second for me to realize it was time for the national anthem. I felt sheepish for paying really too much attention to just some warmup throws, put away the camera, tried to regain some perspective. A few people around the bullpen kept taking shots of Johnson as the anthem played.

Up in the left field stands, there was an old lady with ‘95 on the back of her blue Mariners cap in the row beneath me, some quiet Giants fans on both sides, some rowdier Mariners and Giants fans farther off to the side. When Aaron Rowand hit his leadoff homer our way, I noticed the vendors with their orange shirts were practically silent Giants supporters, adding to the already sizable mix of Giants’ colors at the ballpark.

Randy came in with a 94 mph fastball in the first inning, then he walked Adrian Beltre after getting an 0-2 count and closed the first with a swinging strikeout of Wladimir Balentien. It felt a little like old times: the dangerously fast and erratic Big Unit of the early ’90s was trying to re-emerge. Through five innings, Randy was still a little erratic, striking out six, but sometimes missing with his slider way outside and low to lefties, and taking a while to get hitters out. He’d thrown about 90 pitches. The Mariners were just getting singles, including one silly bloop over Johnson’s head by Kenji Johjima that might have gone 80 feet, but no one could catch.

In the bottom of the sixth, it became obvious this wasn’t the 30-year-old Unit, or even the 40-year-old Unit: he went to 3-2 counts on Russell Branyan and Jose Lopez, took 10 pitches to strike out Branyan after getting a 1-2 count, and had Lopez eke a single through the infield on his eighth pitch after getting an 0-2 count. These were guys he would have struck out quickly a few years ago. He’d thrown about 115 pitches, and just wasn’t getting the ball by hitters. Randy still has some speed, he’s still effective, he’s still pretty durable: but he’s not Cy Young material anymore.

He left the game to unanimous cheers, lifted his left arm to acknowledge them as he crossed into foul territory, and settled into the dugout. We might have brought him back out with renewed applause, but an NBA highlight flashed on the screen, and the moment was over.

For whatever reason, the Mariners didn’t do anything to acknowledge Johnson’s career with the team, unless that came before I got to Safeco: no highlights on the video screen, no call for applause from the fans, no first pitch thrown out by Dan Wilson or another player from the ’90s Mariner teams. That didn’t seem right, but maybe the ownership still resents him leaving town, and anyway he’s been gone long enough that they figured it wasn’t necessary. Still, when I looked from the left field stands toward the street, there was a banner attached to a lamppost with Wilson leaping into Johnson’s arms after defeating the Angels in the ’95 division playoff.

So exactly what does all this have to do with 1995? Well, I didn’t go to any of Randy Johnson’s three earlier returns to Seattle, with the Diamondbacks in 1999 and then twice with the Yankees, in 2005 and 2006, so I don’t know how those ones compare. But it’s obvious the Big Unit’s fans are still legion in Puget Sound, more than a decade after he left town.

This time was different, I think, simply because of the distance time provides. Randy’s practically at the end of his career, with quite a few more wins after leaving Seattle than he had with the Mariners; kids born in 1995 will be going to high school in the fall; the Kingdome’s a fading memory. There must be a few people still accusing Johnson of malingering in 1998 or just upset that he didn’t stay on with Seattle. But the people who were at Safeco on Friday to see Johnson pitch were paying tribute to what he’d done for their lives as baseball fans by carrying the Mariners in ‘95 and pitching a lot of memorable games for the team in his 10 years at the Kingdome. He gave us those memories, and now was coming back one last time to revitalize them by simply showing up on the mound: that’s all he had to do.

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Talking About 1995 With Dave Grosby

May 2, 2009

KJR talk show host Dave Grosby hosted the Mariners’ pre-game and post-game shows in 1995 for KIRO. Last week I talked with him about that year, beginning with the strike that was resolved just a few weeks before the 1995 season started.

Arne: As the season started, were you frustrated or bitter over the strike?

Dave: Pretty bitter. It looked like they had a chance in ‘94, but you knew the strike was coming. The team was very close [in the Western Division], and it was not like they were having a great year. 51-63, I think, was their record when the strike happened, but they still would have had a chance. It was ‘94 that had been disappointing. They just weren’t winning that year. Griffey had shown what he could do, but it was the pitching in the Kingdome that wasn’t doing it. Piniella had Johnson, Bosio, Ayala as his closer, there was the sense that they had a chance, but it just didn’t happen for them. The Montreal Expos that year, they were superb, and the strike just killed that team, took away their best shot at a pennant, and a decade later they were gone.

Arne: I’ve talked to a few people, and they’ve all said Griffey’s homer against the Yankees in late August was the start of the run.

Dave: Yeah, that was the first game, the homer off their new pitching coach, Wetteland, on August 25 I think, that happened and people went back to the Kingdome. But it wasn’t really until the first week of September, a three- or four week-long stretch where they were winning every day, that the run really happened. They came from 12, 13 games back, and the other moves [trading for Andy Benes and Vince Coleman and signing Norm Charlton] started paying off. They brought in Benes, that was a big deal, the first time they showed they were willing to make a trade for someone to compete. It was funny, it took until mid-September for the fans to take interest.

Arne: Yeah, the run was 18-2, I think.

Dave: They had all these flashy moments, and they [the fans] started realizing all these good things were happening. The O.J. verdict came down the same day as the playoff against the Angels. And then the playoffs started.

Arne: It sounds like Buhner was the player who really pushed the team to make that push for the division title.

Dave: The Mariners decided to put up flags for the wild card standings, and Buhner was furious, he tore them down. It was a rallying cry for the team. It was amazing to see how close the team got. The whole thing happened so fast.

Arne: Was there any sense of a chance the Mariners would come back from the 2-0 deficit against the Yankees?

Dave: Game 2 was a real blow to the team. Griffey hit the homer to give them the win it looked like, then the Yankees came back to tie in the 12th. Leyritz hit the homer to win it in the 15th, that incredibly long game, it must’ve gone on until 2 a.m. in the Bronx. You figured that was their best chance; if it didn’t happen there, in game 2, it wasn’t going to happen. Charlton pitched five innings, it was by far his longest outing, but it winds up a loss.

Arne: Did Piniella help the team get ready for that Yankees series? He’d spent so many years with the Yankees, been in some World Series, he was used to that New York media.

Dave: I think he might have said something. Piniella was talking at the point when there were 4 or 5 weeks to go in the season, and he said now is the time to bear down. But Piniella said it actually works the other way around, it’s up to the players now, we’ve taught them, done what we could. They have to figure out how to respond now. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to calm them down, but they already felt that they were ready, they’d be prepared for what they needed to do. And the funny thing about Piniella, he was right, they were ready. And him not talking about it kept them from getting too aware of the circumstances.

Arne: The Mariners actually had a three game lead, I think, with four games to play against Texas, and then they lost it.

Dave: I went down with them [to Texas], and in the first game, Griffey hits a grand slam, they clinch a tie for the division title, and you figured they were going to do it. I flew to Lincoln, I was doing the Cougar games at the time, and they were playing Nebraska [that weekend], but the Mariners couldn’t get it done. It’s happened so many times, the team coming back gives back the lead at the end of the season. That was the situation with Boston and New York in ‘78. You’d think it shouldn’t have happened, but it did.

Arne: There were all those rumors about the team probably moving to Florida after the season. Was that something the players were aware of, or did they not really pay much attention?

Dave: That was the backdrop to the whole season, but no, the players weren’t that aware of it. I remember the election night thing, how the game went on and the stadium yes vote was ahead during the game, then it slipped back, and the homer by Strange to have them go ahead. The no vote just barely won; that vote was so close. I think the Mariners wouldn’t have gotten even 40 percent of the vote if the election was held a couple weeks earlier. Later Mike Lowry got the legislature together, and they put a funding package together; it absolutely wouldn’t have happened otherwise.

The funny thing about it is, the argument was that they needed a new stadium to survive in Seattle. They only had a few more years in the Dome, but they were drawing 3 million people there in ‘98. And Safeco’s a gorgeous park, but it turned out they didn’t have to have the new stadium to draw people in. It was just winning.

Arne: What do you remember about the celebration after beating the Yankees?

Dave: I had a post game show to do at Umberto’s which was the name of the restaurant at the time next to FX McRory’s. I had lucked into 2nd row sets so when Griffey scored I jumped around like a maniac hugging complete strangers then went across the parking lot to the restaurant for the post game show. Never a wilder or more raucous night. Players like Wolcott came by, all the broadcasters came by. . . the first call was from New York and the second call from Boston. We were supposed to do a 1 and a half hour show and wound up doing 4 hours till 3 in the morning. The wildest night in Seattle sports history.

Arne: I talked with Rick Rizzs last month about the Cleveland series, and he said the Mariners were just too exhausted, physically, and maybe emotionally too, to have much of a chance.

Dave: There’s no question they were messed up, especially the rotation. They brought in Johnson to win game 5, they had to have that game. But they had Wolcott for game 1, the 22-year old from Oregon, he’d started 3 games all year, and if I remember right, he walked three in the first inning. Then he pitched a shutout, I believe. Cleveland was sensational that year, 100-44, they were the best team [by winning percentage] since 1954, along with the Mariners in ‘01.

Arne: A-Rod that year, was he up and down with the team, going from Tacoma to Seattle and back a lot?

Dave: He was a September call-up. It was part of his contract when he was drafted that he’d be brought up to the major leagues that year. I’m pretty sure he was on deck when Edgar Martinez hit that double. You think about how things change in his career and for the Mariners if A-Rod comes up and gets a hit to win that game.

Arne: There’s that one picture of A-Rod consoling Cora after the Indians series ended.

Dave: I know exactly the picture you’re talking about. I’ve always said, that picture was worth $100 million to the Mariners. It really turned women on to the team, They came up with that “you gotta love these guys” slogan the next year, which was really directed at women, and it brought in a whole new fan base. Cora crying, being a baby, and the 18-year-old kid with his arms around Cora’s shoulder.

Arne: You look back on those late ’90s Mariners teams, and it’s just so hard to figure out why they didn’t have more success, with Griffey, Rodriguez, Johnson, Buhner, Martinez.

Dave: You sure do wonder: why didn’t they repeat that performance a few more times? I’ve talked to those guys, and they can’t really understand it either. They’ll wonder what happened. That’s what you hear those guys say, why didn’t we do more with that talent? In ‘97 there was Mussina [in the ALDS for the Orioles].

Arne: Was it mainly the bullpen, just letting too many runs score?

Dave: The problem wasn’t really the bullpen, it was the starting pitching. Bosio couldn’t pivot [on the mound], but he was such a gamer for Piniella [in 1996]. They had Charlton; it wasn’t so much the relief, they just didn’t have the starters.

Arne: Do you think fans dwell too much on ‘95 and don’t pressure the Mariners to at least get to the World Series and improve on ‘95 and ‘01?

Dave: I’ve heard that and think its bullbleep. Pressure them how? DO what? Since ‘01 attendance has gone down as they haven’t won and last year’s was the worst ever at Safeco Field. Should they throw shit at players? Never watch or listen to games and take away the income that provides players? I’ve always thought that was a crock and utter nonsense, as you can tell. Fans don’t create winning teams, in fact they have nothing to do with it. Now if the Mariners were hoarding money and not paying players and living with a tiny payroll so the owners could make huge profits you might have something. But they aren’t and you don’t.

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The ‘95 Mariners and the Tacoma Rainiers (Part III)

March 16, 2009

This is part III of an interview with Kevin Kalal, a long-time member of the Tacoma Rainiers’ front office, about the ‘95 Mariners and that year’s Tacoma Rainiers. Parts I and II of this interview can be seen here and here.

Arne: Do you have any particular memory of the Mariners’ ’95 run?

Kevin: There is one thing, a game I guess no one remembers, but it was one of those wins crucial to getting the Mariners in that playoff.

Bill Krueger pitched 10 games with us, and then one day someone got injured or maybe a starter got blown out of a game early [it was Randy Johnson missing a start because of a shoulder injury]. And the Mariners called to have him come down as a spot starter, and he had a huge game against the A’s down in Oakland. I remember I always thought that win, so unexpected, that it was such a huge game to getting the Mariners the tie with the Angels, but it never got played up in the media. The Mariners’ thought well, he’s 37, let’s run him out here, see what happens. And he threw a lights out game, so it was an unexpected win. I always think about that stuff, but nobody really remembers the game. It was on August 6, a 15-8 win, it was a Sunday afternoon getaway game. They were 11 games back. He pitched 5 2/3rds innings, gave up two runs and beat Todd Stottlemyre who was having a strong year.

Arne: Did you go to any of the playoff games?

Kevin: I didn’t go to the Yankees games. I went over to Washington State to visit friends and watch a football game. During game 3 I was watching a volleyball game. Then there was game 4, Edgar’s grand slam after the football game. For game 5, I was driving home, on a Sunday afternoon, and as I hit Snoqualmie Pass the radio signal went out. It was the seventh inning, and I thought “I won’t check again until I get home.” I figured it would be over by then. So I got home and it’s the 8th inning. Then I went out to pay my rent at the front office before it closed on Sunday evening and as I was walking back I hear a bunch of yelling and screaming. The Double, and I missed it. I went to two of the Indians games. I have champagne bottles from the celebrations after the Angels playoff and the Yankees series.

You know, in ’01 it was the same thing, the same excitement. What are the M’s doing? Everyone wanted to know, even after they’d clinched the division. And we were really good too, we tied for the PCL title, an 85-65 record. It was still a split season then, but they didn’t have a playoff because of 9/11. That year was the pinnacle of a collective effort throughout the organization. We had all worked together for years and years and years, everyone at all levels of the team, and it came to that point. When Bill Bavazi came in as the general manager the organization started to change fairly dramatically. A lot of the key front office personnel and player development staff started leaving the organization.

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The ‘95 Mariners and the Tacoma Rainiers (Part II)

March 16, 2009

This is part II of an interview with Kevin Kalal, a long-time member of the Tacoma Rainiers’ front office, about the ‘95 Mariners and that year’s Tacoma Rainiers. Parts I and III of the interview can be seen here and here.

Arne: What impact did the Mariners’ run have on the Rainiers?

Kevin: The comeback really started in September. By that time the Rainiers’ season was pretty much done, so we didn’t feed off the Mariners success.

I was at Ripken’s game against the Angels, where he broke the record for consecutive games played. The O’s beat them three straight games, and you looked up and the M’s were 8, 7.5 games back, so that was kind of interesting. And then they were right back in it. The Mariners organization was so unprepared for the playoffs, in terms of tickets, figuring out how to handle the logistics of the process. For the 1-game playoff they called our staff and we went up to their offices and were bundling tickets together. There were some great disasters along the way, but we got our tickets done, then went to the game. I remember Sojo’s line drive, seeing the ball skip past J.T. Snow. Then being down in the clubhouse. We got prepared for the Yankees series.

Anyway, the impact on us was 100% positive. It created a lot of interest in baseball, a front page story, the first story of the day on tv. It generated buzz for us. We sell baseball, not really stars or victory, the race for the pennant. It’s a brand-affordable family entertainment-and the Mariners created excitement, a new reason for people to check out our game. The comeback got baseball to take off, there was so much more energy. Some people said, “Doesn’t it take away attention for the Rainiers?” but no, it just expanded awareness of us. And we were selling tickets at different price points, so people who didn’t want to spend the money for the Kingdome could go to Cheney. It hurt us more when the Sonics were playing the Bulls, say, in the playoffs in spring. Then everybody’d stay home and watch the game.

Arne: And I saw Griffey came down to Tacoma for a rehab game in August, right before the comeback started.

Kevin: There was a big power struggle between Griffey and the M’s management. Woody Woodward. Griffey wanted to go to AA, the Port City team. His brother Craig was playing there, but the Mariners said no, you’re going to be in Seattle with our trainers to rehab and play in Tacoma. We’re not going to have you play until you’re ready.

He came down to Tacoma for a few days, but just took batting practice, fielding, throwing and therapy on his wrist. The media saw him leave. The next day he came down, did his treatment, left, snubbed the reporters. They weren’t happy about it. On Sunday morning he did therapy on his wrist. Griffey talked to our manager, Steve Smith, about playing. He said, “If I play today can I just be the designated hitter,” Steve said he should talk to Woody and make sure. Junior said, “Don’t worry about Woody, just put me in at DH.”  Steve wasn’t sure, he thought he should call up the Mariners. Junior just said, “They can talk to me about it.” He had his bodyguard go up to the Kingdome and get his stuff.

It was 11:00 Sunday morning, and we’re saying hmm., we need to get some people aware of this. The Mariners were in Kansas City, it was a day game. So we called the press box and talked to Kevin Cremin, the producer. They said, “Griffey’s in the lineup” on radio, TV, and the phones just go off the hook. He was the biggest thing around, and all the media were calling, trying to cover the game. There wasn’t any bigger, more surreal moment. The game wasn’t quite a sell-out. Griffey had three pretty bad at bats, he struck out, popped up to the pitcher, grounded out.

Now, 50,000 people say they saw the first Tacoma game, and 50,000 people say they saw Griffey play for the Rainiers. He could come back this year, pull a hamstring or something, play for the Rainiers. Later on it was a highlight for Tacoma baseball: we could say we were the team for players like Griffey, Martinez, Buhner. It wasn’t just the same old AAA baseball. We probably could’ve benefitted more from the Mariners.

The people in Everett say the same thing about the ’95 season. They were cultivating brand new fans too. That offseason, at Thanksgiving, my grandma, my mom, they were asking me about the Mariners for the first time. Young kids were talking about the Mariners. It was fun to be a Mariners fans, and there hadn’t been much of a product to create interest before.

Arne: Alex Rodriguez must have been the best offensive player on the team. You probably could see that he was going to be a star even then.

Kevin: He was a real phenom. The first time you saw A-Rod he was 17, playing for Calgary, and I said, “That’s something special.” You could see he was in the league of a lot of big-time guys. There’s a high school next to the stadium and we’d joke in the pressbox that he should be in high school and playing against Shelton not Edmonton. Neither team could get him out.

He was such a special player. It’s so hard to understand all this stuff about the performance enhancing drugs, knowing how hard he worked. He was a great player, but he really, really, really worked hard at it. He was very likeable, not phony, not saying look at me. Level-headed. I think Scott Boras was a great guiding influence.

The pattern was for a player to use the drugs to get him over the top, or if he injured to help him recover, or as a short cut. I’m inclined to give Rodriguez the benefit of the doubt. At the time, steroids policy was very loose, relaxed: basically it was “Don’t get caught in an airport with the stuff.” There wasn’t any penalty for steroids, and even when they did the tests, there wasn’t any punishment, I guess the tests were observational, to collect data.

There were a couple times Rodriguez would go on an 8-game road series against someone and get 6 homers, 13, 14 RBI in the series. He went to and from Seattle four times in ’95, and he didn’t sulk after he came back down, he didn’t say, “Oh, they don’t know what they’re doing.” You just knew there was something special there.

All the booing against him when he went to Texas, it wasn’t really fair. He’s the only one who got that treatment, when Griffey and Johnson, their exits were pretty bitter too, but they haven’t felt the unwelcomeness that Alex is saddled with. He wasn’t making big money and then gets the $252 million from Texas. You’re supposed to blame him for that?

A-Rod had a German Shepherd here and he was living in an apartment complex. Over the year the puppy had a field day in the apartment which didn’t sit very well with the landlord at the end of the year. The complex manager was quite upset and we had to come over and explain and tell him what happened. And the guy who ran the complex said, “Who is this Alex Rodriguez?”

I have fond memories of Alex as a player and person. There are a lot of players with 1/10th his talent who think they have 10 times the talent.

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