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

March 16, 2009

The Tacoma Rainiers were the new AAA affiliate of the Mariners in 1995. In a cross-border swap, after the 1994 season the Rainiers succeeded the Calgary Cannons and displaced the Tacoma Tigers, the AAA A’s affiliate that became the Edmonton Trappers. A few days ago I went looking for the Rainiers’ perspective on the Mariners’ run that year, which led me to a talk with their then-public relations director, Kevin Kalal, about the Rainiers’ relationship with the Mariners in ’95. Kevin was with the Rainiers from 1991 through 2007 in several front office roles. We talked about things such as Ken Griffey Jr.’s brief rehab assignment in August, Bob Wolcott, Alex Rodriguez and his pet German Shepherd, Bill Krueger, Salomon Torres, and Rainiers’ manager Steve Smith. Here’s the result, in three parts (read parts two and three here and here):

Arne: I was just looking through some archives and noticed the Rainiers actually started their 1995 season before the Mariners did, because of the strike. That’s kind of funny, to see the new AAA team starting play before the Mariners did.

Kevin: We’d been the A’s affiliate from 1981 to 1994, and there was some benefit to that. We got to see Jose Canseco, Mark McGwire, Walt Weiss, three rookies of the year in a row. But in ’94 we had an expiring contract, and so did Calgary, the Mariners affiliate. When we posted scores for the major league  games, our fans would do nothing when the A’s scored, but they’d cheer when the Mariners scored. The A’s were so much farther away; a lot of fans would never see the Tigers’ players again. It was a natural fit with the Mariners, and in October of 1994 we announced we were going to be with the Mariners the next season. There was a lot of enthusiasm in anticipation of the season.

Actually even before that the Mariners, because of the tiles falling from the Kingdome in ’94, they were going to play their games at Cheney Stadium, or in Anaheim, while they fixed the Kingdome roof. Of course the strike stopped that, but it still shifted attention to our organization, our facilities. Around that time we were playing the Cannons, and Alex Rodriguez hit a homer in extra innings to win the game.

’95 was an exciting time, there were these questions about what’s going to happen if the season doesn’t start on time, will we use scab players, replacements. In fact, 5 or 7 of the guys who started the season, people like Terrell Hansen and Marty Pevey, were not everyday guys, they wouldn’t’ve ordinarily been on the team. We had one fireman who’d been a player and he made the team. Then when the major league rosters got readjusted after the strike ended we had brand new players.

We had a major turnover in our front office staff going from the A’s to the Mariners. We needed to break away from the green and gold so we came up with a new logo, a new team name. A lot of people really didn’t like the decision to be called the Rainiers. The detractors didn’t like “Rainiers,” they said it was too tied up with Seattle. “Why were we naming the team after a Seattle franchise?” They said our teams were the Tigers, and some of them would wear Tigers clothes to the game. We had a really good team in ’95, but lots of transition, guys coming and going. Two great shortstops, Alex Rodriguez and Andy Sheets. Andy hit about .293, 47 RBIs. We had Marc Newfield, Ron Villone, Desi Relaford.

Arne: What about Bob Wolcott?

Kevin: Wolcott came to us midway through the year. He was solid, not very big, not really a dominating pitcher. When he had the chance to go up to the Mariners he did pretty well, but wasn’t on the division roster. Then the Mariners put someone on the 60-day DL and took him up to pitch against Cleveland. He struggled in his first inning but got a strikeout and a double play, and got through the game. At the time, the fans, they didn’t know who he was, but the next year when he back to here he had a little more celebrity to him.

Salomon Torres, back then he had all the stuff but terrible stats. I saw just last year he was still going with the Brewers. It’s funny to see how the guys who were supposed to be stars don’t ever really make it, people like Roger Salkeld, Newfield. And then you have Andy Sheets, guys who just keep going and eventually they make it. Chris Widger was still in the majors a couple years ago.

Arne: I noticed Don Wakamatsu was on the roster.

Kevin: Yeah, Wakamatsu, he started the season with us and played briefly before the Mariners offered him an opportunity to be a player-coach at a lower level. I was talking with him as we drove to the airport and he ended up deciding to take the player-coach position instead of being released, perhaps a blessing in disguise.

Then there’s Tony Phillips. I heard about him later, that he was the mayor of a small town in Mississippi after his days as a pitcher. Then one day a couple years ago I saw him outside Cheney Stadium, and he said, “Kevin!” He said he was working for some company back East, sales, and he came back on a business trip, and took a trip over to the stadium.

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An Interview With Rick Rizzs

March 14, 2009

Not long after spring training started, I spent a few minutes talking with Rick Rizzs about his memories of the ’95 Mariners from a broadcaster’s perspective, and we discussed a few elements of the season. Here’s how the interview went:

Arne: Was there any sense coming into the 1995 season of what the Mariners could do?

Rick: There was a great nucleus, Junior, Randy, Edgar, but nobody really knows what’s going to happen before the season starts.

Arne: Coming off the strike that stretched into the scheduled start of the season, were fans upset at baseball?

Rick: The fans were upset, they were frustrated, sure. There was anger. But people really just wanted to see baseball again. The strike had extended into April, and we had spring training for two weeks before the season started in late April. There had been replacement players scheduled to begin the season. Thank goodness it didn’t come to that. The Mariners would’ve lost more games early, they wouldn’t have been in position later in the season to make their run.

Arne: At what point in the season did it begin to feel like the Mariners could do something?

Rick: All the pieces of the puzzle came together: everybody stepped up and got the job done. After Junior broke his wrist on May 24, Diaz and Amaral made some great plays. Edgar hit about .400 while Junior was out. Blowers played a huge role; he had something like 98 RBIs that year. Tino of course.

If you remember, that was the first year of the wild card, and in July, people were thinking in terms of that. But then Buhner said “hey, forget the wild card, let’s win the division,” and the Mariners picked up Charlton on waivers from Philadelphia in July, they made some trades for Coleman and Benes and people got serious.

Arne: As the season went along, the Mariners played under the rumor that they were moving to Tampa. Was there a sense that they were really going to leave without something happening?

Rick: Yes, that was the season that saved baseball in the Northwest. I remember on the 19th of September the vote on the stadium funding took place. Texas had the Mariners beat but they made a comeback against Jeff Russell. Coming out of the park after the game we learned there were 500,000 votes, and it lost by 1,000. That was for the 1/10th of 1 percent sales tax on restaurants, bars, car rentals, the lottery. But then a task force and the legislature got together and put together a creative funding package just as the Yankees series was ending.

Arne: How about the Angels playoff?

Rick: You know it was the 3rd largest comeback in the history of baseball. The Mariners had tied up the division to end the season, coming into the playoff with the Angels. You had Randy Johnson and Mark Langston starting. The Mariners had traded away Langston for Randy in 1989, and now they were matched up against each other. Just a great game. In the bottom of the seventh, Blow was on third, Tino on second, and Cora on first, and I remember Vince Coleman had a great at-bat. He fouled off pitch after pitch, finally on the 11th or 12th pitch he hit a low line drive to right and Tim Salmon made a great catch. Then came Sojo, and “Here’s the pitch. Swing, and it’s a ground ball, and it gets on by Snow. Down the right field line into the bullpen. Here comes Blowers. Here comes Tino. Here comes Joey. The throw to the plate is cut off. The relay by Langston gets by Allanson. Cora scores! Here comes Sojo! Everybody scores!!!”

Arne: People don’t seem to remember the Indians series so well; I haven’t really had anyone write about it. The Mariners were up 2-1 on the Indians, then lost the last three games and the series was over. Why do you think they faltered?

Rick: Sure, there was that stirring game in game 3, Buhner going from hero to goat to hero, hitting the homer in the second, not getting that fly ball in the eighth inning, then winning the game with his home run in the 11th. You know, it had taken so much just getting into the playoff with the Angels, then coming back from 2-0 against the Yankees. Randy had pitched three innings in game 5. The Mariners had to use Wolcott, who hadn’t even been on the roster, to start game 1.

Coming into the Cleveland series, you thought this is going to be their year, they had the magic working. But they just ran out of gas, they’d left everything on the field against the Angels and Yankees. They tried to drum up the energy, but they’d used all their magic dust just to get there. The Indians had so much talent, Albert Belle, Kenny Lofton, Omar, and of course Jim Thome at third, but also their pitching, Dennis Martinez, Orel Hershisher, Charles Nagy.

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A Conversation With Mariners Announcer Tom Hutyler, Part II

March 13, 2009

My conversation with Mariners public address announcer Tom Hutyler continued by comparing the ‘95 and ‘01 Mariners and talking about the Kingdome, his signature announcement of Ken Griffey Jr., and the 1995 ALCS. Here’s part two of our conversation (see part one here):

Arne: I know most people have fonder memories of the ‘95 season than the ‘01 season. Is it the same way for you?

Tom: Oh, yes. In 2001 it was not a new deal. The drama of what happened in 1995 wasn’t there. 2001 was a foregone conclusion from May or June onward. We had the All-Star game, and the Mariners had eight or nine players on the team. The only question was would they reach the 116-game record. Then 9/11 happened, and people knew it wasn’t so important how many wins they had. 1995 was so much more impactful, so unlikely, such a storybook ending. There was the fantastic finish, the underdog coming up from nowhere. Actually the most dramatic game after ’95, I’d say, was the game against the White Sox, Carlos Guillen’s bunt to win the game. That was the end of the 2000 playoffs against Chicago.

Arne: Was it sometimes a drag coming into the Kingdome in the summer?

Tom: Sure, it could be. In the summer, during the really lean years, you’d have 4,000 people on an August afternoon. I didn’t really need a microphone; I could have just leaned out the booth and shouted: everyone would have heard me. The sunny, warm days are few and far between here. People would say, “I should be out on a boat, in a park, somewhere outside,” enjoying the absolutely gorgeous weather. Sometimes I’d wish the same.

Arne: People tend to overlook the Indians series when they think about the ‘95 season. Is there a particular memory you cherish from those games?

Tom: I was just going to say, Wolcott’s performance in game 1 was amazing. It’s too bad he could never recapture that performance. There was such promise for the future with him. Buhner’s performance that series was pretty remarkable. We thought the Mariners were going to go on to win the World Series. The series had a lot of emotional highs and lows. The Indians had a lot of talent. Looking up and down that lineup, you saw really good players, really good pitchers.

Arne: I noticed that even late in game 6 the Mariner were down just 1-0, and you thought maybe this will be like the Yankees comeback. I think the Mariners would have played game 7 at the Kingdome. So, with Griffey coming back to the team, are you anticipating announcing his name again?

Tom: That was the first name I introduced that became imitated by people. Scott Bradley, who was a catcher for a few years with the team, told me, “You know you’ve made it when that happens.” Out on the streets, people would stop me and ask me to do “Ken Griffey Junior.” I’ve had a lot of people ask about my response to him coming back to Seattle. So it’s kind of like a singer getting to do a hit song again, on a much smaller scale of course. I’m really looking forward to it. In 2007 I did, but it was different because he was with the visiting team. I think it’ll be really fun.

My son’s 18, he was 9 when Griffey left, and my daughter’s 27. He was a big part of their lives. So they’re happy he’s back, and it’ll be good. The only drawback is that issue about how you can’t go home again, you can’t replicate that feeling of however many years ago. He might hit a few of those high-arching homers, but the catches in center field aren’t going to happen again. But I think people are smart enough to know he’s not the same man now; they can’t expect the same things to happen, and maybe it’s enough just to have him back.

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A Conversation With Mariners Announcer Tom Hutyler

March 13, 2009

Tom Hutyler has been the Mariners’ public address announcer since 1987: he’s the man who announces the players at Safeco, and he did the same at the Kingdome when the Mariners played there. I recently talked with him about the 1995 season and some of the technical aspects of announcing for the Mariners. Here’s part one of our conversation (see part two here):

Arne: With the strike having just ended, were the fans a little surly at the start of the 1995 season? Did they boo the players more often? Or maybe there just weren’t as many people at the games?

Tom: The fans were not really surly. There was a little bit of skepticism. Fans who were spending their money on baseball, they felt betrayed. For Joe Average there was that sense of “Why do I need to feel sorry for these millionaires?” There was an attitude against the team, a feeling of betrayal.

Arne: When did the fans first get really involved in the season? Was it when Griffey hit his homer in August against the Yankees?

Tom: Yes, that was the pivot point, when people started to think this could really happen. A lot of players in the background, people like Doug Strange, not your everyday players, they picked up the slack. And they turned to gold, those players who weren’t regulars. Then there were those trades for Coleman, Benes; they were really critical also.

Arne: In your approach to announcing the games, do you try to keep yourself detached from the action, to be more of a professional, and not so much of a fan?

Tom: You’ll notice, if you’ve been to Safeco, there’s a decidedly different way in which I announce the batters for the Mariners and the visitors. But I try to be professional, to respect the sanctity of baseball, and not treat the game as a sideshow. I want to be entertaining and clear. Having said that, when I announced the games in 1995 it was very difficult for us to maintain our decorum as broadcasters. We were very excited during the games. I don’t know if people noticed, but between pitches I’d be pacing around the booth, trying to settle myself down.

Arne: Was the job of announcing harder in the Kingdome because of the acoustics of being indoors; would you hear echoes?

Tom: Oh, there was a tremendous echo in the Kingdome. It was most difficult to get used to, a real distraction. When small crowds were at a game, you’d hear your voice bounce off the walls, and the echoes would be bouncing around as you said the player’s name. I’d say, “Number 24, Ken Griffey, Jr.,” and “four” would come back to me as I said “june-yuhr.” When the Kingdome was a shell and they were preparing to take it down, someone said my voice was still lingering in the corners.

I don’t know if it was because the Kingdome wasn’t acoustically sound, or if that’s just the nature of domes. Maybe there have been technological advances to resolve those things. But there were pockets in the Kingdome where people said they couldn’t hear me at all or it sounded like I was right next to them.

Arne: It seems there were two real sustained, memorable ovations in the ‘95 season, and one was Randy Johnson coming into game 5 against the Yankees.

Tom: From the booth, we’d seen Randy warming up down in the bullpen, and as he started heading onto the field, we cued up “Welcome to the Jungle.” The fans were starting to cheer, and it was a question of how to time it, and getting the energy into announcing his name. As he was coming in you had the swelling of the crowd noise, and you try to capture that emotion in your voice.

Arne: And then there was that long ovation at the end of Indians series.

Tom: I just let it go, didn’t say anything, then finally said something quiet, like “It’s been a great ride, hasn’t it?” I remember the applause, it was really emotional. It almost spoke to the innocence of Seattle, not having gone through the playoffs or a championship game before. Everybody-all of the players-were touched by that ovation. It showed how appreciative fans were of the team. It was spontaneous, so you don’t bother it. I normally do a game recap, but there was no way to do that, no need for music or talking. People were celebrating, even grieving almost. When I’m watching a game on tv I sometimes get irritated by the announcers: there’s no need to tell us what we just saw as viewers. The senses get it.

Arne: How much contact do you have with the Mariners players and coaches?

Tom: Not as much as I used to. I have more outside responsibilities now: I work at KOMO. Before, there were some players I just naturally had more of a relationship with: David Valle, Mark Langston, Harold Reynolds, Alvin Davis. Griffey would sign bats for some charity auctions I did. But it hasn’t been as close over the last few years.

Arne: Do you get players asking you to change the way you pronounce their names or just the way you say their names?

Tom: You know, it’s something I’m surprised more announcers don’t do. They’ll assume a name is pronounced a certain way based on how they’ve heard others say it. The more professional way is to just ask the players “How do you pronounce your name?” It can be tricky with the names of Latino players especially. For Raul Ibanez, once I got his name down I’d say “Rauuuuull Ibanez,” stretching out the name.

The Yankees pitcher, Mike Mussina: I’d always heard his name pronounced “Muh-seen-a,” then one day I went in and asked him, and he said he pronounces it with an “e”-”Mess-seen-a.” For Ichiro, of course he has just the first name on his uniform, and people wonder why I say the full name, Ichiro Suzuki. Well, I asked him how he wanted me to do it, and he said “Ichiro Suzuki.” He wants that.

Players don’t tend to notice so much the way I say their names. The bigger thing with them is the music we play. Some will send up cds to the booth and say, “I want this played.”

There was one catcher a few years ago who, well don’t quote me on exactly who it was, but in the year when there were all those bad Mariners catchers. He’d call up to the booth between innings and say, “Why didn’t you play this? Why did you play that?” And you’d wonder, “Shouldn’t you be paying attention to the game and not the music? Isn’t this why you’re hitting .200?”

Different players like country, hip-hop, rock. One player wanted nothing for his at-bats: he didn’t like the distraction of the music.

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The Seattle Times on Griffey and ‘95

February 20, 2009

Ryan Blethen of the Seattle Times wrote an editorial notebook item today responding to Griffey’s return to Seattle and describing his memories of Griffey’s days in the Kingdome. Here’s how he remembered the fall of 1995:

When it became official that The Kid was coming home my thoughts drifted back to the fall of 1995. The chill of fall tickled the Palouse as my fraternity brothers and I firmly planted ourselves in front of the TV for every M’s game.

I could have driven home to watch any number of games as Griffey and the M’s came from 13 ½ back to win the American League West. I didn’t. I could not give up the shared elation and camaraderie. I wanted to experience the M’s success with those who understood what it meant to me. We were rooting for a team and a player that helped define our youth.

By Ryan Blethen

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