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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The ALDS

February 20, 2009

I was a freshman in college watching the ’95 ALDS. I was watching the game on the TV in the lobby in a room full of Yankee fans. I still remember screaming & jumping up & down as I ran out of there celebrating.

By Mark Wood

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Steve Kelley on the ALDS

February 12, 2009

With the rumors of Ken Griffey Jr.’s return to Seattle swirling, I wrote to Steve Kelley of the Seattle Times to ask if he’d be willing to share any of his thoughts about the ’95 season. He quickly responded with some of his recollections of the ALDS against the Yankees:

I think of everything in that series as magical. The O.J. verdict came down in the morning before Game 1. The Mariners lost both those games in New York. Tim Belcher attacked a TV camera in the hallway outside the Mariners clubhouse after game two. The great run seemed over. And then everything happened perfectly when the team came back to Seattle.

There were so many years when I was certain Seattle wasn’t going to be a baseball town. That was the game, not NBA basketball, I thought would leave the city. But to feel the emotion in the building and to listen to the sounds of those games, it still gives me chills. As for Junior on Martinez’s double. I remember writing something along the lines that it was the best piece of base-running I’d ever seen. He cut the corners on those bags so perfectly and turned what should have been a close play at the plate into an easy slide and celebration.

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December 29, 2008

I lived there at the Kingdome during the playoffs. I pulled my two boys out of school just so I could go to the games.

I still remember trying to get tickets for almost 5 hours!! But I did get them, I got the best seats that I could get at the time for all home games and the same seats for four people.

By Tod Clisby

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A Wonderfully Strange Season

November 15, 2008

A great baseball season, the kind of joyride that turns a so-so team into a champion and makes a football city into a baseball city, has to have players that come out of nowhere.

Players like Doug Strange.

Some Mariner fans, in looking back on the magical 1995 season that transformed a moribund franchise into a city’s heartbeat, will think of Ken Griffey, Jr. Others will cite Edgar. Still others, Randy Johnson. Seattle women couldn’t stop professing their love for Joey Cora during the mad dash to the team’s first-ever division title and playoff appearance. While all those players led the charge for the M’s, the season that saved baseball in Seattle–and taught a city how to appreciate the unique drama of a pennant race–could not have unfolded without the help of bench players who stepped out of the shadows to take everyone by surprise. Few figures fit this description better than the man who became Seattle’s other version of “The Stranger.”

On the night of Tuesday, Sept. 19, 1995, a small crowd of just 20,410 die-hards found their way to the Kingdome for the Mariners’ game against the Texas Rangers. This, despite the fact that the M’s had fought to within two games of the A.L. West-leading California Angels. While it was true that the Mariner franchise had known nothing but losing, the fact still remained that Lou Piniella’s boys were in a full-fledged race to the finish. With just under two weeks of ball left to be played, a two-game deficit was minimal. Had the Angels led the hometown team by 5 or 6, the small crowd would have been understandable. But two? Not at all. Even on September 19, Seattle didn’t believe.

Doug Strange was the one who began to create believers. It was this unknown player who generated the sense that one of the most hapless and helpless baseball organizations of all time could write a new and very different chapter in the history books.

But before talking about the deeds of this baseball journeyman, it’s worth saying, for the record, that through eight and a half innings on that Tuesday night in the big dome, the M’s lived up to–or rather, down to–the reputation that preceded them. Listless at the plate in key situations, the Mariners trailed Texas, 4-2, going into the bottom of the ninth. With Ranger closer Jeff Russell–an All-Star in his best days–taking the bump for the visitors, it seemed that the good guys wouldn’t be able to take advantage of the Angels’ loss in Oakland. California was trying to give away the West to the M’s, but Lou’s Crew didn’t seem ready to take the gift.

As the bottom of the ninth began, some of the bleacher creatures in right field, in the lower bowl behind the elevated light-blue scoreboard wall, were already filing out of the ballpark and heading for home. Even many of the believers didn’t really have that much faith. It was hard so see that kind of a sight, but one must acknowledge that if you’ve never endured a pennant race involving the team you care about, the mysterious ways of baseball seem elusive. Sticking around until the last man is out, and until the magic number is zero, doesn’t seem logical to the fans who have never tasted baseball’s late-season twists and turns. When you’ve only known losing, it’s hard to see the rewards that can emerge with just a little more perseverance… and the heroics of someone you’ve never really paid attention to.

Yes, it was understandable that part of the paid crowd wouldn’t want to see Jeff Russell slam the door on the M’s and halt the team’s forward momentum. The years 1977 through 1994 had given Seattle baseball fans nothing but misery, so why should the script have been expected to be any different in this final half-inning of a familiar and disappointing ballgame? After all, here were the three men due up for the M’s: Alex Diaz, Warren Newsom, and Strange. Not exactly Griffey, Edgar and Jay Buhner. The Seattleites who stayed home committed a head-scratching act.

The ones who left in the bottom of the ninth? They lacked faith, but they had a certain amount of intelligence behind their decision.

After Diaz walked and Newsom struck out, it didn’t seem that anything big was going to happen.

Enter Strange.

The same player who had only one home run all season; who used to play for the very same Texas Rangers; and whose physical frame screams “slap hitter”, giving you reason to roar with approval if he merely punched a bloop single into the opposite field, stepped to the dish and drilled a Russell fastball into the very same right field bleachers that had begun to empty out a few minutes earlier. With one strike of lightning from a light-hitting utility player, the Mariners had tied the game at 4-all. Norm Charlton would hold the fort in extra innings, and when Griffey hit an RBI single in the bottom of the 11th, Seattle had begun–truly begun–its mad love affair with a baseball team.

The 5-4 victory kept the train rolling for an M’s team that would lose only once over the next ten days. Precisely because of that Tuesday-night mini-miracle against Texas, the Kingdome crowds swelled for the remainder of the season. The final three home games–in a weekend set against Oakland–drew more than 150,000 fans combined. The one-game playoff against the Angels–made famous by Luis Sojo’s game-breaking three-run triple, followed by the sight of former Mariner Mark Langston falling to the ground in a theatrical but real sign of ultimate defeat–drew 52,693, despite the fact that Seattle citizens knew of the event less than 24 hours before it actually started.

Yes, the Mariners played great baseball (they had to) since the middle of August to ultimately catch, pass, and then finally overcome the Angels in that glorious 1995 season. But if serious Mariner fans want to discuss the moment the city began to fall in love with its baseball team, it’s fair to say that Doug Strange’s home run off Jeff Russell, on Sept. 19, 1995, was the first kiss of heaven in a love affair that burned with passion through the 116-win season of 2001.

As a side note, Mr. Strange would be heard from again in 1995. In Game 5 of the American League Division Series against the Yankees, his ice-veins eighth-inning walk with the bases loaded tied the game and knocked out a gritty David Cone. A season from the gods was built on the backs of the Randy Johnsons and the Griffeys of the baseball world, but as is the case with any great playoff run in America’s national pastime, guys like Doug Strange have to contribute when called upon. A man whose career didn’t become terribly special found its One Shining Moment during the 1995 season. Fans of the Seattle Mariners need to be forever grateful that Doug Strange saved his very best for the year that gave Major League Baseball new life in the Pacific Northwest.

By Matt Zemek, National Staff Columnist, College Football News
Seattle Resident, 1994-2008
Seattle University, Class of 1998
Attendee of the Sept. 19, 1995 game, plus several other games in that stretch run, including the one-game playoff

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Griffey, Rounding Third

October 19, 2008

I wrote this recollection of the 1995 ALDS between the Mariners and Yankees back in the summer of 2001. I was trying to put the strengthening Mariners-Yankees rivalry in a broader context while also recalling the ALDS and Edgar’s double. I was also hoping we’d see another Seattle-New York series in October, when the two teams would add a new chapter to the rivalry. They did, but the circumstances had changed immensely in the meantime. The piece was originally published in the print edition of MISC., a short time before the September 11 attacks. Here it is:

Six years have passed since October, 1995, and it would seem that nothing so recent qualifies as a legend. But, the Mariners-Yankees playoff series of that month is already a memory of wonderful brilliance. That series was a classic proving ground for the Mariners; it also had a broader, heavily symbolic importance for Seattle and the Puget Sound. Like so many sporting events, it provided a crystallized summary of the status and culture of the two cities represented on the playing field.

Seattle was the upstart: a city roughly as old as Central Park, and a team only 18 years old. At that point, the Mariners had scarcely emerged from the sub-.500 region and its accompanying status as perhaps baseball’s worst team. Seattle’s national and global identity was still largely as the home of Boeing. But, the city had put aside its grunge capital status, well over a year after Kurt Cobain’s suicide. Starbucks and Microsoft were beginning to expand from mere brands into multinational corporate behemoths. And, the local Internet boom had started, with RealNetworks and Amazon just beginning to build names for themselves, and Microsoft initializing its efforts to become a dominant power on the Web.

The Mariners’ late-season run was a rough emblem of that new Seattle: the team that had fumbled through the ’80s shocked its fans by actually coming back to win the division. During that effort, Randy Johnson established himself as a real hero: his amazing pitching delivered the team into a playoff with the Angels, where he then pitched a shutout to clinch the division.

Then, of course, there was New York. Rightly or not, it is seen as the center of America, to such an extent that it sometimes seems as though New Yorkers are proudly ignorant of anything south or west of Philadelphia. As America’s unofficial capital, it was a unique challenge for the Mariners and Seattle. The Yankees were, and are, the sports symbol of New York’s elitism: the team with the biggest personalities, most famous stars-even cultural icons, and above all, the team that won, and was expected to win.

Even after nearly 15 years without making the playoffs, the Yankees were an intrinsic, deeply historic threat to anyone they faced in the postseason. They had dominated baseball throughout the century, just as Manhattan had dominated American capitalism. Their resurgence in the mid-’90s paralleled the surging growth of Wall Street, the great bull market, and the rise of a safer, even richer New York under the Giuliani administration.

But, the Mariners did win, despite all that symbolism. Looking back on that series now, after so many changes, provokes a strange feeling. With Johnson, Griffey, and Rodriguez gone in acrimonious departures, and players like Mike Blowers only fairly distant memories, it’s hard to really recall that team. But, that series still, at least until this season, represents Seattle’s greatest baseball moment. The vague memories of Griffey and Martinez’s heroics throughout the series are crystallized into the last play of game 5. Edgar lined the ball down the left field line, and as it bounded into the corner, Joey Cora (remember him?) scored the tying run from third, then turned to beckon The Kid home. And Griffey did come home, sliding across the plate as the throw came in a bit too late, and jumping up with a look of absolute glee on his face before being immersed in a sea of Mariners.

Now, the Yankees-Mariners matchup has become as sharp a rivalry as can be imagined between two teams 3000 miles apart. The two teams are thoroughly cross-pollinated (Lou Piniella the former Yankee player and manager, Jay Buhner the Yankee outfielder traded early in his career, Jeff Nelson the once-Yankee and twice-Mariner, and Tino Martinez, who moved to New York after that 1995 season), and New York is, today, even more of a colossus. It recovered from its lost opportunity in 1995 to win 4 of 5 World Series, establishing a new Yankee dynasty even as the Mariners were stopped short twice, including last year’s loss to New York. Even in this year’s mid-August visit to Yankee Stadium, when the Mariners’ dominance over baseball was firmly established, the New York press still assumed they were the upstarts needing to prove themselves, while the Yankees were the team expected to win the Series, again. It seemed absolutely fitting for Mike Cameron, Griffey’s replacement, to win the final and deciding game of that series by slugging two home runs and driving in eight runs.

By Arne Christensen

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What I remember when I was at game five

September 16, 2008

I was seventeen-years-old when the Mariners clinched the division in 1995.  I rarely follow baseball in this day and age but I was an avid fan of our Mariners and baseball in general.  My mother worked for a Fortune 500 accounting company in Seattle so she was given tickets to game five. Center-right of home plate, about 20 rows back.  I don’t remember the entire game but I remember the atmosphere.  Everybody was going crazy.  Regardless of what was happening there was an air of inevitability in the air; absolutely electric.

Then, bottom of the ninth, Edgar Martinez came to bat and drilled a pitch over the left fielder and into the wall.  I believe that RBI drove in Griffey but that doesn’t matter, what matters is the single best moment in my life as a baseball fan.

I remember the second Martinez tattooed that ball, as the ball travelled past the left-side and left field fans, there was this wave following the ball as it drifted over the left fielder.  The Kingdome had to go but I’m telling you that between the Sonics, the Seahawks and the Mariners there was never a louder indoor moment in my experience.  I couldn’t hear for nearly two hours after the game but it didn’t matter.

I got near Martinez before the game while he was waiting to take a few swings at batting practice, literally within 15 feet or so.  I said, matter of factly, “Gonna win the series for us?” and he simply said, “Ok.”  It was awesome cause he had that smile that told me not to keep my hopes up.

I had a stroke nearly seven years ago and I have lost and never recovered almost my entire teen and adolescent memory but I’ll never forget that day and I’ll miss going to the Kingdome and watching how crazy the ball travelled through that air conditioned outfield.

By Aaron Rogers

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July 24, 2008

The other day I popped in one of my favorite videos of all time, “My Oh My.” Recently, the Mariners have been pretty depressing, and every once in a while I need to remind myself that at one time, the M’s were really good. The mid ’90s were the golden years of baseball in Seattle. We had this guy called Ken Griffey Jr. No doubt, Kenny was the best player of the league at the time and of the decade as well. You’re a pretty good player when you’re drawing comparisons to Babe Ruth and Willie Mays.

There was also this guy on the ’95 team named Randy Johnson. He was the most dominant pitcher in baseball. With his bad ass mustache and his trend setting mullet, he mowed down hitter after hitter, guaranteeing the Seattle bats a chance to win the game.

I could go on and on about all the talent we had on that team; Edgar, Tino, Cora, Buhner, etc. With the best player in baseball (Griffey) and the best pitcher (Johnson), expectations were high for this team. However, 27 games into the season, on May 26th, Ken Griffey Jr. was injured, breaking two bones in his left wrist while making a highlight catch. It wouldn’t be until August 15th that Griffey would return to a team clinging to a 51-50 record and 12.5 games back of the California Angels.

The Playoffs

Many baseball fans consider the ’95 ALDS the best of all time. Coming from two games down, the Mariners tied the series at 2-2, forcing a decisive game five to be played in the Kingdome. Game five would produce one of the most memorable games in any Mariners’ fans’ heart…

The game was tied, 4-4, going into extra innings. In the top of the 11th, the Yankees drew first blood with a single by Randy Velarde driving in pinch runner Pat Kelly to seize a 5-4 lead. But the Mariners Refused to Lose. Little Joey Cora started things off by drag bunting and safely reaching first base, then Griffey singled and Cora advanced to third base.

With no outs, runners on first and third, Edgar Martinez stepped to the plate. Jack McDowell wound up, and Edgar hit a double into left field, scoring Cora to tie the game. And then Griffey was waved in, all the way from first. The throw was late, and Griffey slid into home late safely. Cementing an ALCS BERTH! In one of the most celebrated images in Mariners history, Griffey was mauled by his teammates at home plate as they were one series away from the world championship! The words of Dave Niehaus echoed, “MY OH MY”!!!

The Mariners would go on to lose in six games to the Cleveland Indians, dropping the last game on their home turf, the Kingdome. Although the magical ride ended, the fans in Seattle finally knew what it was like to have a successful baseball team, and the Mariners were no longer a crappy expansion team but a permanent part of Seattle culture. That double by Edgar is known for how it sent the M’s into the ALCS, but it could also have been the hit that built Safeco Field.

By Kevin Cacabelos, adapted from his posting athttp://www.seatownsports.net

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Interview With Bob Condotta

June 27, 2008

Bob Condotta is now the Seattle Times’ reporter on the University of Washington sports beat, covering men’s basketball and football. But back in ’95 he was covering the Mariners for the old Bellevue Journal-American, attending most of their games at the Kingdome, the final regular season series in Texas, and all of their playoff games. I wrote to him after seeing a posting that mentioned the ’95 Mariners during his relief appearance on Geoff Baker’s Mariners blog earlier this year. The eventual result was the following interview about the season.

Q: What were your feelings about the Mariners and major league baseball in general coming into the ’95 season, after the strike ended? And, did the Mariners’ comeback change your attitude?

A: I was a little less jaded back then and so happy to have a job reporting on sports in the Seattle area, which had always been my dream, that I didn’t really let the strike influence my feelings about anything all that much. I knew it would be an exciting and pivotal year for the Mariners as a franchise, and since I wanted the team to stay, I hoped it would turn out well. So once the strike ended and they were back playing ball, I quickly forgot about it and just focused on the season at hand.

I remember that there were a lot of mixed feelings at the Kingdome on Opening Night among fans — I think that’s the last Mariners’ opener that didn’t sell out — but I was just glad to have baseball back. I might not feel that way if the same thing happened now (the NBA is close to losing me forever over its handling of the Sonics’ situation) but I did back then. So that said, how the season evolved really didn’t bring me back to baseball since I came back pretty quickly anyway at that time.

Q: Which game do you see as the most remarkable/most memorable one of the Mariners’ regular season?

A: Like a lot of people who were there — and there really weren’t that many as the official attendance was 17,618 — I’d say the Aug. 24 game against the Yankees at home when Griffey hit a game-winning home run. Most view that game as the beginning of the streak that brought the team back and saved baseball in Seattle. My personal memory of it is that I almost missed the game. I was also assigned to do a Seahawks story that day so I was at their practice in the early afternoon and decided at the last minute to try to get to the Kingdome for the M’s game, as well — it was a 3:30 (or right around there) first pitch. I’ve seen hundreds of games since then and barely remember any of them.

But I have all kinds of vivid memories of that game (some of which I’m sure may be a little embellished with time) — Andy Benes getting hammered early and Piniella leaving him out there; Vince Coleman almost striking out with two outs in the ninth, then drawing a walk and stealing second and third; Cora hitting that little liner that Tony Fernandez misplayed; and then Griffey’s never-a-doubt home run. I won’t say I had any idea that day that what ended up happening would happen. But I did know that something was happening.

Q: Could you compare Edgar, Randy, and Junior. Which of the three was the best Mariner of ’95, and which do you have the most appreciation for now as a major leaguer, and as a Mariner?

A: I must confess that I covered mostly just home games in 1995 and then never was a regular Mariners beat writer again. The Journal-American covered only home games then (except we went on the road for the last series and the playoffs and a lot of spring training) so I never got close to any of the players the way the regular guys did. So I don’t necessarily have great personal insight into those guys that would be a lot different than the everyday fan.

Edgar was the consummate professional in every way, from the way he dealt with the media to the way he approached his at-bats. He always was respectful and tried to answer your questions. Johnson was incredibly dominant that season, but even then some of his prickly personality came out. I remember a game in July when he pitched well and the team won, but he didn’t get the win because Bobby Ayala blew the save (imagine that?) only to have the Mariners win it in the bottom of the ninth. Despite the team’s win, Johnson seemed unhappy afterward, talking about how frustrating it was to pitch like that yet get nothing for it — that had happened to him a few times that season. I’m one of those who thinks the way his Mariner career ended puts a pretty big smudge on his legacy. On the other hand, that season wouldn’t have happened without him, so he deserves a lot of gratitude, as well.

As for Griffey, everybody knows he missed much of that season and batted only .258 for the year. But I’d forgotten a little bit just how great he was in the playoffs that year. It seems like everybody always focuses on how incredible Edgar was. Yet Griffey hit .391 with five homers in the series against the Yankees, and .333 with another homer against the Indians. If he’d ever been on the right time, I have no doubt Griffey could have been a Mr. October, since that was the only time he ever really had that chance. Not sure I can pick a “best” of that season — take out any of them and the season doesn’t happen. And for overall contribution to the Mariners, I couldn’t pick between Griffey and Martinez. To me, they are the two most-defining players in franchise history, which is why it’s so fitting that they were the two key players in the defining moment in franchise history.

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Memories

June 12, 2008

We bought 4 strips of tickets for the playoffs. We had to: it was big bucks and all, but I was a little league coach and our boys were at the prime age for memory making. We had nosebleed seats with our backs literally against the wall. Now some venues will provide a little extra space for those intrepid souls who expend all the energy to get up to those seats, but not the Kingdome. No, we sat bolt upright against the curvature of that concrete at the top of the 300 level. The noise level was far above anything I have ever felt before or since. Palpable, physical pain, no doubt caused by some quirk of sonic physics, was assaulting our ears. We shouted in each others ears to be heard. The wave would start and go on and on, separating by levels and then joining back up. We laughed and screamed like fools. We hugged strangers and we chanted Edgaaaar, and Juuuniorrrrr, and Joeeeey all the way to the parking lot. When I think back to those nights in the dome and remember the Frozen Malts and King Dogs I smile. The kids are grown and scattered. My wife and I are empty nesters and when we talk about the M’s, it’s never about the 116 year. It is and will be forever about falling in love with a team for the first time in my life.

By John Mitchell

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