Ken Griffey, Jr. makes a curtain call after hitting a home run in Wednesday's game. (Jim Bates/Seattle Times)
The man is magical. He leaves for a decade and we spend the final eight years of the post-Griffey era in a playoff drought.
He returns, all of a sudden we’re winning again.
Griffey’s solo home run, his 400th as a Mariner, was the highlight of an 11-3 pasting of the California Angels of Orange County Wednesday night.
The momentous blast gave the M’s a one-run lead in the fifth inning, and required a curtain call by the 39-year-old slugger upon reaching the dugout.
But the fireworks weren’t just limited to Junior.
Immediately before Griffey stepped to the plate, left fielder Endy Chavez launched a solo homer of his own, which tied the game at two.
Another run in the sixth inning gave the Mariners a 4-2 lead, before the Angels countered in the top half of the seventh with a run, cutting the deficit to 4-3.
That’s when all hell broke loose.
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Uh oh, he's got that crazy look in his eye.
After signing on to man the bench at the one school in the nation with initials that denote “Fire Isiah U,” the new head coach of the Florida International men’s basketball team will be paying heftily for his job security.
That’s because former New York Knick coach Isiah Thomas (the “other” Isiah Thomas, to Husky fans) has pledged to donate his entire first year’s salary to the FIU athletic department. This decision coming just hours after Thomas inked a deal to become the school’s highest profile faculty member.
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Franklin Gutierrez scores the winning run in the Mariners' 2009 home opener. (Cliff DesPeaux/SeattlePI.com)
Five months ago we started this website in hopes of discussing a winning atmosphere. Our very first post talked about what this city had gone through, and what we deserved. To briefly sum it up, we deserved better than what we were getting.
Less than half a year ago, we were immersed in a losing culture, brought to the brink of apathy by sub-.500 sports teams and the constant nature of rebuilding.
Since then, it’s been a different story.
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Mike Sweeney, Felix Hernandez, and Ken Griffey, Jr. hang out in the dugout on Opening Day. (Ken Lambert/Seattle Times)
The Mariners have IT.
IT is not something that can readily be defined, but IT often breeds winning. The 2001 Mariners had IT.
The 1995 ballclub also had IT. Even the ’97 playoff team had some of IT.
The funny thing about IT is that IT can strike at the most unexpected times.
After a strike shortened the beginning of the ’95 season, hopes were low for your Seattle Mariners. The AL West belonged to the California Angels, and no team was going to stand in their way. Especially not a Mariners ballclub with a host of mediocre additions, the likes of Joey Cora, Luis Sojo, and Doug Strange, among others.
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