Seattle Sportsnet

Seriously. I couldn’t tell you why this move arouses me. But it does.

Russell Branyan is not the world’s greatest baseball player, far from it in fact. He can hit home runs, though. And the Mariners are a team desperately in need of just that.

Currently last in the American League in dingers, the M’s lineup will take to the return of Branyan like Lisa Gangel to Patrick Kerney. Likewise, Branyan should embrace his reunion with Safeco Field’s short right field porch. Let’s face it. Branyan and the M’s were made for each other. Like Spencer and Heidi. Like Reggie and Kim. Like Khloe and Lamar (Khlamar).

All of this, of course, begs one simple question: Why did the M’s ever let Branyan out of their grasp in the first place?

The team could have signed their 2009 home run leader for pennies in the offseason, but instead allowed him to leave for Cleveland on a one-year deal. They’ve now been forced to relinquish two prospects (AAA outfielder Ezequiel Carrera, and A-ball shortstop Juan Diaz) to reacquire their one-time property. Does anyone else have a flashback to that scene in Father of the Bride II when Steve Martin’s character repurchases his home at a considerably higher cost than he sold it for from Eugene Levy? Anyone? No? Just me? Okay, just me.

Read more…

Mere hours after getting his ass kicked by the Milwaukee Brewers, Ryan Rowland-Smith was on his Twitter account, telling the world about his plans for the evening:

“Tom Petty concert 2m night! Going with dudes, more of a ‘take ya girl’ kinda concert! Wish she was here now! :(“

An innocent bystander would read this message and have no idea that Rowland-Smith just suffered his seventh loss on the season, dropping his overall record to 1-7. Nor would they realize that Rowland-Smith’s ERA had ballooned by another twenty decimal points, from a rotund 5.98 entering Friday evening to a morbidly obese 6.18 by night’s end.

In spite of yet another crappy outing, The Hyphen apparently felt no remorse for taking home a paycheck he has barely earned this year. At the same time, he had the urge to let the world know that he didn’t really give a damn about his latest underwhelming performance.

Read more…

It happens every year. A handful of European players who no one but Fran Fraschilla has ever heard of get selected in the second round of the NBA Draft.

With nothing but YouTube videos to help craft their opinions, ESPN’s draft analysts deftly bullshit us into believing that these future YMCA ballers have a great chance at becoming the next Dirk Nowitzki.

Let’s be honest. We’re all sick of this garbage. Just once, it’d be nice to hear a supposed “draft guru” speak candidly about these Andrea Bargnani wannabes.

Here’s how I picture it going down:

Scene: Deputy commissioner Russ Granik comes walking on stage while the crowd chants something awful about his mother. Grinning like an idiot in spite of the fact that he wants to kill everyone in attendance, Granik manages to make the all-important announcement.

Russ Granik: With the forty-sixth pick in the 2010 NBA Draft, the Milwaukee Bucks select Nikola Tjksvlijiblab, a center from Uzbekistan.

Read more…

American-born John Isner defeated Frenchman Nicholas Mahut in an eleven-hour marathon tennis match that finally reached its conclusion on Thursday morning.

The epic battle destroyed the record books for longest tennis ever — besting the previous longest match by nearly five hours — and had to be suspended twice — once on Tuesday night, and again on Wednesday night — due to darkness.

Since Isner and Mahut commenced their test of wills on Tuesday morning, I’ve been tabulating all the things I have accomplished while they were merely playing tennis. Let’s begin.

Tuesday morning

-Woke up at 7:30. Got out of bed. Went to the bathroom. Stood in front of the mirror. Uttered a four-letter word.

Read more…

I’d like to start by dedicating this post to the guy who keeps commenting on articles, demanding that I stop writing about the Mariners. Enjoy this, beyotch.

Now let’s address what really matters. Cliff Lee. What a pimp. The dude is insane. He’s arguably the best pitcher in baseball right now and it’s effortless. He’s pitching at a level that no Mariner has pitched at since Randy Johnson was in town. He’s that amazing.

Watching Lee pitch is like watching porn. You realize you’re immersed in fantasy, you sense this is too good to be true, and yet you can’t take your eyes off the action. He’s a freakin’ pornstar. We have a pornstar on the mound.

Just a few hours ago, I was under the impression that the Mariners should swap Lee for prospects as the trade deadline nears. It makes sense. The team is in last place, Lee will be a free agent at season’s end. Why not, right?

But after the left-hander’s most recent complete game, my opinion has changed entirely.

We need Cliff Lee. We need to try to keep Cliff Lee. If we trade Cliff Lee, the only time we’ll see him again is when he’s dominating our hitters. Personally, I don’t think I can handle that.

Read more…

Is we don’t stop other Mariners fans from looking ridiculous.

Come on, man. Seriously.

You’re killin’ me, Hyman.

At least the Mariners don’t have to worry about half-naked hermaphrodites running through their clubhouse at all hours of the day. That’s what happened in New York, where Lady Gaga steamrolled her way into the Yankees’ dressing room following a loss on Sunday afternoon. Sources indicate that the pop star was wearing a bra, underpants, a baseball jersey and little else at the time. Apparently, she started chatting up second baseman Robinson Cano, who said afterwards that, “She can sing, I’ll tell you that.” Yeah, Robinson. I hear she has a real nice baritone.

The closest thing to Lady Gaga in the M’s locker room is FSN reporter Jen Mueller, who has two sweater pillows but likely no penis. I mean, as far we can tell. I don’t want to overstep my bounds in assuming things. (And for the record, if you missed Jen’s interview with comedian Joel McHale during Friday night’s broadcast, you need to find it and you need to watch it. It’s hilarious.)

Ambiguous body parts aside, the hometown nine is doing their very best right now to attract international music stars to Safeco Field by at least attempting to become relevant once again. They’ve taken four games in a row, including a three-game sweep of the NL Central-leading Cincinnati Reds.

Read more…

Josh Wilson is kinda funny looking and resembles someone’s little brother. He strikes fear into the hearts of few, and up until one month ago, he wasn’t even the best Josh Wilson in the city of Seattle, let alone the world (the local distinction, at least, belonged to the Seahawks cornerback of the exact same name).

But that matters not anymore, because Wilson, nicknamed “The Paperboy,” has delivered time and again for the Mariners so far this season.

That ability to rise to the occasion, along with Wilson’s unequivocal underdoggedness, has vaulted the 29-year-old shortstop to the top of my Favorite Obscure Mariners list. This small grouping of esteemed individuals has previously included the likes of the following few: Hiram Bocachica, Henry Cotto, Charles Gipson, Josias Manzanillo, Greg Pirkl, and Doug Strange, among a Webster-sized handful of others. It’s a select team of pseudo-all-stars that Wilson can forever and always associate himself with.

Read more…

Me and The Jet go way back. We first met on December 24, 1999. The Jet was on my Christmas list, and when I unwrapped him and pulled him out of his box, I knew we’d have a lasting relationship with another.

Smooth, leather, and with just the right grip, The Jet was a throwback to a different era, a prelude to a PETA-enforced generation of composite wannabes.

The first time I ever took The Jet to the gym, my basketball team didn’t put him down for an entire practice. The Jet was cool from the get-go, socializing with everyone, making friends, but still coming back to me at the end of the day. We were tight like that.

As the years passed, The Jet and I would run games all over the place. High school gyms, middle school gyms, elementary school gyms, college gyms, the YMCA, the Boys and Girls Club, city community centers, church gyms…you name it, we ran it. The Jet was our designated game-ball, and him and I had that rapport, that comfort with one another that you can only develop after a number of years together.

Read more…

Sometimes I struggle to find topics to write on. It happens. It’s called writer’s block. Thankfully, the world is populated by morons who give me new material every day, and that’s where our next guest comes in.

A few months ago I wrote this article about how the Mariners would win the American League West. Of course, the season isn’t over just yet, but I was more or less wrong. Winning the division at this point would be a Godforsaken miracle. And thanks for backing me up, by the way, Mariners. I stuck my neck out for you and you bastards let me down. I’m not mad, just disappointed. And disappointment is far worse than anger.

So anyway, if you scroll down to the comments section of that article I just linked, you’ll notice that a dude with the user name SuckItSeattle decided to leave a smart-ass remark earlier this afternoon about how much we suck. What a douchebag, right?

Here’s the context of his comment, for easy reference:

“Great article. This offseason was one of so much drama leading to anxiety for the upcoming season. ‘Seattle is the most improved team in the league. They are the runaway pick for AL West champions.’ This is all I heard for months and months. I couldn’t wait to read things like this and just laugh at people who really believed that. Currently 24-41 and flirting with the worst record in the league, the Mariners once again prove they play in the city with the dumbest fans in the country. I’ll save you a seat for October baseball in Arlington if you want to watch how the big boys play.”

Read more…

Admittedly, I have nothing else to write about. The Mariners are the most boring team in the history of baseball, and the Pac-10 Plus Colorado just invited Utah to come out and play. These are topics barely worth mentioning, let alone devoting an entire article to. So instead, I give you my Darrell Jackson story. I’ve been saving this for a rainy day, and frankly it’s pouring right now. Enjoy.

Once upon a time, I used to work at Champs Sports in the Bellevue Square Mall. Frequent visitors of the site already know this, but you might be new, and so I welcome you to the Seattle Sportsnet family by providing that little bit of context.

Read more…

We had the Big 12 on the ropes and we couldn’t deliver the knockout punch.

We were going to form the Pac-16, a monstrosity of a conference that would have all but eliminated the term “West Coast bias” from memory.

We would have been all-powerful, like the Superfriends, or the X-Men, or even Jay-Z and Beyonce.

We could have had it all. And we choked. We did. We blew it. Instead of forming the Pac-16, we’re currently the Pac-11, with the Big 12′s former redheaded stepchild as our latest addition. Colorado. Home of scandal and subpar performances. It’s like adding another Oregon State. Yeah, think about that for a minute.

Now, in order to create some sort of balance within our oddly-numbered league, we’re going to be forced to add a Utah, or a BYU, or a Boise State to our conference of champions. Because nothing says “champion” like Boise State.

Read more…

One thing sportswriters love to do is tell their stories about pickup basketball. Perhaps it’s an ego thing, or maybe the camaraderie fuels their words, or maybe we, as an audience, just enjoy reading about the human side of sports. Either way, I’ve read a number of good pickup stories over the years, but I have yet to find one that even closely resembles mine. So without further ado, here goes.

Some guys run pickup games with old-timers. Some run games with kids. Other run with work colleagues, or family members, or longtime friends. I run with stoners. Potheads, if you will.

To clarify my situation, these stoners aren’t the only people I run with, and I, myself, do not share their fondness for the reefer. But it just so happens that over much of the last decade, I’ve happened to cross paths time and again with this group of people who value marijuana and basketball equally, and at the very least it’s been entertaining.

Read more…

Once upon a time, my baseball career came to a crashing halt. I was 18 years old at the time, a third baseman for the Bellevue Wolverines. It was one of the sadder moments in my life.

Bellevue’s 2003 season and my career came to their simultaneous conclusions on a beautiful Saturday afternoon in May. Our fate came at the hands of the hated Liberty Patriots, a group of juvenile bush leaguers that our JV squad had brawled with three years earlier. Seriously. Liberty would go on to win the state championship that year, led by some stringbean pitcher named Lincecum. I don’t know. He was okay, I guess.

After the game, I remember our whole team kneeling in the grass behind the third base dugout, listening to our coach sum up this unfortunate turn of events in a few words. At the time, I remember thinking how I had no idea what I was going to do with my life now that baseball and I would be getting a divorce. I wasn’t going to play in college and my dreams of ever appearing in the same big league lineup as Ken Griffey Jr. were now dead (I say this only half-jokingly). All of this left me feeling completely lost, in spite of the fact that I was headed to the University of Washington and had what was more or less a promising future in front of me.

Assuming the life of a journeyman hanger-on, I dabbled in a select league that fall and played on one final all-star team in the spring of 2004 before finally hanging the cleats up for good. The all-star team I played with took on a traveling squad from Japan. If ever there was a more fitting way to end a baseball career, that would have to be it.

Read more…

I’m currently reading a book by ESPN baseball analyst Jayson Stark entitled The Stark Truth: The Most Overrated & Underrated Players In Baseball History. It’s a good book which I’ve known about since it hit shelves in 2007. I’ve just been too lazy (and cheap) to buy it until now. Sorry, Jayson.

Anyway, the title of the book is pretty self-explanatory. Position by position, Stark breaks down the most overrated and underrated players in baseball history, in his opinion. It’s a great read and I’d recommend it to anyone. But that’s not the point I’m trying to get at here, so let’s move on.

So there’s this one section in the book where Stark is discussing the most underrated relief pitcher of all-time, who he claims is Goose Gossage. A fair choice given that Goose isn’t as recognized for his Hall of Fame career as some other guys in his position, but again, this is not the point I’m trying to make. I digress, once again.

Read more…