Seattle Sportsnet

Hello, Seattle. The news says we’re going to get between one and twelve inches of snow on Wednesday. One and twelve. That’s a hell of a range. I told my last date that she’d be getting between one and twelve inches when we got home and we never went out again, so, yeah. Good work, local meteorologists. Way to narrow it down for us.

I was at the grocery store preparing for this monstrosity earlier today. I scoured the aisles like I was on Supermarket Sweep, stockpiling all the essentials: microwaveable meals, cookies, Red Bull, string cheese. My cart was a dietician’s worst nightmare. But whatever, right? That’s why we have the Wroten Workout Plan. Unclogs the arteries. Oh, and the Red Bull was sugar free, so there’s that.

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You may have heard the news. The California Angels Anaheim Angels Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim have signed Albert Pujols and C.J. Wilson to free agent contracts. The best hitter in the game and one of the better pitchers in the game. Both Angels. Both playing in the American League West. Both direct competitors to your Seattle Mariners. What. The. F**k.

There will always be bad days. Maybe your dog passes away. Maybe you lose your job. Maybe you wake up one morning and find that reruns of Saved By The Bell have been removed from syndication. Bad days happen. They don’t usually happen like this, though…

We were blindsided. We woke up this morning, checked our computers, checked our phones, and there it was: Pujols signs with Angels. What? What?! What happened to the Marlins? What happened to the Cardinals? What about the Cubs, the motherf**kin’ lovable loser Cubs?! How? The Angels? Howwwwwwwww????!!!!

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This doesn’t happen to us.

We hear about sports-related tragedies all the time. But they never involve our players. Not Seattle. We’ve been lucky. We’ve been spared.

And then it happens. It doesn’t seem real, but it happens. You can’t quite wrap your head around why it hurts so bad, either. You didn’t know this guy. He wasn’t a friend of yours. He wasn’t a family member. He just happened to wear the jersey of your favorite team. He was a byproduct of your fanaticism.

But then you think about the way he played the game. You think about the attitude and the beaming expression. He wasn’t the best player on the field, but you wouldn’t know it by the demeanor. He held his head high and trotted out to work on a pasture so green it seemed to symbolize the promise that he, himself, exuded.

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Seattle Mariners outfielder Greg Halman passed away early Monday morning when he was fatally stabbed in the Netherlands. The 24-year-old played in 35 games for the Mariners in 2011 and was considered a promising piece of the future.

Our thoughts and prayers are with the Halman family during this tragic time.

The passion, the attitude, the smile, the ability: You will be missed, Greg.

I’ve reprinted the ad here in image form. Click the pic for a full-size glimpse of the ad. You can also navigate to the ad page (at least for now) by clicking here.

Every now and then some wayward soul actually asks me to write something for them. I’m certainly grateful for the opportunity, but have to question the judgment of the individual who extends the offer my way. Do you know who you’re dealing with here? Have you seen my Twitter feed?

All joking aside, I’m pleased to be a part of Yahoo Sports’ baseball coverage for the second straight year, and want to thank Kevin Kaduk of Yahoo’s Big League Stew blog for allowing me to write a unique end-of-year recap on your 2011 Seattle Mariners. Just like last year, I was given a specific format upon which to adhere. In 2010, I wrote a breakup letter to the team; in 2011, I was asked to channel my inner Richard Belding and give a detention lecture. It’s certainly different than your standard recaps and (hopefully) not boring.

If you’d like to check it out, you can go here to do so. As always, thanks for reading and supporting the website.

First of all, let me start by saying that I’m Asian. Half-Japanese, in fact. And if there’s anything I know about Asians, it’s that we tend to be a little proud and a little selfish. I realize that this is what sensitive people call “stereotyping.” Frankly, I don’t care.

I, for one, fall under the umbrella of proud and selfish at times. I’m not going to lie to you. It is what it is. The guy driving 50 miles per hour in the fast lane on the highway? He falls under that category, too. And if you want yet another example of the proud and selfish Asian man, look no further than Ichiro Suzuki.

Ichiro is a bad teammate. There’s no getting around it. The man plays a team sport in selfish fashion. You can say what you want about his talent level, his ability, his meticulousness, his craft, but at the end of the day, he’s more concerned about Ichiro Suzuki than he is about the team he plays for.

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First of all, shortstop isn’t that hard. It isn’t. You play deep enough so you can field every grounder hit your way, you scoop up said grounder, and then you throw the ball to first. Occasionally, you’ll have to cover second or third. Every now and then, you’ll take a relay throw. In between, you’ll stand around, kick the dirt, spit, smack the palm of your glove, hold one or two fingers above your head, chatter, and just generally try to look good out there for all the people watching. Don’t put the position on a pedestal. It’s not that freakin’ hard.

Baseball as a whole isn’t that hard. Sorry, but it isn’t. Scouts and old guys who follow the game will have you believe otherwise, but that’s mostly because they’re fat asses who couldn’t field a turtle. Plus, they want their opinions and numbers to mean something. So if they portray baseball as this difficult endeavor, maybe you’ll listen to what they have to say every time they open their mouths. Whatever.

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I don’t really have much to say. I just wanted to make sure I got to use “Fister” and “Furbush” in a headline once in my life.

I’ll be honest. I’m sad to see the Doug Fister era end. Doug, we hardly knew ye. I made the photo you see to your left a little over a year ago. Barely got to use it. Never got around to t-shirts or anything. Now it’s Detroit’s to have fun with.

So much for my Double Fister Night at Safeco Field. Mariners never could find a way to make that one happen. Two-for-one beers would have been great.

I saw two girls at the Mariners game last night, in fact, each wearing Fister jerseys. I can only imagine how they feel right now. Probably in quite a bit of pain.

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Don’t pretend you’re sorry. I know you’re not.

You are my fire. Everything I do is for you. But sometimes I feel like I’m swimming in an ocean all alone.

I just want you to know that I’ve been fighting to let you go. There’s something missing in my heart. Is this the feeling I need to walk with? Keeping it inside, it’s killing me. Sadness is beautiful, they say. But I don’t wanna waste another day.

There’s nowhere to run. I have no place to go. Some days I make it through, but then there’s nights that never end. I never thought I would lose my mind. I tried to go on like I never knew you. I’ve tried to hide it so that no one knows. But I guess it shows.

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*Editor’s note: Welcome to our first installment of Writer X, a column written by anonymous contributors for your reading pleasure. Periodically, we will be presenting you work from accomplished scribes behind the guise of the mysterious Writer X. The idea here is that we give our talented journalists the freedom to say what they want about who they want without fear of retribution. Were they to pen these thoughts under their own names, they could face serious repercussions. Writer X, however, is perfectly immune to it all. Enjoy the candor.

Obviously, the Mariners blow homeless guys again this year.

Yeah, sure, they made the first half interesting. But they did it with ungodly pitching that was wholly unsustainable. This has been a familiar refrain over the last few seasons.

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No time to dilly-dally. Let’s get right to it.

Solution No. 1: Kill Chone Figgins

This is not as easy as it sounds. Figgins is a crafty beast, squirrely in nature and with a strong desire to live. He is not unlike a dragon or a minotaur in this way.

There is an urban legend that states the only way to kill Figgins is to stab him in the heart with a garlic-encrusted stake. Or pierce his scrotum with a silver bullet. I don’t really remember. All I know is this: Chone Figgins WILL NOT DIE!

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Authorities have arrested a man they say tried to kill a well-known local icon.

John Boggins, 54, was taken into custody late Wednesday evening after police allege he attempted to have the Seattle Mariners’ Yellow Hydro murdered.

Boggins is a member of a notorious gang of fun-stealers who call themselves “Sabermetricians.” He specializes in the manipulation of numbers to radically impose his will upon others, not unlike a Jedi from the Star Wars films.

The county sheriff’s department initially learned of Boggins’ plot through an ad on CraigsList seeking, “a talented demolition man that knows how to keep a secret and hates fun.” Police then responded to Boggins’ ad in order to mount the evidence they needed to arrest the Everett native.

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Brandon League is an All-Star.

Let that sink in for a minute while I bandage the cuts on my wrists that are still healing from all the blowups League had last year.

Can you believe this? We’re living in a bizarro universe right now. I feel like Marty McFly in Back To The Future II, just now coming to the realization that Biff Tannen is both my step-dad and the richest man in Hill Valley. I gotta get my hands on Gray’s Sports Almanac so we can get the hell out of here.

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Sensing a golden opportunity with Chone Figgins having surpassed him as the worst third baseman in Seattle Mariners history, Jeff Cirillo knew it was his time. Time, he declared, for a youth baseball camp.

From the Bellevue Reporter, courtesy Josh Suman:

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