Some idle thoughts need to go into the Boneyard today so I can rest a little easier. It’s tough when your mind goes in several different directions at once. So I need to get rid of some of them.
Just thinking that if the Mariners can get past the one-game wild card playoff – and just getting there is still up in the air – they have a good shot at advancing to at least the American League Championship series. Teams that have two or three very good starting pitchers have the edge when it comes to playing in a best-of-five series. And the Mariners have the possibility of having three every good ones if James Paxton comes around. He, along with Felix Hernandez and Hisashi Iwakuma make for one of the best top three rotations in baseball.
As you know, I’m not one to jump on bandwagons, so I’m not quite there yet on the Mariners. However, like you, I sense that they are peaking at just about the right time. If they can keep it up they may be extremely dangerous in any post-season series. So keep your fingers crossed.
I don’t see the Seahawks winning a second straight Super Bowl. Football is such a violent sport that injuries play a big part in any team going all the way. I see where Percy Harvin limped off at practice the other day. Harvin is an incredible football player, but he is very prone to injuries and if you are betting he will have a great season you are taking a very big risk with your money. The latest report is that he’s ok, but I wouldn’t beat your mortgage payment that he will survive the season intact.
The same thing can be said about Marshawn Lynch. Running backs in the NFL have a short life span – around five years. That is why more and more teams rely on the passing attack for success. And Marshawn is past his running back expiration date. He’s one tough dude, but this is his eighth year in the NFL and with the way he runs, taking on tacklers, I can’t see him lasting another full year without getting hurt.
Another tough dude is Russell Wilson. But one of these days he’s going to turn the wrong way and get really whacked. All NF quarterbacks play with the knowledge that just one play can ruin them for weeks, or a season, or even a career. I think you have to be a little crazy to be Wilson’s size and try to play in a league full of giants who feast on quarterbacks. So if Wilson makes it through the season without getting hurt he should thank his lucky stars.
Sometimes I wish I was not the way I am. I’ve always been interested in world affairs, even as a young lad. I continued that interest through college. I graduated from Western with a degree in political science with minors in economics and history and I can’t stay away from what is happening in the world. And some of the horrific things that are going on in the Middle East, the ugly rise of Russia under Putin and the ominous shadow of China as its spreads its wings is more than enough to cause me headaches.
We made a horrible mistake by going into Iraq and destroying the hold that Saddam Hussein had on that country. We woke up centuries old tribal and religious differences, causing havoc and thousands of deaths. Now the ultra-extreme element of Islam has risen up under the name of the Islamic State and threatens and kills everything and everybody who disagrees with them.
It’s now a maddening cesspool of ideological thinking that has the whole region on edge and in flames. It almost making the Palestine-Israel problem seem like Disneyland in comparison.
I voted twice for Barack Obama as president and been disappointed both times. I think he’s the worse president I have lived under, and that includes Eisenhower and Carter, two guys who were virtual do-nothing presidents, and Richard Nixon, whose character proved to be more like Al Capone.
And now the front-runner for our next president is Hillary Clinton, and I’m going please anybody but her. I’m getting tired of the Clintons, whose main purpose in life appears to make as much money as they can. I don’t know what they are worth, but I would guess hundreds of millions.
Hillary is the golden gilded cage candidate who believes she is entitled to be president. She will have trouble, I’m guessing, trying to stave off that image as the election campaign progresses.
We don’t need a queen. What we need is somebody who is like the majority of us – somebody in the middle who knows the problems of the majority and is ready to get them fixed and can fend off the influence peddlers who have gained control of Washington.
We need Elizabeth Warren.
I was just thinking about Steve Ballmer, the former Microsoft CEO who dropped $2 billion from his petty cash to buy the Clippers, and wondering what it’s like to overpay for a sports team because, well, because you can.
Even Hillary would be hard-pressed to come up with that amount of money.
All I can say is it must be nice to throw $2 billion at something and still have enough money left over to buy a burger. You and I are in the wrong business.
I’ve been trying for several years how to feel about the Kitsap BlueJackets. The people who own the BlueJackets are nice people with their hearts in the right place. They want a wholesome and entertaining sport for their community, and that is about it. But the franchise has never really taken off. It does not have a love affair with the community that you might see with other places. And I don’t think it will ever have that love affair. Although I hope I’m wrong.
The one thing that might help the franchise is if it had a closer relationship with local media outlets, and if the media would embrace the team. But that hasn’t happened, either.
What I’m really saying is I think if we have a choice of going to a BlueJackets game and going to a live theater production locally or in Seattle, most of us would go to the theater. And until that changes, the BlueJackets will be, well, they will be blue.
- LOU PINIELLA KICKING UP A STORM
One last idle thought, this one on Lou Piniella, who was inducted into the Mariners’ Hall of Fame last Saturday (August 9). Being involved with sports all my life, going back to playing against my older brothers as a five-year-old, I have experienced many good competitors. In fact, I’m an extreme competitor. Very extreme. But I have never met anybody – including myself ‑ that comes close to the competitiveness of Piniella.
When I covered the Mariners for the Sun the post-game routine was for media to wait outside the clubhouse 10 minutes to allow players and manager to cool down. Then we would be allowed in with the stipulation that we would speak with the manager first, and then the players.
However, some post-game nights Piniella’s office door would be closed, which was a signal to us that he was not talking. Finally, after several years of this, I walked into Piniella’s office and asked him why on certain nights he closed the door to the media. He responded that he was afraid to say something he shouldn’t.
That is classic Lou. He wanted to win and win so badly that it’s hard to imagine just how much he wanted to win. And on those nights when he was close to strangling somebody after a difficult loss, he would close his door.
I remember once standing around the batting cage and talking to Lee Elia, hitting and bench coach under Piniella, about Sweet Lou and what made him tick. Elia, an old-school baseball coach if there is one, said there is a flame in Piniella’s belly that burns red-hot for winning. He had never seen anybody who wanted to win so badly. It was Piniella’s passion, Elia said.
I believe some of that passion to win for Piniella came from two other real fiery managers – Billy Martin and Earl Weaver. Piniella played for Weaver in the minor leagues and for Martin with the Yankees.
When Weaver was managing Baltimore, I often would sit with him in the dugout hours before game time at the Kingdome and listen to his many stories. He would be smoking a cigarette and sometimes would get up demonstrate something. He would have me laughing in no time at all. But once the game started, he was all business and very vocal in his dislike for some of the umpires calls.
Martin, I remember, as somebody the media was afraid of. Numerous times I was in the visiting manager’s office at the Kingdome when he would walk in and without acknowledging me or others turn his back on us and go over his mail. You could smell the alcohol on him (he was likely an alcoholic), and finally, after several minutes, he would turn around and somebody would stammer out a question. I learned pretty quickly to take a step back because Martin would usually explode on the poor questioner and I didn’t want to take the blunt of his outpouring.
But Martin and Weaver, both great managers with a deep passion for winning, were the men Piniella learned from, especially explosions on the field when he disagreed with an umpire’s call and would uproot a base and throw it or kick dirt on an umpire or kick his own cap.
Piniella was a great show all to himself. But he knew better some nights to keep his office door closed.
Be well pal.
Be careful out there.
Have a great day.
You are loved.