TERRY MOSHER
WILLIE BLOOMQUIST
It’s not like we didn’t see this coming. Willie Bloomquist will be 38 in November and in baseball terms that is old. So when the Mariners designated him for assignment today to bring back up from Tacoma Chris Taylor it wasn’t much of a surprise.
If this is the end of the trail for Willie, that also wouldn’t be a big surprise. He would still be receiving the rest of his $2.9 million owed him on his contract, which ends at the end of this season. That’s not a bad going away present.
Willie is the ultimate utility guy. He played every position other than catcher and pitcher. In fact, he may have been one of the best in baseball history, if you can define accurately just what a utility player is.
Some of the best in recent times have been, in addition to Willie, Larry Milbourne, Jeff Reboulet, Rocky Bridges, Tom Foley and Darin Erstad.
There were some veteran press box observers that swore that Bloomquist would not be able to hit Major League pitching. I mean a couple of these guys early in Willie’s career were so certain they were right that they almost jumped up and down and stomped their feet when they talked about it.
As it turned out, Willie did pretty well. He hit .269, which is really, really pretty good considering those that didn’t think he could come close to that kind of batting average.
He was never going to be a power guy. He finished with 18 home runs in his 14-yeaer career, with a single-season high of four twice, in 2009 with Kansas City and 2011 with Arizona.
His lack of power got me in trouble with him. I was talking to his mother one time and, stupid me, told her that one of the problems with her son was that he didn’t have any power. Yes, I know, it was a dumb thing to say to a mother, but I did it. And I’m sure it got back to Willie because it wasn’t too much later I asked him to autograph a baseball for the Strong Kids Program for the Kitsap Family YMCA and he immediately reported me to the Mariners’ PR department, who proceeded to chew me out for doing something I knew I wasn’t supposed to do – ask a player for an autograph in season.
Willie didn’t have to rat on me. But he apparently was getting back at me for my dumb comment to his mother. That ended any relationship I might have had with him, and I never talked to him again. To say I was ticked is an understatement, but then I was in the wrong.
I did get an autograph for what is a great YMCA program, though, I just went in a different direction and got Edgar Martinez’s name on a new ball, even though I again was going against Mariner policy (did I tell you I am stubborn and persistent?)
There is one excellent quality about Bloomquist: He’s a winner. You have probably run across somebody like him somewhere. Maybe on the golf course or in a game of recreational basketball, or whatever, but there are people out there in our vast wasteland who just won’t be denied, and Willie is one of them. Put him in a baseball game, no matter the position, and he will wind up being an important factor in that game, either with his defense or his bat or his hustle on the base paths. He just has a way about him that you know he won’t be denied.
I have a brother like that. He will find a way to turn something into a game, and then proceed to beat you. In fact, I’m like that. I will find away to beat you, even if it takes something different than I’m used to.
Which reminds me of a story about another brother. He was home for a few days from his Navy service and we wound up playing shuffleboard at a local tavern. I’m not great at shuffleboard, but had more experience than my brother and was able to beat him. But he wouldn’t quit. He kept insisting we play until he won. I got tired after a while and found a way for him to win so I could sit down and have a beer.
That, by the way, didn’t work out real well, He insisted I let him win and he wasn’t going to take victory unless he truly knew he won fair and square. So we wound up playing several more games until I figured out a way to let him win without him thinking I was throwing the game to him.
Willie, though, is a winner. Always was and always will be, no matter what he now does with his life.
I have to admit I didn’t realize early on how much of a winner Willie was. It was November of 1993 that I sat with then Mariner general manager Woody Woodward in the bleachers at the almost completed spring training complex in Peoria, Arizona to watch the Mariners select high school team play. I came to watch South Kitsap pitcher John Mattson, a highly prized prospect at the time and when I asked Woodward who he was watching he said, “Bloomquist” who then was a sophomore at SK.
I was stunned. I had not expected that answer. But Woodward and the Mariners knew even then that Willie was a winner, as he would prove at Arizona State and from his 14-year pro career.
If this is the end of the baseball trail for Willie, he went out as one of the best utility players of all time, and with a lot of class and respect.
Be well pal.
Be careful out there
Have a great day.
You are loved.