Shyzer.com

(This will be the last post of this type for a long, long time. So humor me and read it. Also, for those of you interested in how the hell I became such a big Mariners fan, you can find the answer in the comments of this post.)

Well, the move back home has gone smoothly enough. I still have yet to deal with the pile of shit in the garage I call “my stuff,” but that will be dealt with sometime soon. I have, however, been working on a number of new posts to soon show up on Shyzer. I actually had a good one ready and prepared to go up tonight, but I decided to hold off a day on that one to finally get in these 2004 baseball predictions I made this past March. I would have posted them then, but I wanted to take the time to explain why I picked each team to finish where I put them, which you can read by hovering your mouse over the team’s logo. Looking back on them, I didn’t see any prediction that made me go, “Wait a minute…what in the hell was I smoking when I make THAT?!” but at the same time, quite a few of them have been off so far. Yeah, it’s only a month and a half into the season, but things are starting to settle down, the dust is clearing, and we are beginning to see the true side to most of these teams.

In fact, now that I look at, I can’t help but chuckle. The League that I should know the most about, the American, seems to be where I made the worst predictions to date. I picked the Twins and White Six to be bad (nope and nope), the Blue Jays to play decent (nope), the Angels to tank (God I was off), and the Royals to win their division (Okay…I was REALLY off on this one). The only prediction in that whole league I seem to have nailed is the Mariners blowing. But more on this later.

The National League, however, I seem to be doing decent in. My three “upset” picks were all over here. The Phillies sucking, the Dodgers winning, and the Padres surprising everybody. So far, so good. It seemed like every “expert” out there picked Philadelphia to dominate that division, but they are hardly “dominating” and winning this one with ease. Apparently winning the World Series and keeping your most important player isn’t that big of a deal now a days. Folks, the Florida Marlins are still good. They were good last year. They beat Atlanta, Chicago, and New York. They are still good this year. How much more is it going to take to prove they aren’t just some “fluke?” The Padres seemed to have snuck up there on everybody and all of a sudden they are a playoff team and the Dodgers have finally found the offense that they so desperately needed. Yeah, yeah, it’s only May. Come October, the tables could be turned in both leagues and Kansas City could be winning their division like I said. But I’m not holding my breath on this one. =)

Which brings me back to the Mariners. The season is over. I knew all along they weren’t going to be a good team, but with the birth of every new season for every team, there is that small seed of hope. Maybe, just maybe, your team will exceed all expectations and win despite all the odds. It happened with the Marlins last year, it happened with the Angels the year before, and it happened with the Diamondbacks the year prior that. They all just barely made the playoffs and then caused chaos for all the other teams in the playoffs. But they all had one thing in common. Pure, common, unfiltered luck. They suffered no injuries, they picked up key players along the way, and had more then one player have career years. And so I held out hope that maybe, just maybe, they’d have a season like that.

Ha.

Sunday afternoon was the game that slammed the steak in. Last night was the final blow. Sunday, Seattle has an offensive outburst by scoring 6 runs in the 2nd inning. They’ve only scored 6 or more runs four times this season, helping them earn the 4th worst offense in the entire major league. They went on to allow the Yankees to score 7 runs and lose the game. Then, last night, I watched the Mariners get 17 hits. SEVENTEEN HITS! 16 of those hits were for singles. Yet even with those weak singles, they managed to carry a 6-2 lead into the 8th inning. So what did they do? Let the Twins score 5 runs and win the game 7-6. This team stinks. I cried and stared in amazement as the Mariners went out and signed some of the worse players this off season. The Mariners’ management ignored logic and went with “community friendly” guys who can’t hit or field worth a shit. They continue to operate in a method that will maximize their wallets (publicly stated numerous times. They aren’t bashful about this fact) while staying relatively competitive. You almost want to root against them at this point so that they’d finally realize how erroneous their assumptions on your average fan’s intelligence is. Attendance in Seattle has already dropped by over 10,000 fans per game. Jersey sales are at a decade low and they were only able to get 6 games televised on national TV this year.

It’s time to clean house. Trade whatever elder players we have, stockpile on young talent, suck for another 4 years, and see if we can’t win a world championship that way. The method their operating under now has already proven futile and now it’s just a matter of the fans staying away from the ballpark and merchandise staying in the store to prove to the owners that this new path must be undertaken. It would be so much easier to start following some other team (I’ve practically fallen in love with the Marlins since last October), but I can’t. I love the players on the Marlins, not The Marlins. If Pierre and Dontrell and Lowell and Choi and Castillo were all traded, the Marlins would be a different team and I’d no longer follow them. And even if I did, I couldn’t forgive myself for becoming one of “those” fans, which is why you stick with your team through thick and thin. Yes, the next few years are going to physically blow. I’ve already stopped following baseball with the same passion, the same zeal, the same energy that I once did. I still love the sport, I still will stop flipping through channels if I spot a baseball game, and I still drop everything the moment the guys decided it’d be a good day to go out and play. But The Mariners have jaded this fan with their greedy ambitions and until they prove that they care about their fans, I’ll stay away.

Like I said, this will be my last post about the Mariners for a while. I’ve got a few funny posts ready to go, so don’t think I’ve forgotten about y’all. Back to my daily weekly ramblings. (And that y’all was just for you Stan)

Oh yeah…Go Mariners.