In theory, the Seattle Mariners could score just once every 18 innings and still finish 81-81 instead of the 61-101 mark that the moribund club put up last season.
The theory was put into its experimental phase during the final two games of the most recent series with the Los Angeles Angels. The M’s managed a run in the first inning of the May 20 tiff. That held up for a 1-0 final. Then Seattle failed to score through the next 17 frames, whiffing, hacking and occasionally even smacking, but directly at Angels’ gloves.
The standings, then, listed it as a 1-1 split (1-3, actually, since the M’s lost the first two of the four-game series and, as of May 22, were 3-4 for the homestand). Fans read it as every reason to boo as though Darth Vader and the Wicked Witch of the West had just strolled into the ballpark. Those of us amid the May 21 gathering (reported to number some 18,000, but looking more like 1,800) at times had trouble hearing the clatter from the adjacent train yard because of the bellowing of disappointed spectators.
The Angels had three runs on solo long balls. The new truism of Major League baseball is that a 3-0 lead is never insurmountable unless you get it against the Mariners, who out-hit L.A. but left seven runners on base. During the aftermath of the game, M’s players claimed yet again that they’re working hard to concentrate and hit at key points of games. That it just doesn’t happen would seem to have been obvious to anyone who saw them register 51 straight outs without scoring against L.A.
The Seattle organization, however, has a solution for fans wondering whatever happened to the ballclub that bounded out to a 15-10 record before dropping to the current 19-23. The solution isn’t timely base hits but homely bobble heads, those creepy effigies of M’s players that are distributed at several promotional events throughout the year. Nagging problems with the bobble heads (there was an Ichiro version, April 17; the May 22 “honoree” is Felix Hernandez, followed by Brandon Morrow, Franklin Gutierrez and Ken Griffey Jr.) include the reality that they have dubious aesthetic appeal and little street value. Numerous “fans” nevertheless flock to Safeco Field on giveaway nights, many supposed baseball partisans (as was the case on April 17) actually leaving after receiving their plastic, mass-produced toys, presumably to hurry home and hawk them online.
On the other hand, even purists might concede, why stick around to witness the futility of another string of scoreless innings? That string threatened to continue given that the May 22 opposing thrower would be the San Francisco Giants’ Randy Johnson. Granted, he isn’t your dad’s (or even your granddad’s) Randy, not with a 3-4 record and a 6.86 earned-run average. But the Big Unit (maybe it ought to be Big Old Unit, since he was born in 1963), who of course rose to stardom in a Mariners uniform, would be trying for his 300th victory.
Would Johnson shutout his old team for the milestone win? Maybe, but then the M’s, as the theory goes, might not have to score a run until the ninth inning of the May 23 game in order to go 1-1 against the Giants.
