The Mariners Start the Season Off Right

April 2, 2001

I bought my dad tickets to opening night for his birthday, because even though he does not enjoy crowds, parking his new and beloved Dodge pick up truck downtown or listening to me curse out the umpires and opposing team, he is impossible to shop for and I figured one of us (me) should at least be happy.

So here we are, April 2, 2001, still enjoying the Texas "Ball Four!" Rangers' loss of the day before, and we enter the stadium and we head for the Hit It Here Café, which proved to be exceedingly enjoyable as their TVs were all playing Alex "It Was My Shoe" Rodriguez's wipe outs from yesterday along with his throwing error. Repeatedly. I revel in it. So this goes on for like 20 minutes, where they'd play it, then rewind it and then play it again, and I don't care what anybody says, that just doesn't stop being funny.

 We find our seats, a few rows up from the corner of left field, and I am distracted for the next ten minutes wondering if the Oakland "2nd Place This Year" Athletics realize how ugly their uniforms are, I mean seriously, whose bright idea was it to put green and gold together, though I have to say that they don't have anything on the Texas "Ball Four!" Rangers in terms of hideousness when it comes to uniforms and naturally that little opinion wouldn't have anything to do with me being bitter about a former shortstop of ours now being in one of them.  

The Opening Ceremonies begin and they were awesome, except that we were right by the fireworks which were going off about every 2 seconds I think, and those, combined with the ever irritating train whistle that would honk at about 9000 decibels from all those stupid trains going by nearly did me in because each and every time they'd go I would brace myself in earthquake preparation and it was right about that time I noticed that there wasn't really anything for me to hide under if an earthquake WERE to hit and so I am getting a little panicked, but then they put up our new banner for having made it to the ALCS last year and back in 1995 which made me really happy since I was fit to be tied when we won the Wild Card and had that great playoff run and I didn't think we'd even get so much as a post-it note to commemorate it. And then they introduced the 2001 Oakland Athletics and nobody cared and then they introduced the 2001 Seattle "Eyes On the Prize" Mariners and they had all the guys run out from centerfield down this ugly orange carpet except for Jay "Laura's Hero" Buhner who headed out from the dugout with his hurt foot and how cool is Jay anyway, I can't think of a better baseball player in terms of loyalty, honor and class except perhaps our designated hitter who I will get to in a second. Then we watched an excellent video of the 2000 season and A-Rod was cut out of it like almost entirely, I think I caught a glimpse of him once during the whole thing and that was just because he was hi-fiving somebody else and then they gave John "My, How That Little Country Boy Could Play" Olerud his Gold Glove and Kazu "Hero" Sasaki his Rookie Of the Year Award and THEN they gave Edgar "Who Wants To Pitch?" Martinez his Designated Hitter Of the Year Award which brought the entire crowd of 45,911 to it's feet in a loud ovation and my father, who would like to adopt Edgar as his son, stood there beaming in his Mariner jacket that I think kind of makes him feel like the Fonz when he wears it.

We finally get things underway and Freddy "I'll Come Around" Garcia started off okay, but soon was struggling and much to my horror, we were down 4-0 by the bottom of the 4th, though I should mention that Edgar was still hitting away like the machine that he is the whole time and at one point with Mike "Griffey Who?" Cameron on 1st and Edgar at the plate, they decide to throw to first to keep Cameron there and I said "If I were you, I'd be worrying about the guy at the plate" which made my dad and I giggle for like ten minutes because we're such Edgar geeks.

 And so there I was starting to get a little agitated since we'd yet to get a run in ourselves and my father is totally bracing himself for the string of expletives that I've been known to let loose with in such situations, when Dan "The Man" Wilson singled, and drove in a run. Brett "Sit Down & Shut Up" Tomko came back in the fifth to hold it nicely at 1-4, and THEN in the bottom of the fifth, Bret "Welcome Home" Boone hit a sacrifice fly to cut our deficit in half.

I should also mention that in addition to playing the footage of Alex wiping out from the Hit It Here Cafe BEFORE the game, they played it during the bloopers video as well, much to the delight of every single person in Safeco Field, most especially me.

Now pay attention here, because this is where it gets really exciting. Bottom of the seventh. Enter Ichiro "Ichiro" Suzuki who got what I suspect will be the first of many, many hits here. Cammie walked. And then to the plate stepped the mighty, mighty Martinez who promptly smacked his third hit of the evening, scoring Ichiro, and sending Cammie to third. Next came John, who singled to score Cammie and then of course came Laura's excessive celebrating in the stands as we stood tied 4-4.

Bottom of the eighth, Carlos "It Is Very Disconcerting For Laura Not To See Alex At Shortstop, But I'll Do Just Fine" Guillen walks, and Ichiro lays down a bunt so beautiful it almost would bring a tear to your eye, and as fast as he is, panics the A's into throwing the ball away and he motors around to 2nd and Guillen holds up at 3rd with our new, very non-aggressive third base coach. Cammie flied out hard and I suffered a small coronary as to why said third base coach held Guillen up with that, and then with 1st base open they of course intentionally walk Edgar so I was pretty much about to head down to third base myself and ask him what he might have been thinking, but it turned out not to matter as John came back with a sac fly that he finally DID send him on and we took the lead 5-4.

And next, of course we brought in Kazu who gave up a hit, but then promptly shut them down, and the Mariners won it.