smoak on the water

he's also good at swinging the bat with that doughnut on it

I want to get this on the record before he blows up and everyone jumps on the band wagon.  Justin Smoak is my favorite Seattle Mariner and I think he’s going to be very good.  There, I said it.  May it be etched in stone.

To make a proclamation like that about an unestablished star is dangerous.  Especially for me, because most often when I go out on the limb like that it snaps off and I fall to the ground crying and embarrassed.  Which is exactly what happened to my last favorite Mariner, Richie Sexson.

For those of you not familiar with the sad and woe some tale of Richie Sexson, here it is in a nutshell.  In 2005 he signed a four year $50 million contract with the Mariners.  The contract was steep and inflated for a player of his caliber, I was still beyond excited.

You see I’d followed his career since he was a rookie with Cleveland.  Perhaps it was the fact that he was a local boy, or perhaps that he was tall (6’ 8”) and goofy, either way I loved to watch him play.

His first two seasons with the team went well, but by 2007 his power was diminishing and his batting average dropped.  By 2008 strikeouts devoured his at bats and the hometown fans were openly booing him.  By July the Mariners released him.  Eventually he was picked up by the Yankees, even that fell flat as just over a month after signing, the Yankees released him as well.  He would never play baseball again.

You can see why I have been hesitant to proclaim another player as my favorite, again.  I was afraid that as soon as I became invested in him, it would all result in a catastrophic disappointment.

Last year when the Mariners traded Cliff Lee for Justin Smoak, people immediately wanted him to be as good a hitter as Lee was a pitcher.  He came with a lot of promise but at his very young age was still struggling to figure things out.

When I saw him play in Anaheim last year, I wanted to “come out” as a full on Smoak supporter but didn’t want to jinx him.  He did well at first but soon after arriving in Seattle he began to struggle and he was sent down to the minors to develop further.  I breathed a sigh of relief that I’d held back, perhaps later when he got things sorted out I could openly root for him.

When this season began I couldn’t wait to see how he’d progressed.  Spring training had been difficult for him but by the time the season started he began to excel.  Not to star or superstar status (not yet anyway) but he was progressing nicely.  I decided that I should be brave and go for it and make Smoak my favorite player.

I like to watch Felix Hernandez make batters look silly on a sinking curveball, or Franklin Gutierrez race down balls in center field, or Ichiro beat out an infield grounder for a base hit, but I love to watch Justin Smoak just play.

If he ends up a star with a long career, then I will take pride in rooting for him first.  If like Richie Sexson he burns out after ten seasons, then I will look like a fool.  I just can’t sit by and not be an outspoken supporter of my favorite play regardless of which way his career swings.

posted by: brian snider

it takes courage

not enough courage to show this is a Sexson shirt.

Baseball season is upon us, we are now two full weeks in.  Last Friday I attended opening day at Safeco Field for the first time in years.  My family has had season tickets since the teams maiden voyage in 1977 and for the twenty eight seasons that I have been alive, most have been... pretty ugly.

It’s rarely easy to root for the Mariners, they’ve been to the playoffs only four times, they’ve never won the American league championship and or even played in a world series game.  Most of our star players leave us right as they reach their peak.  We have no curse to lean on, no rich history of baseball legends, or almost mythic figures and historical feats.  One thing that Mariner fans have an abundance of is courage.  

At the beginning of every season we have high hopes, even when we know we shouldn’t.  Each new year is a clean slate and as fans we press on like anything can happen.  We cheer on opening day like it is game seven of the world series, a euphoric rush will take over us and last between a week and a month.  By the time that rush fades it will be replaced by disappointment and heartbreak as once again our team tries feebly to scrape together wins.  Yet we still root, we wear our Mariner blue, and we cheer every Mariner run no matter how insignificant.  We have courage.

This season Opening day was bittersweet, with the passing of the most famous Mariner Dave Niehaus.  The voice was gone but it was another new season and we were eager to erase the embarrassment of 2010’s 101 losses.  Coming home for opening day they had lost four games in a row and were carrying a record of 2-4.  As I expected however we got geared up through the opening day ceremonies and cheered with great anticipation as Jason Vargas delivered the first pitch.

That excitement lasted all of one out when the Mariners fell behind one to nothing on a home run.  Three innings later the wind was completely taken out of our sails when the Cleveland Indians demolished us for a ten run fourth inning.  It might have been record timing for the Mariners to break my heart but when they made a mild comeback for two runs in the bottom of the ninth, I was right there on the edge of my seat screaming at the top of my lungs.

Unlike being a Mariner fan it takes no courage to root for the Yankees.  Rooting for the Yankees is easy, they will always compete for the World Series.  As Chris Rock put it two weeks ago on Letterman “rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for Steve Jobs to win the Lotto.”  I couldn’t have said it better.  I acknowledge that there are genuine fans of the Yankees, those who grew up in New York and root for their home town team just like me.  There are also these other fans out there, those who don’t have a hometown team or even worse those who do but choose to root for the Bronx Bombers regardless.  This is simple cowardice.

I will never consider the fans without a team who root for the Yankees true baseball fans, they wanted only to find the best and the easiest team to cheer for.  The Benedict Arnold’s who abandon their home town team by selling their souls to the heartless New York Yankees have absolutely no courage.  These people wanted a winner and weren’t willing to put in the sweat, blood, and tears necessary to understand what it means to truly love a team.

These Yankee fans are like that couple you meet who claims to have never had a fight.  They think their a special and extra connected couple but everyone else around them knows the truth.  That isn’t a real relationship, real relationships require emotions good and bad, frustration, anger, joy, and heartbreak.

On opening day despite all the “experts” low expectations, I walked into Safeco field with high hopes, it was early and anything could happen.  Maybe just maybe this could be the year that the Mariners went to the World Series.  I rooted my ass off despite the unholy beating they suffered, and regardless of the fact that I knew that this will be a season full of heart break and tears.  They will test my dedication over and over, but in the end my courage will help me endure.

Eventually when the Mariners achieve that elusive World Series victory it will be much sweeter and for more hard earned and deserved than any Yankees win in the long and storied history of their franchise.