Peabody: Life, Friends Baseball

Since Ichiro left the scene of his disentanglement with the Mariners, contractual and physic, the Mariner’s younger players seem free and reborn. Almost as if a baseball exorcism had occurred. With apologies to \William Peter Blatty and William Friedkin, ever since the 2001 season, really Christmas of 2001, Cirillo, at Lou Piniella’s request the Mariners traded for Cirillo. He had been a line drive kind of hitter with some success with the Brewers and then went to the Rockies in 2000. Everything went bad for him after he was in Safeco, no power, couldn’t buy a hit, ran his mouth and whined about Lou and ultimately sickened Lou to the point Lou left and Cirillo himself was traded to San Diego for a bag of balls after the 2003 season. The details are fuzzy, but when this trade occurred either Cirillo or someone in his circle of people cursed the Mariners.

Even when the team had it’s rare season of better than .500 baseball, something was amiss, like in 2007 when Ichiro had the whole team traded when he was the brunt of criticism for playing for his own stats and not the team. If the curse was not in place, Ichiro would not have done that, as witness his demeanor with the Yankees as the ultimate team player.

More recently Fr. Damien Zduriencik thinking the soul of the Mariners was possessed by Ichiro worked tirelessly to free the team from what seemed like demonic possession. Candles, incense, phone calls, clenched fists, and lots of prayers and Ichiro was gone. But he was not demonic, he was possessed and controlled by the curse of Cirillo and after the trade, people saw apparitions circling the field and screaming filthy things at Lou Piniella. See the exorcism had not only freed the team of the perceived possession, it freed it of the curse.

People have only reluctantly talked about this to me and I have to protect sources, but what they say they saw would weaken grown men’s knees.

In the past two days Mike Carp has five hits, so far as I write this, including a home run. Dustin Ackley has four hits, Ryan has two hits tonight, Montero has two tonight, Jaso has a bomb and a couple of hits. Blake Beavan is throwing a gem, and struggling a bit now but has six ks and one walk, which is the second transforming kind of game due to the use of his new big pitch, a curve ball.

Beavan might be very special after all. Right in front us he made an adjustment that makes the rest of his pitches work better. All the would be braniacs have written him off, as they did before with Doug Fister. It is illustrative that players and pitchers can get better after they arrive.

As to the curse being gone, I don’t know what to make of it. Could be just the thing for the Mariners and I will remain optimistic.

I wrote during the winter and the spring that I thought Mike Carp was a better prospect than Justin Smoak. I think that is true. All the guy does is battle and compete. Now that the curse has removed the wool from the eyes of the organization, perhaps all the politics can be set aside and a player like this be given a shot to play himself out of consideration. He was by far the best hitter last year and was rewarded by being moved to left field.

BREAKING NEWS: Deep throat, my Mariner Mole tells me that Felix, Vargas and Millwood may all be gone by Christmas, along with Gutierrez, Figgins and Olivo. Leaving the payroll at $20 million or so which would enable a sale.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 27th, 2012 at 9:24 pm by terrybenish and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.