Peabody: Life, Friends Baseball

The phenomenon of writing baseball blogs about a major league team began here in Seattle, largely with the USSMariner with Dave Cameron and Derek Zumsteg. Jeff Sullivan had a fun titled one named around a former Mariner prospect from St. Martin’s College in Lacey, WA Justin Leone.

Derek Zumsteg quit writing several years ago, Dave Cameron has gone on to the Wall Street Journal, ESPN and Fangraphs and suffered a bout with leukemia. Sullivan went on to Lookoutlanding.com and now writes primarily for fangraphs on wider baseball topics than just the Mariners. Jason Churchill started prospectinsider.com and he now has a paying gig with ESPN.

Making money doing this is the best thing since sliced bread and peanut butter. The blogger may be a sabermetric guy or think he is, not sure what that difference is, but it’s obvious when you encounter the latter. Post game show on KIRO and the guy was talking about defensive WAR as if it is meaningful as an example.

But for most it is a mix of baseball and writing. It could start at any point in terms of proportionality, i.e. 80% baseball and 20% writing, but that swings way around to the reverse where it is mostly about the discipline of writing daily and picking something in daily events or trends to discuss.

The die off in local bloggers is not mirrored around baseball. The Mariners have become the modern day equivalent of the St. Louis Browns.

A laughing stock around baseball that always loses and ultimately moved to Baltimore. This year they lost less than the previous years, largely due to the efforts of GM Jack Zduriencik and some measure Eric Wedge and the young players and Felix Hernandez, Vargas etc.

But in the face of those efforts there is the perfidy of the executives, Armstrong and Lincoln and the reaction that ensues:
1. Japan trip. Most of the team was sick and Carp was hurt for the year.
2. The decision that marketing Ichiro was more important than team development.
3. Chone Figgins opens season at third base, while best player on team, Kyle Seager sits.
4. Lincoln fights Sonic’s Arena
5. Sale of Team looms.
6. Major Newspapers stop covering the Mariners

There are a group of very talented guys that could be part of the team next year, from the start to the end of the season. As a purist that should be fun.

This fall’s Arizona Fall League features the Peoria Javelinas with a large group of players and pitchers are very good for the Ms:

http://mlb.mlb.com/mlb/events/afl/club.jsp?team_id=490

The stadium commission deal with the Mariners needs to be looked at, I think this group of dilettantes will sell this team to anyone in the world.

The consequences of this is that even though the blogger is turned around to writing as being the primary motivator, if you follow this franchise you know they will do something to screw up any positive momentum. I call it the curse of the superstar.

Similar to the Red Sox trading Babe Ruth so that their owner could finance

, the current Mariner brain-trust traded Omar Vizquel, Randy Johnson, Ken Griffey Jr., and let Alex Rodriguez walk. All hall of fame or soon to be hall of fame players. You must respect and honor the game.

Writing day after day about the Mariners is like getting gangrene in your little toe, you know if you don’t cut it off, it will kill you.

So there are but a few left.

There are now rumors about Zduriencik being fired by electronic media types which could be pure bs, but who knows.

I could always steal from Jim Moore, do a reversal and supposedly write about the Huskies and rip the Cougars instead. Lots of low hanging fruit there. People cheer me and rip me both, it is great fun.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 24th, 2012 at 9:04 am 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.