agreed.

Gosh I really hope you have a safe flight.

Hear, hear.

However, I must take issue with your description of "fair-weather fans". I prefer to think of myself as a fan who demands at least a modicum of value for money. Watching Ichiro is great; watching Miguel Cairo, Jose Vidro, Jarod Washburn, Carlos Silva, and the rest of these no-hopers, few of whom have any business in a major-league uniform, is just putting money in the pocket of the moronic shitbags who assembled this team. I don't plan to visit Safeco again until Howard Lincoln and Chuck Armstrong have been fired, and Kim Ng or Chris Antonetti hired as our first-ever GM with a clue.

Good to see you sticking to what you know, Professor. I agree with most of what you posted here (though your prediction is hardly "bold").

I was at the M's/Red Sox game two weeks ago and saw the motherfucker make this catch. That alone was indeed worth the price of admission (though the Mariners lost in 12).

You failed to mention Ichiro's AL MVP award.

Ichi was also MVP.

yeah, if the fans are so "great" why don't they try out and make it into the majors and prove their worth.

Geez.

I thought moving here from Los Angeles would usher in good baseball fans, in return I see only mediocre fairweather fans at the games. I mean they roasted the crap out of Sexson and now look...he's gone.

Whatever.

The team just dominated last night, and here the next day, a negative post.

Nice.

Right on. Ichiro is certainly future HOF material.

@3 That's still fair-weather fandom. The true die-hards are the ones who, despite the team's current stint at the bottom, are still buying single game tickets to go drink beer and boo at Safeco. Personally, I find the experience of appearing in person to heckle shit-suckers like Vidro cathartic and satisfying.

To me, that just means you're willing to buy the product even when it's broken. What possible incentive does a team have to be good if people will turn out anyways? You end up like the Cubs, never winning anything, but with stands full of people who barely even know there's a game on. And Los Angeles? Give me a break. They're too busy playing with beach balls to watch, and by the sixth inning they're all gone.

Sexson? Good riddance to bad rubbish. I said this would happen the day they signed him, and I was right.

Die hard fans remind me of people so devoted to Ford or Chevy that they'll even put up with cars that don't run.

@3 Right on to that. If the Mariners need to get a little poorer to stop throwing eight figures annually at the likes of Silva and Washburn, let's put them on a budget.

If the reward of fans who never stop packing the ballpark no matter how bad a team gets is 99 years (and counting) between MLB championships, I'd rather be the fair-weather variety.

Actually, while attendance is down off the high, we are still a reasonably well attended team.

AMEN, Chicago Fan. Whenever Ichiro is in town, I go. I went to the cubs-Mariners series last year, and am hoping to catch a game of Sox-Mariners in a week and a half. He is by far my favorite player in MLB. He is without peer, IMHO, just for the fact of how he keeps himself in shape, his speed, baserunning, fielding... I could go on. See you at The Cell.

And how about that Raul Ibanez?

I've been a fan for 20 years, and I remember going to games for a chance to watch Ken Griffey Jr. make an awesome catch, not for the chance to see the Mariners win.

It drives me crazy when I hear people saying we should trade Ichiro, cause he's the only guy we can get something for in return. He's the only good thing about the team right now, and you can't get enough for him that would offset the loss.

Nice, Doug. I was at that game, too. Going tonight.

What fan doesn't enjoy being number 1? Yay, me, me! But I've also always respected losing teams because of the pressure losing and even sucking (aka losing in every way possible way) puts on your ability to perform, be a teammate, stay focused and continue to go after it.

Ichiro is great, yes, but still for the elusive win, all those other guys have to stack up their individual ends of the bargain, too.

Good effort last night, and we'll see how Ichiro 'n them hold up to 6 more straight against first place teams.

Actually, I like our team.

What's your damage?

@9 - Not going to argue with that. Die Hard sports fandom of any kind is by nature highly illogical.

Last night was great. That grand salami sure sat those idiots doing "the wave" down.

hey bill, you know us. we'd go t a game even if it was a waste of time.

sunday we got to the game, saw it was carlos silva pitching and just thought, "well, we'll see another spectacular loss." instead it was a scoring game and our offense for once dominated. i was so proud to be sitting in the sun up in the three hundreds with the kid sipping beers and watching the damn blue angels fly over every couple once in awhile.

and yes ichiro is awesome. but what about Raul? (my not so secret crush...) He has been a rock for the team. just performing well when no one else can do it. with the talk of his trade last month i was nearly in tears. I hope to god we make him lifer we realy need someone to pull the team out of the dumps and father them back to working together. He's the man.

ps. I'm so freaking excited about how the cubs are doing this year. is that bad. will it jinx them... again...?

M's games are actually pretty well attended, thanks in part to the fact we have a nice ballpark that's a joy to be in regardless of what is happening on the field. Do you ever watch baseball on TV? You'd be amazed at the teams that do WELL and still can't get any fans (Oakland leaps right to mind!).

Seattle is 19th on the list for attendance in 2008, even though we're more like 29th on the list for standings.

The list: http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/attendance?sort=home_avg&year=2008&seasonType=2

That's not too shabby, if you ask me, and not at all indicative that M's fans are "fair weather" only.

The Wave: Pro or Con

Some people feel the wave is an annoying distraction. Real fans come to see the players, and that stupid cheer takes the focus off the game. I have a friend who not only hates the wave, but the any big-screen shenanigans like the hat trick, hydro races, and blooper reels.

On the other hand, baseball is a really slooow game. Most of the time, there is not much going on. That's a lot of the appeal for me. There's a little bit of on-field action and a lot of sitting in the sunshine, drinking beer and visiting with my friends. The five minutes the crowd gets going with the wave doesn't bother me that much. It keeps the kids distracted so they aren't bugging me to take them to see the Moose.

Fairweather fans?

FYI, Mariners season attendance topped the A.L. average the last 12 seasons running.

July 2008's average attendance of 26,662 is remarkably high, IMO, considering the extreme haplitude of play on the field.

I haven't been to a Mariners game in 5 years, despite the fact that I have regualar access to the company seats. And I haven't missed the experience at all.

Why? Baseball is BORING, and when the team is as anemic as the Mariners always are (1 year of steroid-laced wins doesn't count), doubly so. I grew out of it.

I pity Ichiro.

Last night's game was good. After giving up six early runs, our bullpen clamped down in impressive fashion--more so even than Ibanez's grand slam (and his followup 2-RBI double in the SAME INNING).

The aloof Ichiro may be a great ballplayer when you think of him in isolation, but in the context of a TEAM, he is one of the worst team players there is. He offers no leadership behind the scenes to junior players and newly acquired players. His lockerroom behavior is private and he leaves without hardly ever speaking to the press--and remember that, even though he uses an interpreter whenever you communicates to English-language media, he is actually quite articulate and very fluent in English.

The Ms might do well to ditch Ichiro and look for another player with maybe less in terms of stats but more in terms of charisma and leadership and team spirit/sportsmanship. It's no coincidence that the Ms' decline, a psychological problem first a foremost, started when team leaders like Dan Wilson, Jay Buhner, and Edgar Martinez left. Wilson and Buhner in particular were not stellar players in terms of stats, but they helped create an environment on the team of cohesiveness, connectedness, and mutual reliance, something that the team has lacked ever since. (Bavasi seems not to have understood this.)

Ichiro is a fine player, and sexy too. But he's no leader and he's not a team player.

p.s. Neither Cubs nor Sox match that record.

@25 - How does his leadership skills or lack thereof figure in to this discussion? The entire point of this post was to highlight his individual performance accomplishments.

And don't blame Ichiro for the team's lack of cohesion. Blame a string of inept managers and a poor decision making from the front office.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Everybody has their own way of supporting their team. Truth is , Seattle still gets decent sized crowd despite having a lousy product. And there are plenty of baseball connoisseurs in this town. You want to see small crowds? Go to Oaktown.

But forget all this, the biggest baseball news of the day is the fact that it was finally discovered that Babe Ruth was black. J. Anderson Cross’ new book finally reveals that the Bambino was black and he went to find obscure records to prove it, dude found a journal entry in Virginia titled Colored Marriages from 1853 to 1859″ and it proves Ruth’s ancestry. There it’s over.

So there it goes man, white folks no longer have the best player. Time to put Ruth next to Paige.

So is official Satchel Paige, Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Roberto Clemente and Hank Aaron.

If anyone has MLB Audio or video, here's the link to the catch above.....

http://mlb.mlb.com/media/video.jsp?mid=200807233185355

ICHIRO-SAN ICHIBAN!!!

Whoa, whoa, what? Ruth was black? The rumors were true? Good god, Ty Cobb must be spinning in his grave. Fascinating. Thrilling, even.

PS: Simac, your post sets a new record for being completely wrong in every possible way.