Art Thiel is a longtime sports columnist in Seattle, for many years at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and now as founding editor at SportsPressNW.com.
It would almost be easier if these Mariners were like the teams of the 1970s and '80s, which were hapless. Today's Mariners are, well, hap. Or maybe that should be half. As in half good. They can hang, but participation ribbons are faint recompense.
Well before his broadcast personality made him an ebullient, irreverent national sports-culture hero in his final years, Bill Walton as a youngster was something of a budding sports nemesis....
As you may have surmised by now, a pattern has emerged. Nothing about the current Mariners has gone to standard baseball form. They are as predictable as puppies under a blanket.
Where Macdonald's ends up on that spectrum will be the highest Seahawks drama of the 2024 season. As with the presidency and many CEO jobs, it will be defined by crisis management.
Except for a two-run, welcome-back homer by Haniger, plus a two-run dinger from pinch-hitter Dylan Moore, the Mariners disappointed a sellout crowd of 45,337 with a 6-4 loss to the Boston Red Sox.
If you follow the turns here, undoubtedly you have reached the same conclusion as me: Sentiment, loyalty and conscience have no purchase in big-time college sports.
In large part, free agency is a grand shuffling of players among teams with the pivot points being salaries and age. Breakouts and busts always happen, but in general during this period we are seeing a swapping of JAGs (Just A Guy).
Does the state of Washington get awarded a "We Do Last Best" certificate? Is there a trophy, like maybe a door blown out of a Boeing 737 Max 9? Do Huskies and Cougars fans meet in Washtucna, hold hands and sing kumbaya?
All within the realm of rules and customs, of course, but the Chiefs' harrowing triumph in the 75th minute of play did not at all resemble, say, the 13th century works of Genghis Khan, his many offspring and the Mongol Empire.