Baseball

Well, baseball has started and the Mighty Mariners have lost their first one, 5-4 to the defending AL West champeens, the Anaheim Angels or whoever.

Things seemed an awful lot the same as last year, the Mariners falling behind early when Vladimir Guerarro deposited a pitch from Jamie Moyer into the stands which prompted Ron Fairly to wax philosophic on how you don't pitch to Vladimir. Period.

Speaking of Ron, he was in fine form saying the MOST OBVIOUS things..."If you want to win, you've got to score a few runs!"...well, he didn't say that but he coudda. I don't really mind Ron, but a lot of people certainly do.

Komo 1000, the voice of the Mariners, has continued to put as many ads on the air as they possibly can to the point that the game actually seems secondary. I mean, really, the Torve Roofing status of the dome roof? (Closed).

It's too bad that they didn't have the Kellogg's Pop Tart Pop Up of the Game With the Bases Loaded back in Dan Wilson's day, he would have won it every time. Last night, Yuniesky Betancourt got the Lenscrafters Seeing Eye Single that scored a coupla runs and followed that up with the Pooper Scooper Blooper in the sixth.

Komo 1000 (with the news on the fours...or the traffic maybe) has put so many ads in between innings that the broadcasters always miss the first pitch or two of the next inning. This is very irritating mostly because every other media that has ever covered a baseball game has managed to fit their commercials in successfully but KOMO 1000 seems to have a little problem in that regard.

Somebody last season wrote into the Mariner Answer guy and asked why KOMO does their ads that way and the answer guy got somebody at KOMO to talk on the matter. The spokesman had the balls to say that it was all major league baseball's fault.

It's kind of funny to hear the broadcasters at the end of an inning wrap up a play fast because if they don't get to the commercials there will be hell to pay the next inning. Yesterday, missing that first pitch meant that we also missed Kenji Johjima's first at-bat in a Mariner's uniform, a fact not lost on Rick Rizzs I think who would've LOVED to talk about that. You could tell Rick was kind of aching inside as he reported the ground out after the fact.

I'm not sure why KOMO hasn't marketed that first pitch miss, like something like The Seattle Rugby Club First Pitch Miss. Turn that pesky ol' negative into a positive, like those GENIUSES in the marketing department at the airlines who instead of worrying about the physical discomfort of any passenger over 5 foot 10 has instead started charging people for increased leg room.

Commercial endorsements aside, the Mariners seemed a little better than last year, they came back from a 3-0 deficit and tied it up. They even had a chance to blow it open before the Angels relief pitching shut them down.

It really looks like the key to the Mariner's success this year will be the Rolaids Relief Pitching which yesterday was a little Shakey's Pizza Shakey with the winning runs being scored from two Discovery Park Walks given up in the Late Night with David Letterman Late Innings.

If the Mariners can manage to Visit the Maryland Shore that up, they might be pretty goldarned good.