Mariners Won't Stand For Offensive Clothing, Signs

Leave it Yankee fans. What manner of sleazebucket would hoist the image of an NYFD firefighter urinating on Ichiro Suzuki, for crying out loud, when this guy's done nothing except stand, so far, as an example of what a baseball player should be?

Meanwhile, there were some games today...Up in Fenway, the Baltimore Orioles let former reliever Rodrigo Lopez work his way out of a classic jam - Red Sox pulling to 4-2, second and third, first base open, Manny Ramirez coming up. Manager Mike Hargrove decided to let the kid pitch to the big man...Lopez gets him to pop out, then gives way to reliever B.J. Ryan who gets Carlos Baerga pinch hitting to ground out, Orioles out of the jam, come away with a 5-3 win in the end. Geronimo Gil and Melvin Mora went yard for the Birds; Gil to lead off the fifth. Orioles took an early 3-0 lead with the little ball; second inning, three straight singles bring home one, another single one out later brings home another, and a groundout brings in the third.

Last Tuesday, Jeff Suppan of the Royals faced Jeff (Leave It To) Weaver of the Tigers, Weaver came away with the five-hitter. This Monday, as in tonight, Suppan threw a two-hitter, broke a scoreless tie in the eighth on Weaver's wild one, Royals beat the Tigers, 4-0 at Comerica. Carlos (Fruity) Febles started it with a one-out single; Donnie (Back In The) Sadler followed with a double sending Febles to third. Weaver had Michael Tucker 1-1 when the wild pitch got past Mike Rivera behind the dish, in comes Febles. Weaver recovered, finished off Tucker - swish! Big K, then Carlos Beltran flied out. Royals put up three in the ninth: ribbie singles from Joe Randa and Febles and then Sadler drawing the walk with the bases loaded.

Back home from a nasty road trip, the Twins do it to the Devil Rays, 3-2. Eric Milton comes back to pitch 7 1/3 for the win, Denny Hocking drives in two, Eddie Guardado gives Eric Gagne of the Dodgers a run for his money - ninth save in nine chances out of the pen.

Other news that isn't spelled Strawberry-Going-To-The-Brig...Tawny Kitaen pleads innocent to charges that she assaulted her husband, Cleveland Indians pitcher Chuck Finley...Twins shortstop Cristian Guzmann to undergo an MRI on his knee...Rockies third base coach Rich Donnelly calls it quits, and Alan Cockrell takes over as hitting coach following Clint Hurdle's promotion to interim manager...Andy Pettitte got the official word: it's tendinitis in his pitching elbow, the Yankee lefty plans a few days' rest and then back to his rehab, club expects him to go for some minor league rehab starts in two weeks...Wil Cordero's second tour with the Indians has ended offically; the Tribe released him Monday, a week after he was cut for reassignment...Associated Press reporting Jerry (Rolls) Royster can shake off the "interim" tag - he's the boss in the dugout in Milwaukee.

come and get it, boys and girls!

It costs a lot for a family to see a Mariners game at Safeco Field, so keeping the atmosphere family-friendly is a good idea. They would never be able to fill the whole stadium in Seattle with rude people, and rude people keep families away. They are making the right choice.

Phillies-Giants:

Phillies' pitchers Robert (Missing) Person, Rheal (Bhad) Cormier, David Coggin (the Machine), and Jose Santiago (Chile) throw 500 pitches, 400 of which are balls, and walk 100 batters. Giants' bullpen is flawless. In a game that lasts eight hours, Giants win 8-5.

I just couldn't get over Yankee fans hoisting that picture of Ichiro. I can applaud what the Mariners' park policy might be, and you notice they only draw the line at rudeness - they're not exactly playing the censorship game. You'd think the preponderance of Yankee fans would take the hint from the guys who jabbed back creatively when Diamondbacks pitcher Curt Schilling kidded about the "mystique and aura" around the Yankees and, the next night's World Series game, a couple of Yankee fans hung a banner over the rail saying, Mystique and Aura. Appearing Nightly. Now, that's the way to do it. Much in the tradition of the original Met fans (who all but started the banner thing in earnest in 1962) who brought seven lampshades and rolled them down sequentially to spell out:

O'MALLEY
GO HOME

Yep. Sounds like the Giants' bullpen is full of bull...

Hale said she heard of T-shirts at Yankee Stadium last year featuring a New York firefighter urinating on Seattle star Ichiro Suzuki.

I find this story hard to believe. No matter what's happening in the standings, the Red Sox are Yankee fans' No. 1 hated team. The Mets come second. Seattle, and specifically Ichiro, are not even on the radar.

This is a clean clear violation of Constitutional Rights under the First Amendment--it's state action because the field is owned by a state subdivision.

Poor taste? Yes. Rude; silly; dumb? All of the above. We should care because small violations of the constitution lead to big violations. In the Soviet of Washington, they could care less about the US Constitution. The Civil Rights Act clearly applies; this is liability producing conduct.

It costs a lot to take a family to almost any stadium, anywhere. Rudeness doesn't have a whole lot to do with filling the stands. Fielding winning teams fills the stands. Witness the Orioles. For years, Camden Yards was filled to capacity all the time -weeknights, weekends, it didn't matter. Now, after several years of horrible teams (and purging players like Mike Mussina), it's starting to show. I cancelled my season tickets this year cuz I'm sick of driving 2+ hours to watch losing ball. It's got nothing to do with rudeness and everything to do with perceived value for the money.

Constitutional BUMP

My husband and I were in Boston a few weeks ago, at which time the Red Sox happened had a home stand against the Yankees. Every Boston fan we saw, practically, was wearing a "Yankees Suck" T-shirt. I thought the trend originated in Boston.

This is a clean clear violation of Constitutional Rights under the First Amendment--it's state action because the field is owned by a state subdivision.

This may depend on the terms of the lease the Mariners have for the ballpark, granted that the park was designed for baseball alone. If the lease gives the Mariners the singular responsibility for running the park during their games, the Mariners may well have a flexibility as to what mode of expression they can or cannot control.

But this also illustrates one of the prime reasons as to why public financing of professional sports stadia is manifestly a bad idea. The San Francisco Giants, for example, built PacBell Park themselves; it is the first privately-built and owned baseball park since Dodger Stadium, in fact. The Giants - and, for that matter, the Dodgers - can, if they choose, determine which modes of expression are or are not acceptable during Giants' or Dodgers' home games (not that they would, especially when the teams play each other and knowing the history between the teams); the state of California can say nothing of it, any further than they can say that I can or cannot set rules for the manner (as opposed to the idea expressed) of speech I do or do not tolerate in my home.

I have always cared about Constitutional violations small and big, but the Mariners' case seems in need of far more clarification. I can't help thinking, though, that the team might want to cut the fans just a little more slack when the Yankees come to town, considering the banner illustration to which the story alludes involving Ichiro Suzuki...like maybe burning a Yankee in effigy...

I find this story hard to believe. No matter what's happening in the standings, the Red Sox are Yankee fans' No. 1 hated team. The Mets come second. Seattle, and specifically Ichiro, are not even on the radar.

I wouldn't exactly call a team which tied the all-time season wins record and which came thisclose to knocking the Yankees out of the pennant off the radar. And if you consider that there isn't a club in baseball whose fans don't include a small contingency or two of Tree People, I'd have been surprised if such contingency among the Yankee faithful hadn't singled out Ichiro Suzuki for that kind of, er, tribute.

Finest moment I have ever seen of Yankee fans: The night George Steinbrenner was suspended from baseball over the Dave Winfield affair. The news broke early during a game between the Yankees and the Tigers at the Stadium, as the Tigers were about to come up to hit. A swell of applause and cheering broke out in the seats far down the first base line and picked up slowly, growing around the rim of the park, turning into a standing O that lasted about ten minutes. Nobody knew what was going on - it sure wasn't for the Tigers, who were just as befuddled as anyone. The Yankees came up out of their dugout to look and they couldn't figure it out. Then someone put two and two together - there had been Yankee fans carrying portable radios in the park in case the news came out during the game, which it did. The news hit radio before it could have reached the Yankee television booth or the press box. It was the sound of about fourteen years of Yankee fan frustration blowing the cork off and letting go. It wasn't quite as clever as what a Met fan did on an opening day in the early 1980s expressing his frustration with the willfull neglect of the team (this was before the era of the Davey Johnson-Darryl and Dwight-Gary and Keith Mets), but it was very touching in its way. (The Met fan to whom I just alluded - having a little fun with an angry football Giants' fan tow-plane banner, Fifteen years of lousy football: we've had enough! - waited until the top of the first on opening day was over, then held up an exquisitely painted sign: Fifteen minutes of lousy baseball: we've had enough!) On the other hand, I think nothing would ever match the Cub fan on Opening Day, 1980 in Wrigley Field: As soon as the Cub pitcher threw the first pitch of the game, up went the sign: Wait Till Next Year!

I have a terrific essay which was published in Newsweek as a companion piece to its cover story about Steinbrenner in July 1990, "The Most Hated Man In Baseball". The issue hit the stands, as it turned out, the very week Steinbrenner got his timeout. The companion piece in the magazine was called "A One-Man Error Machine," by George F. Will; he subsequently republished it as "George Steinbrenner: An Acquired Taste" in his book, Bunts: Curt Flood, Camden Yards, Pete Rose, and Other Reflections on Baseball. Among other things, Mr. Will had this to say about the Yankee condition in 1990:

Then Whitey Ford was pitching and Yogi Berra was catching and Mickey Mantle was belting the ball out of Yankee Stadium's ZIP cose...and the memory of man ranneth not to when the Yankees were other than awesome. Now the Yankees are the worst team in baseball. Look to your nonlaurels, Atlanta Braves - the Bronx Bumblers have captured baseball's booby prize. And the Yankees' owner, George Steinbrenner, is the worst problem on the plate of the commissioner of baseball, Fay Vincent, who must think the Devil is plaguing him...The commissioner's power is unconstrained, other than by the commissioner's prudence. And it is unappealable, unless the commissioner acts more capriciously than any commissioner ever has. The sweep of the "best inerests" clause generates pressure to use the power. The pressure often comes from people impatient to use fiats to cut through complex problems, sweeping like a scythe through procedural niceties. Nothing matches the impatience of a baseball fan fed up with his team's owner. No one is as fed up as Yankee fans.

What a difference a decade plus two makes.

I wouldn't exactly call a team which tied the all-time season wins record and which came thisclose to knocking the Yankees out of the pennant off the radar. And if you consider that there isn't a club in baseball whose fans don't include a small contingency or two of Tree People, I'd have been surprised if such contingency among the Yankee faithful hadn't singled out Ichiro Suzuki for that kind of, er, tribute.

I respectfully disagree. It's not that I don't think there are a few Yankee fans capable of being so tasteless (they did chant "overrated" when the Yanks beat the Mariners in five games in the playoffs); it's just that even though Seattle won 116 games, they will never be on the radar for Yankee fans the way the Red Sox and Mets or even the Orioles are. Part of it is geographical,and part of it is historical; facing the Yankees may be the biggest series of the year for Mariners fans, but the reverse is not true for Yankee fans.

Anyhow, I asked several Yankee fans today if they had seen any such Ichiro items, and all of them said no, with one of them using the same term as me -- that the Mariners were not even on the radar!

I respectfully disagree. It's not that I don't think there are a few Yankee fans capable of being so tasteless (they did chant "overrated" when the Yanks beat the Mariners in five games in the playoffs); it's just that even though Seattle won 116 games, they will never be on the radar for Yankee fans the way the Red Sox and Mets or even the Orioles are. Part of it is geographical,and part of it is historical; facing the Yankees may be the biggest series of the year for Mariners fans, but the reverse is not true for Yankee fans.

Seattle is on the radar - two seasons running, the Yankees have had to deal with them, and in neither of those postseason rounds did the Yankees have it quite the cakewalk that the smugger-than-thou contingency of Yankee fans would care to have you believe. The Yankees will have the usual suspects to trouble themselves with, no doubt, but it seems rather certain that they have another date with the Mariners coming in October. Who wins is anyone's guess, but unless someone decides to try fixing what isn't really broken, the Mariners look like they're going to be around for quite awihle. It won't kill the Yankees. That's one team that thrives on upstart competition.

Anyhow, I asked several Yankee fans today if they had seen any such Ichiro items, and all of them said no, with one of them using the same term as me -- that the Mariners were not even on the radar!

Well, it's almost the old story of no one hearing the bear bloviate in the woods, in a way, and while Ichiro Suzuki himself seems too nice to think twice about any such miscreance, it doesn't mean that it didn't happen. Especially since he was so heavily publicised last year that you'd have to go through some very extensive contortions to suggest that, historic considerations notwithstanding, he and his mates weren't on the radar. We'll probably have to agree to disagree here. But at least Lou Piniella wasn't dumb enough to pull his infield in in the bottom of the ninth in the seventh game when he had the best relief pitcher in baseball for getting a double play grounder that could have sent that game to extra innings and a chance to win it...

The thing of it is, BluesDuke, is that how a team is doing has little to do with whether they are on the radar of hated teams, at least as far as Yankee fans go. The Red Sox can be in last place and we'll still hate them! As for Seattle, the most annoying Mariner ever (from a Yankee fan's perspective, at least!) was Ken Griffey Jr., with his incessant whining about how Billy Martin was mean to him when he was little, and how he hated the Yankees ever since.