One of the more annoying scams in pro sports is the NFL's insistence on charging full price for each team's two home fake games each August. I suppose that if theater goers are willing to pay to watch dress rehearsals, the NFL can say it wasn't the first to the notion, but I stick to the ancient principle of charging half-price for half-baked.

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On the one hand, no one should be surprised that Steve Ballmer upended the NBA last week. He already did it once in 2014, when he paid $2 billion to buy the Los Angeles Clippers, a then-unimaginable sum in pro basketball, even for an industry pickled with Foghorn Leghorn personalities steeped in cash as well as the art of bombast.

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Not only did the U.S. Women's National Team defend its World Cup title, they appear to be taking rental of the crown as the globe's hottest celebs. After a ticker-tape parade Wednesday morning for the champs in New York City's Canyon of Heroes (webcast here), the team will immediately depart for a flight to Los Angeles, where in the evening, the soccer champs will be hailed at the annual ESPY sports awards.

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Entering the weekend, the Mariners were said by the gambling site BetOnline.ag to have odds of 1,000-to-1 to win the 2019 World Series. While that will surprise no one who watched this season -- particularly the 25,816 who Sunday observed the sheet-soiling first inning of a 7-4 loss (box) to the Oakland A's at T-ball Park -- the noteworthy aspect is that those odds were better than five other MLB teams.

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The news Friday that former Seahawks owner Ken Behring died at 91 called to mind a January 2006 phone conversation I had with John Nordstorm. He was the leader of the family ownership group that brought the Seahawks into existence in 1977, then in 1988 sold to Behring, perhaps the worst choice in Nordstrom's otherwise illustrious business career.

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The happiest Mariners employee Sunday afternoon was Daniel Vogelbach. The most gratified employee had to be general manager Jerry Dipoto, who had taken three years of grief for acquiring Vogelbach at the cost of Mike Montgomery, a versatile starter/reliever who helped the Chicago Cubs win the 2016 World Series.

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Any team taking on France in international sports is automatically down 0-1, because La Marseillaise is the best national anthem by a factor of five.

Any president taking on Megan Rapinoe is automatically down 0-1, because she is the best at what she does, and he is not.

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The Mariners are upon a minor anniversary, one unlikely to inspire the sentimental fetes for which the club's marketers are locally renowned. On July 5, 2018, the Mariners beat the Angels 4-1. Their ninth win in 10 games improved the record to 56-32, two games behind the Houston Astros in the American League West.

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In its ongoing pursuit to remain a relic from 19th-century Britain in 21st-century America, the NCAA has fired a shot across the bow of California state legislature that is advancing a bill to compensate college athletes by 2023 for use of their likenesses.

Mark Emmert, the former University of Washington president now in charge of rolling the NCAA's rock up a steep hill, wrote a letter of complaint last week strongly suggesting that if the bill became law, California schools would be prohibited from participating in NCAA events, including and especially four members of the Pac-12 Conference -- USC, UCLA, Cal-Berkeley and Stanford.

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Gary Bell was born in 1936. George Kirby was born in 1998. Their career arcs as right-handed pro pitchers crossed Saturday afternoon in Seattle through the ethereal Pilots, a single-year sports wormhole that flawlessly connected flawed moments in major league baseball.

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The Mariners Saturday will be acknowledging, or commemorating -- "celebrating" doesn't seem quite the right word -- the 50th anniversary of the 1969 Seattle Pilots, the awkward runt of MLB that lasted a single season. Enough time has passed that the criminal ineptitude of the operation now seems more like a childhood prank on the order of stuffing Aunt Thusnelda's wig down the toilet.

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Since the Mariners pitching staff was, entering Sunday, 26th in MLB in strikeouts (561), next to last in earned run average (5.49) and WHIP (1.47), and last in batting average against (.274), it is understandable that general manager Jerry Dipoto senses a bit of a deficiency there.

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Mariners fans alert: Sports-franchise enfeeblement is not a permanent condition.

Probably you knew that. But when the local nine leads the solar system in errors, strikeouts and double-digit losses, sometimes it's important to hear the reminder over the Benny Hill-theme music playing on an endless loop in your minds.

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In mid-June, NFL talk is cheap, cheaper than sand in Egypt. That's why no one was taking too seriously LT Duane Brown's recent claim that the Seahawks' offensive line might be best in the league in 2019. No one snickered -- Brown is the most powerful Seahawk, so the threat of sudden harm is always in the consciousness around him -- but the remark seemed hyperbolic.

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The NBA had itself some drama Monday night. The two-time defending champs, down 3-1, celebrate the return after 32 days of their star big man, who plays 14 brilliant minutes, only to go down with a more serious injury. Yet Golden State wins. By one. On the road.

The Toronto Raptors, feeling the weight of everyone from Hudson's Bay to Whitehorse on their backs, slavering for a first championship, can't shoot a lick, yet come from 14 down to six up inside the final four minutes. Then they ease ever so slightly, and lose. By one. At home.

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Of all the nuisance things that have attended the Pac-12 Conference's full sellout of its breadwinner football enterprise to the demons of the television schedule, the 7:30 p.m. kickoff is the worst. And not just because it inconveniences me or my media colleagues, who manage to handle 7 p.m. starts for baseball, basketball, hockey and soccer games with only modest whimpering.

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Finally, the Mariners have found something worse than their season. But it's hardly a good distraction.

The man who leads the American League in strikeouts desperately needed make solid contact Thursday. Instead, OF Mitch Haniger fouled a pitch into his groin and Friday was put on the 10-day injured list with a ruptured testicle.

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A bit lost in the run-up during the week of the Seahawks' playoff game at Dallas in January was a regular-season statistical feat on offense that not only was a club record, the NFL had never seen its like since the data was tracked.

QB Russell Wilson targeted WR Tyler Lockett 70 times in 2018. He completed 57, including 10 touchdowns. None were intercepted. According to a formula devised by the NFL and tracked since 2002, the tandem made for a passer rating of 158.3. The figure is the formula's maximum possible. In the parlance of the trade: Perfect.

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There was a time in Seattle when the SuperSonics were the biggest deal. Now they are no deal.

So when the time came Saturday for the 40th anniversary of Seattle's first modern major sports championship, melancholy nibbled at the edges.

To be sure, many cheers and laughs pickled the one public celebration, when coach Lenny Wilkens and six players made it to a pre-game ceremony at T-Mobile Park to have a go at the ceremonial first pitch.

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In a season that is tantamount to extended spring training, any game outcome or personnel development can't be considered large, because there is little incentive to care about either for 2019. Nevertheless, Sunday and Monday may be seen as benchmark days in the larger plan of general manager Jerry Dipoto to get the Mariners competitive before the polar ice caps melt.

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