- Good Week — Two weeks after playing the worst game of his career (vs. Nebraska), Jake Locker plays perhaps his best, leading Washington to an improbable win over USC in the L.A. Coliseum. Locker not only makes all the clutch plays, he becomes, with 310 yards passing and 110 rushing, the first QB in UW history to twice pull off the 300-100 double (also did it against Arizona in 2007). It won’t get him the Heisman, but his performance against USC showed why he was in the Heisman conversation.
- Bad Week — Mariners end a humiliating year with an absurd 101 losses and certify themselves the worst team in franchise history by scoring just 510+ runs, worst in the DH era (since 1973), eclipsing the previous futility mark of 531 runs by the 1976 Montreal Expos.
- Sunday, Oct. 3 — Seahawks (2-2) have two rushing touchdowns in four games, both by quarterback Matt Hasselbeck. And what, we’d like to know, are the odds of one city — luckless Seattle — simultaneously hosting the worst offense in the NFL and the worst batting order in Major League Baseball?
- Saturday, Oct. 2 — Huskies score their first back-to-back wins over USC since 1996-97 and snap a 13-game road losing streak in the process. Erik Folk (lore) punches his pass to the Husky Hall of Fame by beating the Trojans with last-second field goals two years in a row.
- Friday, Oct. 1 — M’s hosed 9-0 for 15th shutout loss of the year. Some quick math shows that the Mariners are going to become the first American League team to score fewer than 530 runs in a full, non-strike season since the invention of the designated hitter in 1973 — and only the third to fail to reach 550. Since the Mariners accomplished this with the AL leader in hits (Ichiro) in the lineup, it also means the Mariners will end the season as having featured the worst American League lineup in modern history.
- Thursday, Sept. 30 — UW announces it will play its 2012 football season at Qwest Field while Husky Stadium undergoes renovation. Huskies have $13 million committed to the $250 million project and need another $12 million by March, 2011, in order to launch construction. They’ll get it, no problem.
- Wednesday, Sept. 29 — The Mariners have suffered thousands of losses in their tortured existence, none more inane than their 6-5 meltdown at Texas that features, OF ALL THINGS, a two-out, walk-off effing strikeout. Went this way: M’s entered the ninth, already having blown a 5-1 lead, tied with Texas at 5-5. Seattle pitcher Dan Cortes got two quick outs, walked Mitch Moreland, and then fanned pinch hitter Nelson Cruz on a wild pitch that allowed Cruz to race for first. Catcher Guillermo Quiroz, trying to nail Cruz, threw wildly into right field, allowing Moreland to score the winning run. “I’ve never seen anything like that,” said M’s manager Daren Brown. No one in baseball had seen anything like it in more than five years. It marked the first time a major league game ended on a play that began with a strikeout since Aug. 3, 2005, when the Phillies beat the Cubs 4-3.
- Tuesday, Sept. 28 — By beating Texas 3-1 in Arlington, Felix Hernandez (13-12) does something even Roger Clemens couldn’t do on steroids in his heyday. Felix joins Bret Saberhagen (1989) as the only American League pitchers in the past 35 years to record 30 quality starts (6 or more IP, 3 or fewer ER) in a season. Hernandez also records his 13th start in which he goes eight or more innings while allowing one run or fewer. Last pitcher to do that: Clemens in 1997, presumably on steroids.
- Monday, Sept. 27 — Using a tool developed by Retrosheet, we discover to our dismay that Ichiro has been left on base 157 times in 2010, a total that leads the majors. This is not the most unheard of thing we’ve ever heard of: Back in 2004, Ichiro was left stranded 204 times, the most by a player in any season since 1950.
TWTWTW (Sept. 27-Oct. 3)
By Steve Rudman