Rookie Edwin Diaz, who inherited the role of Seattle’s closer Tuesday, has gotten off to an historic start with the Mariners, who summoned him from AA Jackson in June.
Author: Steve Rudman
Steve Rudman
Steve began his journalistic career in an era in which social networking mainly occurred in saloons. In the years since, he has been a reporter and columnist (Seattle Post-Intelligencer), a magazine founder and editor (The National Sports Review), the Director of Research at ESPN (once had the chore of looking up the history of rain delays in major league baseball), a radio talk show host (fired by KIRO because stupid people need radio stations, too, according to the program director), and the producer of a syndicated sports statistical feature (titled Wow!Stats), distributed by Universal Press Syndicate (quick, name three countries in which athletes are eaten when they fail to perform). He wrote (with Karen Chave) 100 Years of Husky Football, Who The Hell is Bob? (one of Seattles more remarkable people) and collaborated with Art Thiel (Sports Press Northwest) and Mike Gastineau (KJR-AM) on The Great Book of Seattle Sports Lists, a ribald compendium of Seattle sports exotica that should be made into a movie (Brad Pitt playing Steve). He gained everlasting infamy in 1985 (at least in Corvallis, Ore.), when, in a column in the Post-Intelligencer, he called the Oregon State Beavers The Barney Fife of College Football, then sat stupefied as the 37-point underdog Beavers cast aside a 28-year slump and beat the Huskies. As of this writing, that game (which resulted in an official, Oregon State-issued game ball for Steve) still generates 314,000 Google pages, most of them from unenlightened (and presumably salt pillar-licking) OSU fans. Steve has yet to issue an apology on Facebook or Twitter and has no plans to do so.
Pete Carroll and John Schneider plan on at least four more years. In their time in charge, the Seahawks have eight playoff wins. In the franchise’s first 34 years, it had seven.
Ichiro is nearing entry into the 3,000-hit club, a feat achieved by only 29 of the 17,000 men who have played major league baseball. This is how he got there.
Ken Griffey Jr.’s record 99.32 percent of the Hall of Fame vote testifies to his greatness. Here’s what he might have done if he stayed healthy in his prime.
Ken Griffey Jr., who hit 630 home runs in his 22-year major league career, including 417 in a Seattle uniform, will enter the Baseball Hall of Fame Sunday.
The Mariners have to clear four teams in the second half to claim the second wild card. A major impediment is Houston Astros 2B Jose Altuve, the AL’s first-half MVP.
With 94 home runs in 63 games, the Mariners are on track to hit 241, which would place them in company the Ken Griffey Jr.-Jay Buhner Kingdome teams of the late 1990s.
Catchers Chris Iannetta and Steve Clevenger, signed by GM Jerry Dipoto over the winter, have provided the Mariners with an offensive uptick until Mike Zunino develops into a hitter.
The Mariners seemed on the verge of losing Tuesday night when Leonys Martin hit one of the most unusual homers in Seattle’s franchise history for a 6-5 victory.
Robinson Cano received brutal criticism the past winter — ex-coach Andy Van Slyke called him the worst player he’d ever seen — and has rebounded in near-record fashion.