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Seattle Mariners

Grip on Sports: Danny Shelton steals show at draft

Fun-loving Danny Shelton has a big surprise for NFL commissioner Roger Goodell. (Associated Press)
A Grip On Sports Vince Grippi

Friday: As we all know, the Seahawks’ No. 1 pick resided in New Orleans, thanks to the March trade for tight end Jimmy Graham. Which made Thursday’s kickoff to the draft a bit anticlimactic here in the Northwest.

Oh, sure, there were highlights. Three University of Washington players were chosen in the first round, the first time that’s ever happened. So why did the Huskies have such a tough year again? Nine players overall were taken from the Pac-12, the most ever and the most of any conference in America. So why was the SEC considered the best conference again last season?

Yesterday there were two huge highlights we don’t want to gloss over. The first came courtesy of the Huskies’ big old defensive tackle Danny Shelton, who not only looked as if he were dressed for prom, he treated Roger Goodell as his date. 

The hug and lift was right out of every movie about prom made in the 1980s. I’m sure Goodell was surprised to be treated as a big teddy bear. That made me smile.

So did the attitude and comments from Duke’s Laken Tomlinson. The guard flashed a smile so big it lit up downtown Chicago. And he was so genuinely happy to have been drafted – even if it was by Detroit – you couldn’t help but smile. His reaction is the epitome of what’s good about the event, people reaching a goal they set years before. And that’s fun.

Thursday:  If the NFL held the draft in a parking lot of a Cedar Rapids Safeway, the outcome would be the same, the importance of the players would not be diminished.

It just wouldn’t be the great time-suck it is now. Not for the NFL teams, their time still would be sucked up. They have to invest the time. No, I’m talking about our time. Us clucks who sit in front of our TVs and soak it all in. Suck in every word from Mike Mayock and Ron Jaworski.

It’s like we’re waiting for Moses to come down the mountain with the commandments and then we criticize the order – “Honor thy Father and Mother is only fourth? C’mon man, it’s a No. 2 pick for sure.”

We wait for our team’s picks, have a player in mind that we are sure is the difference-maker and, when our team goes with someone else, start cussing under our breath. Of course, two years later, when the pick we wanted is out of the league due to a lack of ability and the guy our team took is a Pro Bowler, we say we were on-board from the get-go.

It’s the way these things work. The converse is true as well. If our guy is the star, and the guy in our uniform is a stiff, we make sure everyone knows we wanted the other guy big time. If they had only listened. After all, we spent three, four hours examining these guys. And listening to Chris Berman. We know what’s up.

Monday: We’ll explore this in more depth if the mediocre play continues but we have to ask: How much rope does Lloyd McClendon get?

The M’s have been built to win this season. The money has been spent. The starting rotation strengthened via trade, the lineup via free agency. If the M’s continue to struggle due to mental errors, physical errors and struggling pitching, will the pressure mount to make a change?

Probably. Though Seattle isn’t New York and there is no Steinbrenner among the M’s management group. But it’s worth watching even if the M’s performance yesterday when folks got on base wasn’t.