M’S Hope To Win At All Costs With Its Best - And Richest - Club, Seattle Has No Choice But To Succeed
If ever there were a time for the Seattle Mariners to be not bad, it is now.
For 18 seasons - ninth-tenths of the Kingdome lease - the Mariners defined something less. If the ownership was not short on credibility or money, the roster was short of talent.
It was often both. Last place got to feel more like home than the Dome and seventh was around so long that uniform No.7 was close to being retired.
“It sucked,” said outfielder Jay Buhner, wrapping up the dark ages of Mariners baseball in his own succinct way. “It’s different now. I wouldn’t have stayed if it wasn’t, no matter what the money was.”
Buhner is the best and most expensive example of the turnabout in Seattle’s philosophy. That he, Randy Johnson, Edgar Martinez, Tino Martinez, Dave Fleming, Chad Kreuter, Joey Cora or Doug Strange are in Seattle blue today is the result of ownership affluence and Lou Piniella’s influence.
“It’s only right that this season, with so much riding on it, that we put our best team together and keep it together,” said Piniella, who was instrumental in replacing the Mariners’ desire not to exceed budget with the Yankees’ drive to excel. “Ownership has done its job, shown its commitment. Now it’s up to us to do our job, on the field.”
Jobs may be riding on the outcome, including those of Piniella, general manager Woody Woodward and Griffey, one of the game’s brightest stars, who has tied any possibility of extending his contract to the competitive level of the team.
But the season will determine far more than job security. How the Mariners fare could determine the fate of a proposal to build a new baseball stadium as well as the fate of the franchise.
“I don’t think you can say the season will be overshadowed by the stadium issue,” said John Ellis, the chief operating officer who leads the league in pragmatism. “But the performance of the team and our chances of getting support for a new ballpark will very much parallel each other. There is no question that in terms of the whole stadium concept, this is an essential season.
“In many respects, it is the most important season in Mariner history,” Ellis said. “I’d be lying if I didn’t say the performance of the team and the feeling of the community about the team don’t go a long way toward making the stadium a reality.”
No success, stadium could be gone; no stadium, team could be gone - en masse after the 1996 season. Maybe in bits and pieces, after this season?
“If we don’t make it work this season, win the division and maybe go beyond that,” Griffey said, “the fire sale starts this winter.”
If the Mariners flop, then flee, the roster will be a skeleton of its present self. Indeed, the Mariners, even in success, may adopt the approach the Minnesota Twins used as a blueprint for pennants in 1987 and 1991: peak, pare, peak, pare, the only exception being the presence of Kirby Puckett.
“If we’re at $34 million or so this year,” Piniella said, “perhaps we will have to get back to $26 million next year. Perhaps we decide on a three-year payroll of $100 million and let it be shaped accordingly from season to season.”
If this is a peak season, the Mariners require a Mount McKinley of a year to overcome the eternal skepticism that surrounds their prospects. The reluctance of the citizenry to recognize a big-league ballclub as a treasured community asset is reinforced by the bad taste left by the eight-month players’ strike.
“It won’t be easy,” Buhner said. “We’re looking for support at a tough time. But keeping all our players, we’ve got a team that can do it if we’re given a chance. We thought we had a good club last year and we had some bad breaks and we were overcoming them when the strike hit.”
The theory is that if you liked the way the 1994 team shucked unfamiliarity (a dozen new players on Opening Day) and injuries (Edgar Martinez, Chris Bosio, Greg Hibbard), you’ll love the idea that the 1995 group can pick up where it left off as the hottest team in the American League.
Indeed, several factors feed the idea that the Mariners have assembled a team that could be their best, be the comparisons ever so humble.
“We’ve been on a three-year building program,” said Piniella, who is entering his third season as Mariners manager and guidance counselor. “It’s time.”
To that end, the Mariners re-signed Buhner and Felix Fermin, their only significant free agents, kept Tino Martinez and Dave Fleming, and acquired Alex Diaz, Cora, Chad Kreuter and Doug Strange. Those moves put the Mariners in league with the big spenders at last, and the price tag of about $8 million pushed their payroll to about $34 million.
Last week, the club officially declared it is going for it - playoffs, pennant and a park to be proud of, with owners promising not to cut the budget back to $30 million by trading Johnson.
Although he has been allowed to hold a hand with a number of aces, Piniella remains circumspect, repeating his daily ditty. “We’ve got,” he allows, “a nice little ballclub.”
He assumed the modest stance this winter, before the Mariners took to acquiring talent. He refuses to abandon it.
“Last year, I came out and said I liked our chances,” the manager said. “I think I put too much pressure on our players. Some of them were not ready. Then when we took injuries, we could not afford, we struggled.”
That club was coming together when the season came apart. “We suffered about every mishap possible last year,” Ellis said. “Injuries to key players, the Kingdome tiles falling, then the strike. You gotta hope we got all the bad stuff out of the way.”
Still, the Mariners wound up adjusting to those body shots like Alex Rodriguez’s soft hands smoothing out a bad hop.
“You liked the feel of what was happening at the end of last year,” Griffey said. “With all that we went through, and being on the road alone for so long, it was like we had to rely on one another … and found that we could. For the first time in years, you felt we had a team, a real team.”
Most Mariners believe the best way they can contribute toward winning community support for a stadium is simply by winning.
“It’s not our job to go out and campaign for a new stadium,” Johnson said. “The stadium shouldn’t be an issue at all for us. We’re not lobbyists, we’re ballplayers.
“Baseball is a business, as we see more and more. If the Mariners had to leave town, it would affect us as if we had been traded. Life goes on.”
But the big pitcher does “love to live in Seattle,” and thinks a new stadium is needed. “It helped other teams to have a new park and it would help us - the atmosphere, the crowds,” Johnson said. “I don’t need a hand in designing it. They can put the outfield fences whereever they want. As long as they put the plate 60 feet, 6 inches from the mound, I’ll be happy.”
The frontline lineup is the best Seattle has presented. The bench is a blend of experience and flexibility only four switch-hitters can provide. Piniella has the option of long ball or short game, sufficient speed, and in Fermin and Cora, two of the A.L.’s three best bunters last season.
The bullpen should remind fans of the early 1980s, when Gene Nelson, Ed Vande Berg and Mike Stanton set up for Bill “Cuffs” Caudill.
There is a potentially fatal flaw: questions about the starting rotation. If Bosio and Fleming come back and Tim Davis and Bob Wells come through, you won’t remember what the questions were. Until then, the pennant pitching is bandaged by Johnson & Johnson.
“If you reach a certain level of success, I think even in one year, you create a desirable product,” Piniella said. “Our owners have given us and themselves a chance for this. Fans want to see a winner, advertisers want to be involved with a winner. People come to the park, people want to watch on cable TV.
“I respect our owners for their commitment; I thank them for it. They deserve to get a good return, a winning team and a new stadium. They’ve taken considerable losses in past seasons and have risked more, but they saw this was not the year to stop building and they didn’t. It is this team’s time.”
MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: On radio Detroit at Seattle, 6:55 p.m., KTRW 970