Seattle Has Memorial Weekend To Remember Griffey And The Seahawks Have City Shrouded In Black

The Friday morning regulars exchanged plans for weekend concerts, festivals and street fairs then agreed to meet again Monday at the Briefly Stated Cafe for a group trip to the Kingdome to watch the Seattle Mariners.

But nobody guessed so much would have changed in three days.

“All along,” Green River Jack said, “I’ve been telling everybody that the key to the future for the Mariners, the most important person in the whole debate, is Lou Piniella. He was the first manager any Mariners owner listened to, and he had the support of the players and the fans.

“I assumed if they won, fan support would rise to new heights, they would find a way to get a ballpark built - even if it was a spaceage erector-set, moving roof upscale-mall ballpark - and then we could all sit back and say it would have never happened without Lou. Boy, was I wrong.”

The wrist injury to center fielder Ken Griffey Jr. had the effect of kicking the Mariners in the teeth just at the time they looked capable of an upright stance without assistance. None of us will be among the halfmillion or so 10 years from now who will claim they were there The Night Junior Went Down. But all of us heard about the injury and commenced mourning for baseball in Seattle.

“Memorial weekend,” Howard the Worm said, “just took on a whole new meaning for the Mariners. From now on, there will be Memorial Day weekend and around here, Mariners Memorial weekend.

“I always imagined the day would come when the Mariners would have to go on without Junior,” he said, “I just didn’t figure it would happen when the team was still in Seattle.”

Crazy Janey, gathering equilibrium after attending three Grateful Dead concerts last week, saw the Griffey injury from a larger perspective.

“What’s significant about it,” she said, “is that whenever anything’s gone wrong with baseball - strikes, rising salaries, the effect of teams not sharing more revenues - it has always been bad for Seattle. Junior’s injury is the first time I can remember something bad happening in Seattle that hurt all of baseball.

“Losing Junior hurts the game,” she said. “It was never like this when the team was sold or the Danny Tartabulls, Mike Moores and Mark Langstons were let go. One way or another, baseball didn’t really care.

“When great artists, writers, actors or athletes leave the scene, their profession is diminished by just that much,” she said. “Baseball today isn’t quite the game it was when we were all here last Friday morning.”

Brent from Kent was gloomier than the others.

“Maybe they ought to just paint the Kingdome black, then if the vote for stadium subsidy passes, we can let the public paint it, panel by panel,” he said. “If the vote fails, baseball will be blacked out, anyway.”

But the Mariners were only part of the bad news for Memorial weekend sports fans. Will McDonough, a BS Cafe visitor when he’s in town, wrote a column in The Boston Globe saying at last week’s league meetings Seahawks owner Ken Behring expressed interest in moving the team to Los Angeles if Raiders owner Al Davis wasn’t pleased with the financial arrangements at a proposed stadium in Los Angeles that would be built in part by the National Football League.

“That makes it a trifecta,” Brent from Kent said. “Each of the three professional sports franchises has now indicated they would consider moving the franchise. Who was first, Barry Ackerley or George Argyros? It doesn’t even matter anymore, and the owners always say their comments were taken out of context.

“But isn’t it a coincidence,” Brent said, “that these things always happen when a team wants a new building, like the Sonics and Mariners did, or it wants major remodeling, like the Seahawks.”

From all indications, Behring’s comments at the league meeting were more a jab at Davis for whining about an anticipated $20 million a year return on the proposed L.A. stadium than a serious attempt to threaten a move. But once the words are spoken, it makes little difference - the thought is out there, floating around in the public consciousness for everyone to chew on.

“He could have picked a better time,” Green River Jack said. “I want baseball to stay, but I’ll admit I don’t have any trouble finding stuff to do in the summer. If the Seahawks left and those fall and winter weekends were blank, I’d be the one draped in black.”

“Behring didn’t pick the time; the time picked him,” Howard the Worm said. “The comments were made before Junior was injured, and if Al Davis hadn’t tried to play this poker game with the owners, it wouldn’t have come out at all. Bottom line is that the Seahawks want changes in the Kingdome - club-seating sections, wider concourses, all that stuff - and the ultimate wedge is the team itself. It was bound to come out sooner or later.”

We tossed down our lattes and stepped out into the glorious, splintered sunshine of a picture post card Monday Memorial Day holiday for the trip to the Kingdome.

Walking into the building on a nice day has always seemed a little strange. This time it was just a little stranger than usual.