They Built A Park, Tore Down A Team

Now the hitting stinks.

And this one is going to be pretty damned hard to pin on Woody Woodward, which is not to say it can’t be done on general principle.

A little long division reveals that in the second half of this baseball season, the Seattle Mariners are hitting .225 with runners in scoring position. Horrible as that number is, it may actually come as a relief to fans who weren’t certain the M’s had managed to advance any runners into scoring position the last month and a half.

Hey, who says we don’t print any good news here?

There is a John Maddenism that applies to the current state of Mariners appreciation - something along the lines of, “Don’t worry about the horse being blind, just load the wagon.”

Here are the M’s, long since out of the American League West pennant chase and only delusively in the wild-card hunt. Here are their owners, sneering at the public by doggedly asserting their right to more tax money to cover the cost of $100 doorknobs at Safecracker Field, to say nothing of the ghastly roof-on-a-trolley which makes the Kingdome look like a cathedral. Here is the health department, still fretting over the concessionaire’s standards for food handling - not that there’s any guarantee he’ll ever get that food into your hands, the concourse lines being what they are.

And yet patrons of the horsehide arts are streaming through the portals at breakneck pace - Safecracker going into the books as the fastest-to-a-million-fans stadium in baseball history.

A Tuesday night game against the hapless Detroit Tigers draws a near sellout crowd - the only sections with empty rows being up in the far right-field corner. And get this - as the game goes on, ticket holders in more crowded areas actually move farther away from the action for the chance to spread out.

Never mind that one of the M’s kid pitchers was actually throwing a shutout at the time, or that Ken Griffey Jr. was in the process of detonating two bombs. Hey, they could see that any time - but a view of the Sound is priceless.

When they do manage to focus on the field, M’s fans are suddenly gaga about the pitching rotation Woodward and manager Lou Piniella have crafted - and there is, at the moment, much to admire.

Since the All-Star break, Jamie Moyer (4-1), Freddy Garcia (4-2) and Paul Abbott (5-0) all have earned run averages of 3.15 or less. John Halama and Gil Meche are up straddling 6.00, but at least they’re a combined 7-7.

Moyer is an ageless off-speed specialist working on a brand new contract, Abbott is a cheap reclamation and the other three are rookies who inspire the imagination. You’re even moved to forget about past second-year flameouts like Bob Wolcott and Ken Cloude if only because Garcia and Halama have held up for a full five months now and not just as September call-ups.

Sure, they could be susceptible to a last-month swoon. But Piniella doesn’t think it’s likely.

“What we’ve been able to do for the last three weeks is have them all pitch on about six days of rest,” he said. “We haven’t skipped anybody in the rotation, and there have been a couple of off days in there. We’ve watched pitch counts carefully all season.

“I think it’s going to help keep them stronger. Some haven’t pitched into September before, but we’ve taken some precautions that should allow them to.”

Unfortunately, being 14 games out is one of those precautions. No pressure here.

For whatever visions fans can concoct out of this promising rotation, there are other harsh realities.

If those five are 20-10 since Safecracker opened, then that means the bullpen must be 1-10. Former Washington State lefty Robert Ramsay on Friday became the 27th Mariners pitcher of 1999, pulling the club to within two of a most dubious major league record.

And outside of the prodigious bats of Junior, Alex Rodriguez and Edgar Martinez, the once-mighty Mariners offense has been rendered ineffectual in general and downright impotent by the A.L.’s legitimate powers - New York, Cleveland, and Boston.

Brian Hunter, for the injection of speed he’s given the lineup, is once again a .230-ish hitter. Jay Buhner’s decline seems to be complete. Russ Davis is doing a Jim Presley fade at third. Dan Wilson is wearing out.

There is no legitimate first baseman because Seattle couldn’t see fit to tack another year on their offer to David Segui, and peddled him to Toronto. Butch Huskey was seen to be expendable; now he’s aiding Boston’s wild-card run. And, of course, Woodward long ago parted with quality prospects in dubious deals. Jason Varitek is now established as the Red Sox’s catcher; Miguel Cairo, once traded for busts Paul Menhart and Edwin Hurtado, is hitting .300 for Tampa Bay.

Everyone wants to pat Woody on the back for getting Garcia and Halama for Randy Johnson, but the fact is Seattle has slipped even further behind Texas since the day that deal was struck.

And the hand wringing has only just started over the increasing likelihood of not being able to re-sign either Junior or A-Rod before their contracts lapse in 2000.

But the M’s have pulled off a most amazing feat in 1999.

As early as last winter, when Woodward failed to land even one of the players Piniella wanted to improve his product, management and ownership wrote off any chance of competing for a playoff spot this year. It was a clear and unmistakable message sent to their constituents, whom they desperately needed to fill the seats of the gaudy new playpen.

For some reason, those constituents decided they didn’t care. The stadium was built. They came.

Seattle was once seen as a lousy baseball town because it wouldn’t turn out for bad teams. In the strangest of twists, it has become even less of a baseball town - by turning out in droves for a deconstructed one.