It’s time to turn baseball frown upside down

At a silent auction in Olympia, the four-ticket package for an August Mariners game against the Kansas City Royals was valued at $64. A steal, because the seats were good. The highest bid was $51. A cutting board on a nearby table was going for $35, just $16 less than the Mariners tickets. A cutting board!

I was in Olympia to watch Alex Drake, 10, perform in a play capping his summer-theater workshop. The auction items were part of the group’s fund-raiser. Alex, the son of good friends, showed me his puppy-dog pout, a sad-mad look he uses when his parents say no to him. Saturday, people in Olympia put on their puppy-dog pouts anytime I mentioned the Mariners.

Eric Molson, the airport van driver who delivered me to Alex’s home in Olympia, had this advice for fans: “When the team is doing bad, show your displeasure with the team by not going.” Or, if you insist on attending a game, he said: “Don’t buy that second cup of beer. Take money out of the owners’ pockets. Maybe it will give them some incentive.”

In the Olympian newspaper Sunday morning, the report of Saturday’s game read like an obituary. The Mariners had lost for the 11th time in 12 games. In an American League chart, the Mariners were listed dead last, in bold type, loser written all over them.

In the late 1990s, when the Mariners had winner written all over them, fan loyalty – or blindness – helped build Safeco Field. Go Big Unit! Proponents promised a financial boost for everyone involved. But a Seattle Post Intelligencer story last week reported that the big money didn’t materialize as much as hoped. And some businesses near Safeco Field are really hurting this year because of decreased attendance.

The Mariners pout I witnessed this weekend makes me worry about the basketball arena under construction on Gonzaga University’s campus. I walked by it Monday and just happened to see Mark Few talking on his cell phone. He looks fantastic – fit and confident. Go Zags! The new arena at GU is being built during the peak of Few and Bulldog power. What will happen when both are gone?

As spiritual writer Eckhart Tolle reminds us: “There are cycles of success, when things come to you and thrive, and cycles of failure, when they wither or disintegrate. Failure lies concealed in every success, and success in every failure.”

Well, enough of my Mariners pout. Sunday, Alex’s dad drove me from Olympia to Seattle where I met up with my husband and stepson at the 1 p.m. Mariners game against the Cleveland Indians. The two guys drove from Spokane to Seattle and back home again all in the same day, inspired by a Jim Kershner column recounting his day trip to a Mariners game. Here’s how to do it: You leave Spokane by 6 a.m., arrive in Seattle in plenty of time, watch the game, leave Seattle at 5 p.m. and arrive home in Spokane by 10 p.m. – delirious.

Last year, when they made a similar trip the same July weekend, the game was sold out. This year, it was a respectable crowd, but sparser. Still, the cold beer was cold. The hot dogs were hot. And I enjoyed watching fathers and their young sons at the game together.

In 1948, my husband and his older brother watched the Chicago White Sox play the Cleveland Indians at Comiskey Park in Chicago. They were just little guys then, but they still reminisce about that game. They remember how great it felt spending the entire day with a father they called “Sir,” a father who was often busy and remote, in the way of many 1940s dads. They watched pitcher Satchel Paige warm up. They remember who won – Cleveland – but that mattered least of all.

Cleveland didn’t win Sunday. The Mariners did. Fathers and sons rose up together and clapped and whistled. No obituary appeared in Monday’s sports pages. The Mariners won again Monday, but lost Tuesday. Still it’s nothing to pout about. The season, and its lessons, are far from over.