M’s built loyal fan base

SEATTLE – Larry Burris talks more like an addict than a fan. He just can’t quit the Mariners.

“I’m almost embarrassed to admit that I’ve been with them since 1977,” Burris says, laughing. “In some respects, I don’t know if that speaks all that highly of me. I don’t want to sit down and think of all the money I’ve spent on the Mariners. I’ve seen a lot of bad baseball.”

It wasn’t love at first sight. That’s never been the story of Seattle and Major League Baseball. It’s a tale of the unlikely and the absurd and the unforgettable. It’s a tale of comedy, persistence and miracles that has evolved into a yearning for consistent excellence. Fans now have the expectations appropriate for an established team – even if it took forever to reach that point.

It took the Mariners 15 seasons to post a winning record. It took them 19 years, until that magical finish of 1995, to make the playoffs. It has seen three superstars (Ken Griffey Jr., Alex Rodriguez and Randy Johnson) leave town during its lifetime.

Still, the fans remain with them.

They speak to an interesting aspect of this young pro sports city. Seattle is only in its second generation of major league sports fans. The Seahawks have been around 33 years, the Mariners 32. The Sonics franchise, which moved to Oklahoma City last year, existed for 41. You only need to be about 50 years old to say you’ve witnessed Seattle’s entire pro sports history.

Mariners fans have grown with the team they learned to love. Seahawks fans have, too, but the experience was different because the team became relevant faster.

Burris was 30 years old when he joined three of his Bainbridge Island softball teammates and bought season tickets for the Mariners’ inaugural season. Back in 1977, Major League Baseball had already failed in Seattle once. Only eight years earlier, the Pilots ran away to Milwaukee after one bizarre season, leaving fans disappointed and bitter. Now, the league was being reintroduced with the novelty of playing in a gigantic indoor facility known as the Kingdome.

“At the beginning, we were more baseball fans than Mariners fans,” said Burris, 62, who grew up in Los Angeles and loved the Dodgers. “We went to see the other teams. It was more a love of the game than it was some kind of emotional attachment to the team itself.”

Peter Magelssen, 31, remembers going to the Kingdome as a child. His family would buy the cheapest seats and then take advantage of the sparse crowd by sneaking into seats near the dugout. That was common for many Mariners fans back then. The team drew less than a million fans (roughly less than 12,500 per game) six times in its first eight seasons. It didn’t reach the 2 million mark until its 15th season.

“I always viewed the Mariners as someone’s minor league team back then,” Magelssen said.

Then came the miraculous 1995 season. The Mariners rallied from a 13-game August deficit, outlasted the California Angels for their first American League West title and shattered the notion that baseball couldn’t survive in Seattle. The magic continued in the playoffs as the Mariners came back to beat the New York Yankees in a five-game series, capped by Edgar Martinez’s 11th-inning double that sent Griffey sprinting to history.

Since then, the Mariners haven’t drawn fewer than 2 million fans in a season. In 1999, as a result of that breakthrough, they moved into Safeco Field, one of the best ballparks in baseball.

That 1995 season spurred a solid seven-year stretch in which the franchise made its only four postseason appearances. The run ended with a record-setting 116 wins in 2001.

Today, there’s no question that Seattle is a strong baseball town. It’s a sport that fits the city with its family-friendly vibe, statistical emphasis that appeals to intellectuals, and entertainment that occurs during the most enjoyable months of the year.

“I think, as a fan base, we’re more Mariners fans now,” Burris said. “This is about the Mariners. I think we’re starting to grow up. It feels a lot more like what I experienced as a kid rooting for the Dodgers.”

Unlike some of Seattle’s other fan bases, Mariners fans don’t fit neatly into a demographic box. According to Scarborough Research, 73.6 percent of the fans polled are 35 and older, but that’s not dramatically different from other fan bases. The Mariners have a strong base of female interest (43.1 percent), including a group of women called the Old Bats who are among the franchise’s most spirited fans. Mostly, the statistical data reflects a sport geared toward family entertainment.

But the fans aren’t always so warm and fuzzy. The Mariners haven’t made the playoffs since 2001. The team raised the expectations during the Lou Piniella era, and many fans, especially the young ones who don’t remember the early years, can’t stomach watching the team slip. They roared louder than ever during Bill Bavasi’s misguided years as general manager.

Now, with general manager Jack Zduriencik and manager Don Wakamatsu leading the rebuilding, there’s hope again. After the rocky start to the romance, the Mariners can live with fans wanting more from them. It sure beats empty seats.

“I feel like the Mariners owe us that,” Magelssen said. “I feel like we’ve been extremely loyal. We want them to build a real team, a real franchise that can be competitive year in and year out. I feel like we’re headed in that direction. I’m stoked.”