A Grip on Sports: If there is any sure thing in the American League pennant race this season, it’s that there is no sure thing

A GRIP ON SPORTS • Melancholy is a word not used all that much these days. Other terms have overtaken it. But all us English-lit majors who played college baseball – a miniscule subset, I’m sure – understand its importance. And how it can apply to baseball’s pennant races.

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• John Donne. A tolling bell. William Shakespeare. A most humorous sadness. John Keats. Melancholy’s fit falling from the sky. Robert Frost. Walking out in the rain. It’s almost as if those four could make up an infield of an American League team this season. Donne to Keats to Frost has a ring to it, don’t you think?

What doesn’t have a ring is every one of the league’s pennant contenders. At least not a guaranteed one. It’s a year of another “M” word. Mediocrity. About half of the league’s teams are, well, pretty good. At best. Every one of them, from the Blue Jays and their 65 wins to the Guardians and their 56, are OK. Not great. Not dominating. Certainly not a sure thing.

Any of eight teams could be the league’s World Series representative. And only one of them will be.

Which means a big steaming pile of melancholy for everyone else.

It’s this season’s mediocrity which informs the moves the Mariners made at the trade deadline. Other teams as well. It’s sort of as if someone looked out at the bleak landscape and decided instead of bemoaning the game’s fate, saw it as an opportunity. And described it in a poem entitled “Why Not Us?”

Call it the anti-melancholy movement.

One could objectively look at any of the American League contenders, including the team that plays 285 miles to the west, and see flaws. Major flaws. Bemoan-able flaws. “Our team sucks” seems to be the default from Boston to Houston. And yet the Red Sox and the Astros have as good a chance to end up playing for a ring as anyone else. Weird, huh?

Where have all the dominate teams gone? Not to the National League, that’s for sure. Is anyone going to argue the Brewers are built to roll to a World Series title, a la last year’s Dodgers? Sure, Milwaukee is the champagne of contenders, the only team in either league winning at a better-than .600 clip. Good for the Brewers. But as recently as 2020 five teams finished the season doing better than that. And five were caught in the throes of melancholy, losing about six of each 10 games.

In 2025? There are the historically bad Rockies – their .270 winning percentage, if it continues, will put them in the bottom 10 all-time – and no one else winning at less than a 40% clip.

Or as Will Shakespeare might have put it: “Mediocrity, thy name is baseball.”

So complain all you like about how your team is mired in a win-one, lose-one time loop. Or how they blew this game or that game. And know you have company. Everyone else is reading from the same book of sonnets.

Which brings us to our point. Finally. The World Series could pit the Tigers and the Brewers. The Jays and the Mets. The Astros and the Dodgers. But it seems as likely it could be the Rangers vs. the Reds. Or the Padres facing the Sox.

Or even the Mariners facing off with Cubs.

It’s that wide open.

Which means, of course, the Yankees will win their 28th title.

• Are we all just conditioned to see the negative these days? It’s something I’ve been wondering about quite often as the days grow shorter. And as Julio Rodriguez swings and misses at a slider off the plate for the 4,734 time in his career – give or take a thousand or so.

See, if the default view was “Julio has done so much already” instead of “Why, Julio, why?” than all of us might appreciate the esoteric record he set Sunday. With a home run and a stolen base in the M’s key 5-4 win over visiting Texas, the centerfielder accomplished something no other MLB player ever has.

In each of his first four seasons, he hit at least 20 home runs and stole at least 20 bases. No one, not Willie Mays nor Barry Bonds nor Alex Rodriguez ever did it.

Yes, you can scoff at the randomness of another baseball stat, but bottom line, Julio is the only one to reach those benchmarks. Ever.  

And should be applauded. Now, hit 20 more and steal 20 more before the end of the season and lead the M’s to The Promised Land. Or be deemed a failure.

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WSU: Around the (current, old and future) Pac-12 and the nation, John Mateer is no longer in Pullman. Which means he is no longer being ignored, nationally. … We may dwell into this more tomorrow or down the road, but there is a podcast out now concerning the long-ago disappearance of Paul Wulff’s mother. … Washington practiced Sunday. The quarterback shined. … Colorado has a new-look offensive line. … Utah has a new-look offense it hopes will help it return to its usual winning ways. … UCLA is sharing its revenue. It’s not telling anyone who and how much though. … What is the best USC can do this season? … Arizona State has finished a week of camp. … Arizona has a tough guy it can count on. … So does Fresno State at safety. … In basketball news, Rem Bakamus did something unusual for Arizona. He left. Assistant coaches don’t do that often.

EWU and Idaho: Around the Big Sky, we linked stories yesterday covering Damien Lillard taking the role as Weber State’s general manager. Others covered the news so we pass the stories along. … UC Davis spent the offseason building depth on both lines.  

Preps: Liam Bradford has an interesting story this morning. It is about golf clubs. Not just any golf clubs, but a set that once belonged to Ben Hogan. And how the clubs found their way into the possession of Central Valley High golfer Jayden Bommer.

Indians: Stu Flesland, who played his high school baseball 12.6 miles north of Avista Stadium at Mt. Spokane High, has blossomed as a starter for the Indians. He is their best. And was again Sunday, though he didn’t end up with a victory. His team did, though, in 10 innings. Dave Nichols tells us how it happened.

Mariners: We mentioned (and linked) the M’s 5-4 win. Why was it so important? It gave them a two-game cushion on the Rangers in the wild card race. With the White Sox coming to town Tuesday for three games. It also allowed Seattle to pull within 2.5 games of first-place Houston. … The addition of Caleb Ferguson didn’t receive the unfettered applause the M’s hitting additions did, but it may turn out to be as important. … We thought we were done passing along Ryne Sandberg stories for a while. But, no. There is one on his spectacular 1984 game that thrust him into the national spotlight. … The M’s moved up a couple prospects to Double-A.  

Swimming: The U.S. was the most successful team at the World Championships. But not successful enough? That seems weird.

Sounders: This Leagues Cup matchup with Santos Laguna was much tougher than Seattle’s first one. But the result was the same, a regulation win. The 2-1 victory keeps the Sounders atop the standings.

Storm: Another close game. Another disappointing loss. Seattle fell 78-74 to the Caitlin Clark-less Fever at home. … The WNBA is having a moment. Too bad its management may not be equipped to handle it.

Golf: Clarkston’s Joel Dahmen did not make the Fed Ex playoffs. Though he had a good weekend in the Wyndham Championship, where he finished tied for 15th, he needed at least a second-place finish to move on. Cameron Young won, his first PGA Tour victory after years of being called the next big thing. … This may be the least logical commentary I’ve ever read. And I’ve read all the silly stuff I’ve  written. Really. It’s about golf and cheating.

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• Anyone who has read an iteration of this column, which goes back almost 20 years, knows how I feel about “WKRP in Cincinnati.” A great sitcom with the greatest single episode of all time, the one about turkeys and Thanksgiving. And you may be well aware what side of the Bailey vs. Jennifer debate I came down on. But that doesn’t mean I wasn’t saddened to hear of Sunday’s death of Loni Anderson, aka Jennifer Marlowe, at age 79. It brought back memories of late nights watching re-runs featuring her and all the rest of the WKRP cast, a late-‘70s precursor of the New York groups highlighted by “Seinfeld” and “Friends.” Of course, none of those sitcoms featured the five-time winner of the “Buckeye News Hawk Award,” Les Nessman. They were lesser because of it. Until later …