A Grip on Sports: The Mariners will not reach their goals unless Cal Raleigh emerges from his slump and WSU athletics will not until more of its alums open their wallets
A GRIP ON SPORTS • Our brains work in mysterious ways, don’t they? This morning mine certainly did. While trying to find the words to describe the M’s recent play, the predicament Washington State finds itself in or whatever else seemed worth writing about, my brain ended up being fixated on mud. Or mud bogs. Or lost shoes. And finally settled on one of the funniest baseball stories it could remember.
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• The story? Oh, no, getting to that first would be too easy. Let’s get to the sports news. The vegetables on our plate today. Then I can offer dessert.
• I wonder if Cal Raleigh has tried eating a can of spinach before striding to the plate? Couldn’t hurt. Not when his last 32 plate at-bats have resulted in zero hits. With that sort of week dragging him down, the All-Star catcher has probably tried just about everything.
The Mariners finally tried something different Sunday. The organizational brain trust’s plan? Dropping the slumping catcher – .161 batting average, .244 on-base percentage, .329 slugging – from second all the way to (looks at the lineup again) fourth. Really? That’s the plan?
Doesn’t seem like that’s the type of move that would lift a weight from his shoulders. It didn’t.
In Sunday’s 2-1 loss to the White Sox, a game in which they wasted Logan Gilbert’s best start of the season, Raleigh came to the plate with runners on base three times. Didn’t deliver. Of course. He hasn’t really all season. And it has to be eating at the guy who last year slugged a Ruthian 60 home runs, drove in 125 and finished second to Aaron Judge in the American League MVP race.
This season? The M’s are mired in mediocrity (19-22) in a mediocre A.L. (only three teams with winning records). So is Raleigh, their leader, if you use the word mediocre loosely.
He’s stuck in a mud that may or may not have been caused by his World Baseball Classic appearance or an injury that’s worse than being revealed or a bad can of tuna. Who knows? What is known is he’s not hitting. Not for average – not unusual – or power – unusual – or in clutch situations – unusual as well.
Until Raleigh begins the slow slog toward respectability – if he ever does – the Mariners will not reach their potential this season. It’s that simple. His presence, his power, heck, his aura is that important to this lineup.
• Washington State athletics is trying to avoid something worse than mediocrity. Irrelevance.
The Cougars have been trying to avoid it for decades, sure, but the past half-decade or so, ever since USC and UCLA announced their intentions to destroy West Coast college athletics, the attempt has been even more pronounced.
Give the school credit. When the Pac-12 exploded, the Cougs refused to go quietly into the good night. They fought like rabid cats against the dying of the conference’s light. And won. In court. In the court of public opinion. In just about every way they needed to keep the conference and their hopes of relevance alive.
Now they have to make that fight mean something.
The Cougars need to get better at the only thing that really matters anymore. Fundraising. It’s not a secret. It’s not magic. And it’s nothing less than the Grand Coulee for the server farms that are college athletic department these days.
To do that, newly ordained athletic department leader Jon Haarlow has to win another court battle. He has to court the some-240,000 living alums of the school and get them to rule in his favor. With their cash. Or debit cards. Or their Visas and Mastercards. To send a little of their hard-earned money to Pullman, years after sending a lot there to earn a degree.
The problem Haarlow and his crew faces is those folks haven’t done it before. The number of folks – alumni or not – who give to the athletic department hovers around 4,000. Could it be the other 236,000 or so don’t give because they don’t want to? Or because they haven’t been asked?
The latter seems hard to believe.
Washington State has always been behind in athletic fundraising compared to its peers. One can argue, and many are, it’s because they either haven’t been asked correctly, or the ask has been too scattered or it’s been done in some other incorrect manner. Find the right formula and the spigot will open.
Guess we will find out soon if that’s true. But two things might just be true at the same time.
The alums have been asked. In many different ways. Often, from administrators who graduated from the school and just as often those who didn’t. From folks who parachuted in from the Big Ten with all the answers and those who came up through the Bohler gym ranks humbled by the journey. From Northwest natives and from those with accents that seem out of place. And a large majority of the alumni group is still reticent to give.
The other truism? If the 4,000 who do donate included one or two dozen highly motivated multi-millionaires, as seems to be the case at a lot of our nation’s universities, then WSU would be flush. It doesn’t have that. Or hasn’t. Either way, the athletic department hasn’t been able to rely on such largesse.
And, to emerge from the financial mire, enough of the other 236,000 will have to show up, grab a rope and begin pulling. If they do, it should be enough. It could be enough. Heck, it has to be enough. There is no other alternative.
• Now about that funny mud story. Oh, look, we’re out of time. And space. It will have to wait for another day. Maybe a rainy day. Or the day after. Don’t worry. It’s really funny. Or it wouldn’t have popped into my head after 46 years.
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WSU: The reason we decided to revisit Washington State’s money quest? Mike Vorel’s column from the Times appeared on the S-R site this morning. If you couldn’t read it when we originally linked it, you can now. … Jon Wilner’s column about the conference and NCAA tourney expansion is also on the S-R site today. … Elsewhere in the (current, old and future) Pac-12 and the nation, there isn’t a lot to pass along. The NCAA softball tournament field was announced Sunday and former conference schools Oregon, Washington, Stanford, UCLA, Arizona and Arizona State earned berths. … Baseball is still in its regular season, one in which UCLA is the team to beat. … It seems as if the USC football rivalry with Notre Dame may not be completely dead. Just mostly. The schools are still talking about how to revive it. … In basketball news, Colorado’s men added a high school player to their incoming class.
Gonzaga: The Bulldogs’ baseball team has clinched the West Coast Conference regular season title. Will be the No. 1 seed to the conference tournament. And, if they don’t win that, could still possibly make the NCAA tourney as an at-large participant. Most of that is covered in Colton Clark’s weekly college baseball notebook. As is WSU’s clinching a spot in the Mountain West tournament and Whitworth finding out this morning where and when it will be playing in the NCAA Division III tourney.
EWU and Idaho: Around the Big Sky, Idaho State will take the conference’s softball banner into battle at Eugene, where host Oregon is waiting. The schools play each often.
Indians: Small steps. An 8-3 win Sunday at Avista allowed Spokane to split the six-game set with the Tri-City Dust Devils. And arrest a slow start to the season. Dave Nichols spent part of his Mother’s Day at the stadium for this story.
Velocity: It’s been almost a month since Spokane had won a match, so Sunday’s 2-1 win over FC Naples was welcomed by the team. That it came at ONE Spokane Stadium in front of the Velocity’s home fans was a plus.
Mariners: Gilbert threw six shutout innings. Dominated the Sox. And turned the game over to the M’s bullpen. Jose A. Ferrer struggled in the seventh but got out of it. Eduard Bazardo struggled in the eighth and couldn’t. Chicago rallied for a 2-1 victory. … Raleigh’s issues? The Times has a story. We linked it above and here too. … There is more we can pass along about Raleigh. We do. … There is the grief fans feel for their team’s failure. And then there is the deeper grief that comes with losing a loved one.
Storm: Seattle gave their first-year coach her first WNBA win Sunday, topping Connecticut.
Reign: The Reign’s offensive woes continued in a shutout loss to the Spirit.
Golf: There are certain sportswriters whose work we admire deeply. One of them, Barry Svrluga, has joined The Athletic and has this column on the LIV Tour’s prospects.
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• Sorry to tease a story and not deliver. Actually, I’m not. If it gets you back another day, then the little TV network executive who lives inside me – think Bill Murray in “Scrooged” – will be happy. Until later …