Tag Archives: Seattle Seahawks

WQTS 9.1

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My apologies if this spoils your plans for the week. Despite what I said Thursday, there is a post today. I found this little error too amusing to not share, but didn’t want to sit on it until after my vacation.

31-1Many newspapers’ sports sections, including the Chron’s, include a listing of player moves–trades, promotions, suspensions, and so on–tucked away in the back. These are not exactly a fount of stunning revelations. The only people who look at the Transactions report are obsessed geeks, and we usually know all the details before they make it into the paper.

Just imagine my surprise, then, when I found this blockbuster news hidden away in Transactions (Thursday, 5/26/2016 for anyone who wants to confirm that I haven’t doctored the image.)

Apparently the Seattle Seahawks have changed sports, moving from football to baseball.

I can’t decide which is more surprising: that this happened mid-season, or that the ‘Hawks will be playing in the American League, going head-to-head with the Mariners!

I presume there will be a follow-up item in Friday’s paper listing the roster moves necessary to get the 53-man active roster down to MLB’s 40-man limit.

It should be a very interesting experiment in roster construction. Football teams, by and large, don’t have more than a handful of players capable of throwing the ball accurately enough to pitch. That’s going to make for a very skimpy bullpen.

Receivers and kick returners ought to be able to make the transition to the outfield, but stocking the infield may be a challenge. On the other hand, finding players with the traditional catcher’s build shouldn’t be any trouble at all–and while there may be an elevated number of wild pitches (see note above regarding pitchers), I don’t think there will be a whole lot of passed balls. And those new catchers are going to love MLB’s anti-concussion rules.

And talk about offense! Nearly every player on the roster is going to make David Ortiz look undersized. When they make contact and get their bodies into it, well, let’s just say that I expect this team to hit record numbers of 450-foot home runs.

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of this move, though, is the question of how to lay out a diamond in CenturyLink Field. Looking at the current seating chart suggests that the longest dimension is 420 feet. That’s fine for dead center field, but the fences in left and right are going to be a hell of a lot closer to the plate–maybe 255 feet down the lines. Given the likely quality of the pitching, that’s never going to work. Heck, that wouldn’t work even if the rotation included Felix Hernandez, Madison Bumgarner, and Clayton Kershaw. Some seats are going to have to get ripped out, and that’s going to hurt revenue.

Still, as I said, an interesting experiment. Stay tuned for updates!

Well, That Was Expected

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Yes, I watched the Super Bowl. I could claim it was for the ads, but that would be stretching the truth. As I’ve said elsewhere, as a Seattleite-in-exile, I was contractually obligated to watch.

Living hundreds of miles away from one’s home city can increase your attachment to things that remind you of home, sometimes to irrational levels. All part of the mind’s way of maintaining a connection to the people and places you love.

So, yeah. I watched. And I was disappointed, although not as much as my nephew, who declared that Sunday was “the worst day of my life.” (Keep in mind that he’s five years old. When your baseline is that short, any day can easily be your worst day ever.)

Simon is the victim of his expectations, which were warped by last year’s Seahawks triumph. Those of us who have more experience with Seattle’s sports tradition weren’t surprised. To some extent, we expected something to go seriously awry. The closer the clock got to zero, the closer our anticipation of disaster approached infinity.

Don’t believe me? Consider Seattle’s record when it comes to championships in the four major sports.

  • The Seahawks, as we were reminded many times in the past couple of weeks, have one NFL championship–and two Super Bowl losses–to show for their fourteen playoff appearances.
  • The Seattle SuperSonics had a good run in the late ’70s and ’80s. Their clashes with the Washington Bullets produced the enduring piece of Americana, “It ain’t over until the fat lady sings,” but only one championship. Another run in the ’90s resulted in multiple playoff appearances, but no championships. In 2008, the Sonics moved to Oklahoma, leaving behind a pile of lawsuits.
  • The Metropolitans lasted nine seasons, from 1915 to 1924. In that short span, they won their league title five times, and made the playoffs seven times. They reached the the Stanley Cup final (hockey’s equivalent of the World Series or Super Bowl) three times, racking up what has to be the oddest championship record in all of professional sports: one win, one loss, and one “no decision”–the 1919 Stanley Cup was cut short by a flu epidemic with the series tied at 2-2-1. In 1924, the team drew an average of 1000 spectators per game, lost in the first round of the playoffs, failed to renew their lease, and folded, taking the league down with them.
  • The Pilots. How many non-Seattleites even remember that the Mariners are Seattle’s second major league team? They lasted one season, producing a 64-98 record, before leaving town under a cloud of lawsuits and bankruptcy filings. Their primary legacy is a civic grudge against MLB Commissioner-Emeritus, Bud Selig that makes Oakland’s vanish into triviality.
  • The Mariners. Ah, the Mariners. Their thirty-seven seasons so far have produced four trips to the playoffs, a MLB record for most wins in a season–and no World Series appearances, let alone a championship.

With a history like that, is it any wonder that Seattleites don’t expect to win championships? History suggests that Simon will have no shortage of “worst days ever” in his future–and that if the Seahawks ever put together another Super Bowl winning season, the Cosmic Balance will be upset, causing Mount Rainier to erupt. An intrepid band of offensive linemen will have to fight an epic battle against lava, ash, and melted glaciers so that Russell Wilson can make his way to the crater, throw his Super Bowl ring in, and save the Pacific Northwest from total destruction.