Mariner fandom checks boxes for anxiety, depression, fatigue, flu-like symptoms
“The problem, Jim, is that people who are really suffering from a medical condition won’t receive the care they need because someone in this office is coming up with all this ridiculous stuff. Count Choculitis.”
“Sounds tough.”
“Why did you write that down, Jim? Is it because you know I love Count Chocula?”
Game postponed, to be made up in July. Whee. However… we got some Larry Stone! Writing… well, check this out: here’s the opening paragraph:
This is the wrong year for the Mariners to expect patience. They have already burned that bridge.
Yeaaaaaaaaaah. Came with a handy chart.
MLB.com: “Vidro heating up” Vidro’s temperature is now ‘tepid’
However, Jamie Burke, official backup catcher of USS Mariner, is off to a nice start.
At the PI, Greg Johns pointed out the offense has sucked.
Fifteen games into this stop-and-start season, the Mariners have made no positive strides in their attempt to be more patient at the plate, work more bases on balls or increase their on-base percentage.
A year after ranking 27th among the 30 big league teams with an on-base percentage of .325, the Mariners again sit 27th in that critical statistic with an even-lower .305 mark.
When it comes to walks, the Mariners have dropped from 29th at 2.5 per game to dead last at 1.9.
It’s a fairly substantial blow for a leadoff piece in a notebook. Nice.
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USSM definitely needs more Office references.
Oh and the Mariners suck.
Jim Thome has 25 walks, the M’s have 29.
But – how about Wlad Balentien!?! With 2 HRs last night, he’s now hitting a very impressive .380/.430/.648.
The Office is best show on TV.
“I am better at hiding than they are at vision.”
Now starring for your Seattle Mariners: Jamie Burke as Crash Davis, catching “Nuke” Cha Baek. Definitely an upgrade over Rivera; it’s just too bad he can’t be in the lineup alongside Joh (Burke could bat for Vidro, but if Joh gets hurt you lose the DH…)
Considering Snelling seemed to be the only guy who knew how to consistently work the count for a walk, I’m not surprised they’ve gotten worse.
Meanwhile the Rainiers get 12 runs on 19 hits. Can they send somebody down to Tacoma to knock politely on their door and ask to borrow that can of whupass they’ve opened?
#2: You forget we have Yuni, the only thing slightly bad about that trade is we only got Eduardo Perez for him. Although I have no idea how else we could’ve gotten back for Wlad.
Anyways. . .
I’m hoping we will see that headline on this website shortly where Grover is history.
*what, (not ‘how’)
Sorry.
Tom – We traded Asdrubal Cabrera to get Perez. Balentien is an OF in Tacoma.
P.S. The Office is slloooooooooowly growing on me. I’m a big fan of the British version and was so bothered by the fact that it was such a blatant rip off at first. Steve Carell is no Ricky Gervais.
I’ve been suffering from Government Created Killer Nano Robot Infection lately. It’s an epidemic…
Ichiro: In 2001, I would’ve given a kidney to anyone on that team. I would’ve reached right into my stomach and pulled it out for them. But now, no. I don’t have the same relationship with these people that I did with that 2001 squad. I hope they ask, so they can hear me say, “Uh, no, I only give my organs to teammates who can drive me in. Go get yourself a monkey kidney.”
Bill Bavasi: What is the single most important thing for a company? Is it the building? Is it the stock? Is it the turnover? It’s the people. The people. My proudest moment here wasn’t when I gave away Carlos Guillen, or traded Chris Snelling and Rafael Soriano… No, no, no, no. It was a homophobic guy, first job in this organization, hardly spoke a coherent word of English, but he came to me and he went “Mr. Bavasi, will you let me be your designated hitter?” Wow. Wow. Didn’t work out in the end. We had to let him go. He sucked.
What took Burke so long to make it as a major leaguer? Wrong place, wrong time perhaps? Or an example of an overlooked above replacement-level talent?
Ichiro: I don’t think it would be the worst thing if they let me go. Because then I might…
(pauses)
Ichiro: Its just, I don’t think it’s many world class athletes’ dream to be a on a sucky team.
Alex Rodriguez: Would I ever leave the Mariners? Look, I’m all about loyalty. In fact, I feel like part of what I’m being paid for here is my loyalty. But if there were somewhere else that valued loyalty more highly, I’m going wherever they value loyalty the most.
Richie Sexson: Through concentration, I can raise and lower my strike out to walk ratio at will.
Angie Mentink: Why would you wanna raise your strike out to walk ratio?
Richie Sexson: So I can lower it.
Mike Hargrove: I have been Bill’s number two guy for several years now, and we make a great team. We’re like one of those classic famous teams. He’s like Mozart and I’m like Mozart’s friend. No, I’m like Butch Cassidy and Bill is like Mozart. You try and hurt Mozart, you’re gonna get a bullet in your head, courtesy of Butch Cassidy.
Ichiro: You know what they say about a car wreck, where it’s so awful you can’t look away? The way this team is managed is like a car wreck that you want to look away from but you have to stare at it because Mike is making you.
Bret Boone’s Voicemail: Seven new messages. First new message:
Willie F. Bloomquist: Hi, Bret. This is Saddam Hussein.
Bret’s Voicemail: Next message:
Willie: Hey, Bret, this is your girlfriend and I’m mad.
Hargrove: Hey, can I talk to you about something?
WFB: About how you want to give me more playing time? Do you wanna put me in the game now? Maybe later in the game? I’m feelin’ kinda good tonight.
Hargrove: I was just…um…I’m in love with you.
WFB: What?
Hargrove: I’m really sorry if that’s weird for you to hear, but I needed you to hear it. Probably not good timing, I know that, I just…
WFB: What are you doing? What do you expect me to say to that?
Hargrove: I just needed you to know…once.
WFB: Well…uh…I…I can’t. You have no idea…
Hargrove: Don’t do that.
WFB:…what our player-manager relationship means to me.
Hargrove: C’mon. I don’t wanna do that. I wanna be more than that.
WFB: I can’t. I’m really sorry if you misinterpreted things. It’s probably my fault.
Hargrove: Not your fault. I’m sorry I misinterpreted our player-manager relationship.
Also, as a bonus, my favorite all-time Dwight Schrute quote: In the wild, there is no health care. In the wild, health care is, ‘Ow, I hurt my leg. I can’t run. A lion eats me. I’m dead.’ Well, I’m not dead. I’m the lion. You’re dead.
And here’s a clip from this week’s episode. Hilarious.
Kind of sad that they were (and are) worse than at least 13 NL teams in OBP.
If the Mariners were a musical, this would be the point where Bavasi would turn to Hargrove and sing:
Dice are rolling, the knives are out.
Would-be presidents are all around
I don’t say they mean harm
But they’d each give an arm
To see us six feet underground
(Metaphorically speaking, of course. I don’t think anyone hear is cheering for death, but there are surprisingly few comps to the current Seattle administration on Broadway, so I had to improvise with some “Evita.” Which is far less funny than The Office, by any metric.)
Teams with worse winning percentages than the Ms: Royals, Nationals, Cubs, Rockies. But hey, if current trends continue, the M’s might soon be ahead of the Yankees. (Somebody remind me, when was the last time the George S & Co were at the bottom of the AL East?)
22: Not since Don Mattingly was playing first base…
Matthew, thank you for the laughs this morning.
Can I get a little of what Mathew had so I can start my day off a little brighter!;-)
pablothegreat, here is my favorite Dwight moment from all 3 seasons. I loved the bonus footage from season 2 where they showed Rainn Wilson losing it when trying to deliver those lines. The best part is that he was improvising it…
#22 By hey, the Ms just dominated the Rangers for their first series sweep!
Hey, Grover, do you want an Altoid?
“Handy Chart” makes me sad
Were going against Blanton tonight??? WOW..automatic loss…next!
Hargrove saved us a loss according to Stone, “if not for Hargrove’s masterful delay tactics in Cleveland, would have yet another defeat tacked on.”
If ya can’t say something nice then don’t say anything at all. That’s really all I can say.
At least the people at the PI message board think that this team nees a chance to right the ship, Vidro’s a wonderful, patient hitter who draws mad amounts of walks, and Soriano is crap because he has an ERA over six this year.
No exaggeration.
So it’s not everyone, they’re happy.
I heart Dwight Schrute, and now I heart Matthew. Great stuff! So much more fun than watching Vidro and company trying to kill worms.
The american Office is not a “rip off” of the british one, they worked together on it during the first season.
All meteorological signs point to a game happening tonight in Oakland. As for the Hayward Fault acting up, that’s a crapshoot.
Just think…when the M’s hit the road again in a few months to play their makeup doubleheaders, it’ll be hurricane season — with all the accompanying rainstorms and tornadoes. Woo-hoo!
#7: Haha, oh yeah, oops. My bad.
matthew, I was trying to keep it clean, so there was no way I was going to include that one. And I agree, the bonus footage showing alternate places of where “it” might be are hilarious.
Note to Howard Lincoln: Change is good. Embrace change, not Bavasi.
so if both your local papers point out, with statistical evidence, that your offense sucks, do you as a FO admit that your offense sucks?
Human sacrifices, dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!
And a giant marshmallow man! Hey…is he on “the juice?”
Ah, “Ghostbusters“…
Bavasi: First we have to do is figure out what motivates people more than anything else. We have to get this offense going!
Grover: Sex.
Bavasi: It’s illegal, can’t do that, next best thing?
Grover: Torture.
Bavasi: Come on Mike, help me out here, that’s just stupid.
Bill Bavasi: Guaranteed contracts are the best way to show someone you care. It is like this tangible thing that you can point to and say, “Hey man, I love you this many dollars worth.”
King Felix: Where are we going?
Rick Griffin: Come on. Get inside.
Felix: Where are we going?
Rick Griffin: We’re going to Chuck E. Cheese.
Hargrove: Chuck E. Cheese? Oh, god. I’m so sick of Chuck E. Cheese.
Rick Griffin: We’re going to the hospital, coach.
Hargrove: I know. I’m just sayin’…
Box Of Rocks: I have this little vaccum cleaner that’s broken. If Grover doesn’t work out maybe that can be manager.
Bavasi: There’s something very important I forgot to tell you.
Hargrove: What?
Bavasi: Don’t cross the streams.
Hargrove: Why?
Bavasi: It would be bad.
Hargrove: I’m fuzzy on the whole good/bad thing. What do you mean, “bad?”
Bavasi: Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light. Imagine Jose Vidro playing center field. Imagine Carl Everett teaching science. Imagine “Your starting ptcher, Willie Bloomquist.†Imagine the 2006 Mariners. Now imagine the 2007 Mariners being worse. Imagine either one of us getting work in baseball again.
Hargrove: Right. That’s bad. Okay. All right. Important safety tip. Thanks.
Howard Lincoln: There are five stages to grief which are, denial, anger, bargining, depression, and acceptance. And right now, out there, the city of Seattle is denying the fact that they’re sad. And that’s hard and it’s making them all angry. And it is my job to get them all the way through to acceptance. And if not acceptance, then just depression. If I can get them depressed then I will have done my job.
Hey I already said I was sad (aka depressed) Mr Lincoln you can thank me for giving you one less person to worry about. Oh wait I’m in Spokane so it doesn’t matter to you, well I tried.
Carl Everett: Why tip someone for a job I’m capable of doing myself? I can deliver food. I can drive a taxi. I can and do cut my own hair. I did however tip my urologist, because, I am unable to pulverize my own kidney stones.
Jeff Weaver: I like the people I work with generally, with four exceptions. But this team can’t hit, or pitch for that matter, and I did not sign a bloated 1-year contract to make friends…and by the way, I haven’t.
What’s up with all the fake quotes? A joke I don’t get?
Jose Guillen: I never smile if I can help it. Showing one’s teeth is a submission signal in primates. When someone smiles at me, all I see is a chimpanzee begging for its life.
Quotes from the hit NBC show the Office are placed in various Mariners related mouths for comic effect.
Grover: Fool me once, strike one. Fool me twice, strike three.
Bavasi: This is the “Don’t Go In After Me” award. It’s for Hendu, for the time I used the bathroom after him, and it was really smelly.
I mentioned it once way back when he was hired and haven’t mentioned it since, but it needs to be mentioned now: weren’t the Royals a terrible, hacktastic team when Jeff Pentland was their hitting coach?
Methinks they need to can him if our hitters still aren’t showing any discipline at the plate.
Felix knocks on the door of the clubhouse. Willie Bloomquist opens the door with bug-eyes and his hair standing up.
Willie: ARE YOU THE PHENOM?!
Hargrove: I’m an early bird… And, I’m a night owl. So I’m wise, and, I have worms… Um…
Jeff Pentland: Beltré’s about to attend the Jeff Pentland School of Hitting. I’m like Mr. Miyagi and Yoda rolled into one.
Dave Cameron: Honestly, I don’t think Bavasi has the slightest clue of who he’s going to DFA. I think he keeps hoping that someone is going to volunteer… or be run over by a bus before the deadline. But in the end really what’s going to happen is that it’s going to be the first person that gives him a dirty look in the hall. And therein lies the true essence of his charisma.
Beltre: Wax on, wax off. Swing at outside pitches? Yes you can.
From Bronx Banter–Not a good list to be on: The Yankees have the fourth-worst starters’ ERA in baseball (only the Rangers, Mariners and these Devil Rays have been worse, which gives you some idea how rough those teams have had it thus far). The Yankee starters are averaging just 4.87 innings per game, and opponents are smacking them around at a .301 clip. After 18 games, the Yankee have received just five quality starts, three of them from Andy Pettitte, one from the indefinitely disabled Carl Pavano, and the last from Kei Igawa, who was quite a bit short of quality last night.
Ron Fairly: Look. Rick is a wuss. When we rented “Major League,” he cried at the end of it.
Rick Rizzs: Ron, I told you. That was because it was New Year’s Eve, and it started to snow at exactly midnight.
Jose Guillen: He was already dead and we Guillens use every part of the moose. The meat has a delicious, smoky, rich flavor. Plus you can use the molten moose grease and save it in the refrigerator thus saving you a trip to the store for an expensive can of moose grease.
Jeff Weaver: Wow. Win-win.
Bavasi: (waiting outside The Feed) Ok, this is it. Dave is doing my intro right now.
Dave: (addressing largest ever gathering of USSM readers) This team can’t compete and management is unwilling or unable to adapt. Their fanbase is dying off…
Bavasi: I can’t hear what he’s saying, but he looks like he’s really into it.
Hargrove: Alrigth! Ichiro’s on base. C’mon Willie, move him over!.
McLaren: (moments later) Crap. Grounder to second, Willie’s out 4-3.
Hargrove: But Ichiro’s on second! Productive out!
McLaren: You keep using that word, but I don’t think it means what you think it means.
Khalfayan: He doesn’t get Tommy John surgery at this time.
Hargrove: What?
Khalfayan: He doesn’t get the surgery. I’m explaining to to because you look nervous.
Hargrove: I wasn’t nervous. Maybe I was a little bit “concerned” but that’s not the same thing.
Bloomquist: Look, are you just fiddling around with me or what?
Hargrove: I just want you to feel you’re doing well. I hate for people to die embarrassed.
Bavasi: Have fun winnin’ da pennant.
Hargrove: Think it’ll work?
Bavasi: It would take a miracle.
How, for god sakes, does starting Robert F#ck over Doyle in LF benefit the Nationals?
Hargrove: Felix is a team guy, and he knows how our bullpen is tired, and in these next few days, he will be a great help in the bullpen.
thanks for killing the baseball discussion with asinine quotations all day. Does anyone read the post button and think “oh, a made up bavasi quotation really ‘adds my light to the glowing firmament of discussion’”? Enough is enough, back to baseball please.
nice insight dgarnett. So howabout Washburn? Will Cupcakes shut us down as usual?
I was laughing until the switch to The Princess Bride.
Then I laughed harder.
Then I cried when dgarnett posted.
Yes, dgarnett, The USS Mariner authors consider blogging about baseball to be serious business, much like the Internets.
I’ve been trying to think of something more polite and tasteful to say than “oh go blow it out your ass.” But I haven’t thought of anything.
It was funny stuff and why don’t you leave the moderating to the moderators.
Tui had a nice little game in Tennessee today. 5-5 with a homer and 3 RBIs. Avg now at .380.
DGARNETT:The baseball conversation hits everything on my checklist: stats, news, insight, amazing stories . Not for me… for my children. The Garnett’s produce very demanding readers.
Man, you were asking for it…..
#79—BWA HAH HAH HAH HAH!
#79: That Dwight line might be my favorite of all. If that was improvised… wow.
Wow. #73, look at this way, Mr. NoSenseOfHumor, humor for Mariners fans is a defense mechanism. Shows you we’re all still emotionally and mentally healthy…
This, BTW, was surely the funniest blog entry I’ve ever read at USSMariner. Thanks, matthew and everybody else
Hargrove: Here is Jeff Weaver from the pitching department. Brandon, Jeff. Ben, Jeff.
Weaver: [sees Brandon’s school ring] Did you go to Cal?
Morrow: Yeah.
Weaver: Yeah, I went to Fresno.
Morrow: Cool, what year?
Weaver: ’98…
Hargrove: Jeff was released last year. He uh…gawd…recently, right? You were designated for assignment? And you have kids? Oh that’s so…it was really messy. You slept one night in your car too?
WFB:I am not a terrible player, and my middle name is Paul, not Fucking.
USS Mariner:What did I write?
Chavez: It’s Weaver. Severe shell-shock. Thinks he’s Ethel Merman.
Weaver: (singing) You’ll be swell, you’ll be great. Gonna have the whole world on a plate. Startin’ here, startin’ now. Honey, everything’s comin’ up roses…
Slaton: Fenway is hell.
ok, the Tigers are on ESPN. what the heck is going on with Maggs’ hair these days? At least Swisher has a goal.