I decided we needed a silly prompt this week, so buckle up because we are about to get downright ZANY. In spite of our LLegacy here of promoting advanced stats and analysis and backing up arguments with facts, I asked the community via THE FEED to don you tin foil hats and share your favorite pet theory about some aspect of the Seattle Mariners that you feel deeply in your bones to be true, but cannot actually prove it with any real evidence. Y’all rewarded me with some absolutely diabolical and incendiary
takes that I’m very excited to slap rankings on using my patented and very scientific Mariners Hot Take Ranking System:
(/rubs hands together deviously)
LET’S RIDE.
Poster chicagomariner says, “Dan Wilson has a private rage room, where he screams, smashes, laughs, cries, rips, gnashes, and generally exhausts his passions.”
“Okay, thanks, Shannon. Yeah, we’ll get ‘em next time. Tough one tonight,” Dan Wilson says for the fifth time tonight, forcing a chuckle, as he wraps up his post-game duties. “All right, see ya tomorrow,” he says. Wilson opens a door to a pitch black room. He closes the soundproof door. He flips a light switch. A concrete room lined with bottles, plates, lamps, vases, glassware, and light bulbs is revealed before his eyes. Like a surgeon prepping for an organ removal, he calmly puts on a full face shield black motorcycle helmet, then zips up dark grey coveralls, and pulls on heavy duty construction gloves. He then strolls over to a rack featuring several baseball bats. He runs his hand over the rack until he lands on his favorite, ol’ Smashy. “Hello, friend,” he says out loud. “It’s time.” Wilson releases a blood-curdling, primal, guttural scream and proceeds to demolish every object in the concrete room with shockingly precise and efficient violent swings of his favorite bat. The sounds of plates, glasses, and bottles shattering is deafening. He doesn’t care. He wants to feel something. He wants the world to feel his managerial rage. For those 30 seconds of pure and unhinged catharsis, Dan Wilson is finally at peace.
Phew, okay! Rating that one an IWAKUMA for creating such delightful mental images.
Poster Chris From Bothell says, “”Safeco Insurance” was never actually an insurance company. People who supposedly had insurance through Safeco Insurance have always been serviced by Liberty Mutual. No one working for “Safeco Insurance” ever did work related to insurance. Safeco Insurance, the corporate entity, was a shell corporation that was part of a complex series of money laundering and bribes to enable the creation of the current ballpark. This was never picked up upon in the flurry of action after the sales tax was narrowly defeated; the “Washington State Major League Baseball Stadium Public Facilities District” was a misdirect. When everyone in King County and WA state government that needed to be paid off, got paid off, the ruse was no longer necessary. This is why it is not Dave Niehaus Memorial Stadium. This is why it is now T-Mobile Park and not Safeco Field. It is also why Liberty Mutual quietly retired the Safeco Insurance brand in April of this year, and have turned to straightforward psyop levels of advertising. Ever wonder why the jingle for the insurance ad ends with just a barrage of “LIBERTY LIBERTY LIBERTY lib-er-ty”? They want that name to really stick. They want you to forget that the stadium was named Safeco, for years, as a mocking act of defiance to show that the stadium and baseball are here to stay in spite of what the sports-hating slim majority of King County voters wanted. It is forever Safeco Field. The brand is dead. The stadium is forever. Safeco mortuus est, vivat Safeco.
Had to include this one just for the prose alone, but damn, Chris is onto something. I’ve never met anyone who worked for Safeco Insurance. Have you? Probably not! Rating this one as BRASH for bold creativity and because I just imagined this the whole time I read it:
Staff Writer Jake Mailhot says:
Jake dropped in his blue sky post from a recent prompt by the excellent Mina Kimes. This is it, right here. This is my favorite Mariners conspiracy theory. The one where an unimaginable tragedy interrupted the greatest season ever put together by a Mariners team right before the playoffs started. If you were alive during this time, you know how it felt. There was a before and an after. Nothing that happened in the after seemed to matter like it did in the before.
Rating this one a CLIFF LEE because you can’t bring this up around normal people and not get looked at like a complete asshole.
Poster EricByrnesBuntingClinic says, “I am a long time lurker who had to sign up in order to get the truth about the Eric Byrnes sac bunt that wasn’t. Mr Byrnes good name has been wrongfully dragged through the mud by the so-called “Seattle Mainstream Sports Media Conglomerate ” and the zombie horde of idol worshipping Ichiro lovers who DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW THE TRUTH about that fateful evening of April 30th, 2010. And the horrible truth that THEY won’t tell you is that there NEVER WAS a suicide squeeze on during that career ending at-bat. In the Seattle half of the 11th inning, Mr Byrnes was at the plate with megalomaniacal Ichiro standing on 3rd base representing the winning run that would finally unknot the score in a “pitching duel” against the Rangers. The ever observant Mr Byrnes noticed the Rangers 3rd baseman playing out of position and thought he had a decent chance of laying down a bunt past the pitcher for a hit to score the winning run. When Ichiro saw Mr Byrnes showing bunt, he inexplicably broke for home on his own. The world saw what happened next. Mr Byrnes, seeing that the pitch was an obvious ball, brought the bat back, and was a flabbergasted witness to the out at home plate caused by Ichiro’s reckless base running decision. The Mariners went on to lose that game, and the blame was placed squarely upon Mr Byrnes for failing to heed a sign that was never given. Mr Byrnes was publicly shamed in the aftermath so that the Seattle Mariners and the fan base could maintain the ILLUSION that Ichiro never makes mistakes. But REAL fans know the truth about this heinous incident that has inflicted Mariners Nation with scars that still have not healed. But all fans agree that the only good to come from it was when Mr Byrnes mountain bikes over former GM, Jack Zduriencik, in his bid for freedom and for his God given right to play for any beer league softball team that he wants to. Thank you Lookout Landing for the safe space where I can finally set the record straight!”
(/takes glasses off)
(/lights a cigarette even though I don’t smoke)
(/takes a long drag and stares out a window for a long, long time)
Comrade. You have broached a topic that is near and dear to my black heart. I was at this game. I witnessed this event with my own eyes. The pain of the 2010 Mariners changed me. It broke every Mariners blogger at that time. This touches on so many controversial elements of that era that unraveling each spool would require a tome larger than WordPress allows. Just know this. This take hit home. It hit deep. I am having unwanted thoughts about Eric Byrnes and questioning Ichiro’s actions in ways I never thought possible. This is diabolical. The unconscionable Ichiro slander. This take is uncouth in ways no one outside of LL’s most longtime readers will understand. I am currently packing this take into a giant crate, nailing it shut, and pushing it down a long, long aisle in a storage warehouse in an undisclosed location. I feel like a take this volcanic deserves a new ranking, but then I remembered who pitched for the Mariners that fateful night:
‘Nuff said.
FoLLks, every take shared in THE FEED was deserving of being posted here, but I simply do not have the time. Do yourself a favor and check them out if you haven’t yet. Huge thank you to everyone for indulging me and this delirious, sweaty prompt. Have a great week and keep an eye on THE FEED for next week’s prompt. Go Mariners.
