Sports Notes
If you’d been in a coma for ten years and awoke last night to the broadcast of the Mariners-Yankees game, the call in the fourth inning would have had a familiar ring:
- Tino Martinez belts a tremendous shot over the right field wall, driving in Alex Rodriguez from second for a two-run homer and giving Randy Johnson a 3 - 1 lead.
Unreality, and perhaps the vegetative state, would soon set in when our patient deduced that the aforementioned players were wearing pinstripes instead of Mariner…whatever they wear. Should he remain conscious, he’d learn how the Mariners squeezed the city and state for a lavish new stadium, then unloaded all of their high-priced talent in a carefully crafted descent to mediocrity. (Lou Piniella almost screwed it up, but they ran him off, too).
Meanwhile, the SuperSonics got blown out of their first playoff game with the Spurs, and lost two of their starters to severe ankle sprains. That makes it all the more likely that they’ll lose the second game at San Antonio tonight. As Art Thiel in the Seattle PI said, they’ll have to work hard simply to “ prevent the Spurs from the biggest 2-0 lead since Dolly Parton over Olive Oyl”. I don’t really care that much about the Sonic, but I had to find a way to use that quote.
