Tuesday, January 20, 2004
LET'S TRY THIS AGAIN
This is where I try to recreate my entire post that would have been up at about 1am last night. It was a Sasaki-related post. Here I go...
John Hickey, John Levesque, Larry Stone, Larry LaRue, and Dave Boling all take their turns with Kazu Sasaki's sudden departure. Before I respond to these columns one by one, I have one question: does anyone know where the hell Dave Andriesen went? He was gone for a real long time, came back for a couple columns, then left again. Sabbatical? Do journalists have that? I don't know. Anyway...
The Hickey column brought the obvious news that I had already known at that point regarding the Sasaki dealings. It also threw in the tidbit that the Mariners had signed Joel Pineiro for three more years and $14.5M. I like Pineiro and I'm glad that they've gotten him locked up. It's been amazing watching him mature on the mound for the last couple years and it'll be great to see him go farther and truly be this team's number one starter (let's face it -- Freddy's not the number one and Moyer's not a power guy). I guess the whole travesty in it all is this: Joel Pineiro is now making Raul Ibanez money. Or Raul Ibanez is making Joel Pineiro money. Yes, there's something wrong with those sentences, and Raul isn't in the right.
John Levesque lets us know that Kazu came in and helped the Mariners on the way in, and thanks to the $9.5M he may free up, Kazu may help the Mariners on the way out. But Levesque's column really made me want to raise my own bar as a wee B-town weblogger, because guess what? John Levesque reads the blogs! He says it right in the column!!
Larry Stone had the most solid column of the handful (not surprisingly), refreshing my mind to the fact that the Mariners seem to have a certain faction over in Japan that can take issues straight to the top (Hiroshi Yamauchi) of the Mariners food chain to get what they want. Sasaki's Japanese agent sought an audience with Yamauchi leading to the Sasaki departure, much in the same way that Sasaki left the team for "personal reasons" in May of 2002 (i.e., meeting with Yamauchi) and returned to Seattle with the absurd and well-documented two-year, $17M contract in hand.
Larry LaRue presents a couple more annoying tidbits about Sasaki, namely how he wanted to know by the 7th inning if he was going to be used in the 9th. You know, for that mental preparation and stuff and how he would throw 49834904 pitches in the bullpen before he came into the game. The other annoying thing cited was how Sasaki would stay in the training room getting therapy or massages until the 5th inning of games. The vibe of the LaRue column seems somewhat clear to me, though: the Mariners and Sasaki will have to try like hell to make this a clean break.
Dave Boling rounds out the handful of Sasaki articles here. Boling is along the same lines as Levesque in a way, pointing out that Sasaki helped on the way in, and will do so on the way out. He also brings up the torturing of "Who Let the Dogs Out" that Satan (Howard Lincoln) and Sasaki did after beating the Angels in Anaheim on the final day of the season to earn a trip to the 2000 playoffs. Frankly, I didn't think that horrible drivel of a song could be tortured. And it probably wasn't. I think I would have rather heard Satan and Sasaki's version of the Dogs Out song rather than that of the ill-fated Baha Men.
So what do I have to say about all of this? Kazu Sasaki had a solid career in Seattle. Two things are unfortunate about it, yes. One is the aforementioned-by-Jeremy home run given up to Al Soriano in the 2001 ALCS that put the final nail in the coffin of the regular season (Rhodes brought the hammer via Bernie Williams earlier in that game, and Aaron Sele was a mere formality). The other is the brutal happenings of last season. That's one lousy hell of an unceremonious way to go out as a baseball player (at least in the US if he doesn't stay out of baseball altogether). The good things? I remember 2000. It brought the Mariners one of their top two playoff runs ever (that's right, screw 2001). Coming into the season, all Mariner fans wondered if they really could have that sense of security when the Mariners had a lead going into the 9th. By golly, the fans really got what they were hoping for. The fans of Seattle had never seen a closer perform like Kazu. He wasn't Mike Schooler, and he sure as hell wasn't Bobby Ayala. I remember the feeling that sometimes the game was just as good as over when the Kazman came in. That and I remember the feeling that if Kaz had two strikes on a hitter and the "thang" was coming, you just knew sometimes that there was nothing the hitter could do about it. I remember when Kazu blew his first save of that season at Kansas City (June 14; look at that boxscore -- Ricky Bottalico was 6-1?!) and the callers on the KJR postgame (then hosted by Seth Everett and Bill Krueger) were absolutely freaking out. They were wondering if that was going to be the end of it, if the Mariners had paid him too much, if leads would never be safe in the 9th, that his fastball just wasn't fast enough (I hardly ever thought it was), etc. Art Rhodes and Kazu Sasaki that year gave the Mariners something they'd never had before in the form of dominant pitching in the latter half of games. It got them as far as they've ever gotten in the playoffs. It enabled them to go far enough to give me my best memory of that 2000 season -- when Alex put one off the foul pole in the Bronx in the ALCS. That one moment felt great as a sports fan and as a Mariner fan. At the same time, Rhodes' and Sasaki's playoff failures also brought the team to its knees in either year.
That said, happy trails to one Kazu Sasaki. I'll miss the "thang," I'll miss the smile after the final out, and on a local note, I'll miss the guy that calls in on KJR's Groz and Gas Mails as Kazuhiro Sasaki.
I AM KAZUHIRO SASAKI!!! GROZHOPPER! GASHOPPER!! MY FORKBALL MAKE FRANK THOMAS LOOK LIKE PUNK-BITCH!!
Sorry to everyone could could have used this post EIGHTEEN HOURS AGO. Sorry, I really am.
[edit ~7:47p: as Peter noticed, Levesque has been scouring the wild-West-style P-I weblog comment listings, NOT the much more classy (but still wild) Mariner blogosphere. Thanks for getting my hopes up, John. I'll go back to writing crappily now.]
John Hickey, John Levesque, Larry Stone, Larry LaRue, and Dave Boling all take their turns with Kazu Sasaki's sudden departure. Before I respond to these columns one by one, I have one question: does anyone know where the hell Dave Andriesen went? He was gone for a real long time, came back for a couple columns, then left again. Sabbatical? Do journalists have that? I don't know. Anyway...
The Hickey column brought the obvious news that I had already known at that point regarding the Sasaki dealings. It also threw in the tidbit that the Mariners had signed Joel Pineiro for three more years and $14.5M. I like Pineiro and I'm glad that they've gotten him locked up. It's been amazing watching him mature on the mound for the last couple years and it'll be great to see him go farther and truly be this team's number one starter (let's face it -- Freddy's not the number one and Moyer's not a power guy). I guess the whole travesty in it all is this: Joel Pineiro is now making Raul Ibanez money. Or Raul Ibanez is making Joel Pineiro money. Yes, there's something wrong with those sentences, and Raul isn't in the right.
John Levesque lets us know that Kazu came in and helped the Mariners on the way in, and thanks to the $9.5M he may free up, Kazu may help the Mariners on the way out. But Levesque's column really made me want to raise my own bar as a wee B-town weblogger, because guess what? John Levesque reads the blogs! He says it right in the column!!
Larry Stone had the most solid column of the handful (not surprisingly), refreshing my mind to the fact that the Mariners seem to have a certain faction over in Japan that can take issues straight to the top (Hiroshi Yamauchi) of the Mariners food chain to get what they want. Sasaki's Japanese agent sought an audience with Yamauchi leading to the Sasaki departure, much in the same way that Sasaki left the team for "personal reasons" in May of 2002 (i.e., meeting with Yamauchi) and returned to Seattle with the absurd and well-documented two-year, $17M contract in hand.
Larry LaRue presents a couple more annoying tidbits about Sasaki, namely how he wanted to know by the 7th inning if he was going to be used in the 9th. You know, for that mental preparation and stuff and how he would throw 49834904 pitches in the bullpen before he came into the game. The other annoying thing cited was how Sasaki would stay in the training room getting therapy or massages until the 5th inning of games. The vibe of the LaRue column seems somewhat clear to me, though: the Mariners and Sasaki will have to try like hell to make this a clean break.
Dave Boling rounds out the handful of Sasaki articles here. Boling is along the same lines as Levesque in a way, pointing out that Sasaki helped on the way in, and will do so on the way out. He also brings up the torturing of "Who Let the Dogs Out" that Satan (Howard Lincoln) and Sasaki did after beating the Angels in Anaheim on the final day of the season to earn a trip to the 2000 playoffs. Frankly, I didn't think that horrible drivel of a song could be tortured. And it probably wasn't. I think I would have rather heard Satan and Sasaki's version of the Dogs Out song rather than that of the ill-fated Baha Men.
So what do I have to say about all of this? Kazu Sasaki had a solid career in Seattle. Two things are unfortunate about it, yes. One is the aforementioned-by-Jeremy home run given up to Al Soriano in the 2001 ALCS that put the final nail in the coffin of the regular season (Rhodes brought the hammer via Bernie Williams earlier in that game, and Aaron Sele was a mere formality). The other is the brutal happenings of last season. That's one lousy hell of an unceremonious way to go out as a baseball player (at least in the US if he doesn't stay out of baseball altogether). The good things? I remember 2000. It brought the Mariners one of their top two playoff runs ever (that's right, screw 2001). Coming into the season, all Mariner fans wondered if they really could have that sense of security when the Mariners had a lead going into the 9th. By golly, the fans really got what they were hoping for. The fans of Seattle had never seen a closer perform like Kazu. He wasn't Mike Schooler, and he sure as hell wasn't Bobby Ayala. I remember the feeling that sometimes the game was just as good as over when the Kazman came in. That and I remember the feeling that if Kaz had two strikes on a hitter and the "thang" was coming, you just knew sometimes that there was nothing the hitter could do about it. I remember when Kazu blew his first save of that season at Kansas City (June 14; look at that boxscore -- Ricky Bottalico was 6-1?!) and the callers on the KJR postgame (then hosted by Seth Everett and Bill Krueger) were absolutely freaking out. They were wondering if that was going to be the end of it, if the Mariners had paid him too much, if leads would never be safe in the 9th, that his fastball just wasn't fast enough (I hardly ever thought it was), etc. Art Rhodes and Kazu Sasaki that year gave the Mariners something they'd never had before in the form of dominant pitching in the latter half of games. It got them as far as they've ever gotten in the playoffs. It enabled them to go far enough to give me my best memory of that 2000 season -- when Alex put one off the foul pole in the Bronx in the ALCS. That one moment felt great as a sports fan and as a Mariner fan. At the same time, Rhodes' and Sasaki's playoff failures also brought the team to its knees in either year.
That said, happy trails to one Kazu Sasaki. I'll miss the "thang," I'll miss the smile after the final out, and on a local note, I'll miss the guy that calls in on KJR's Groz and Gas Mails as Kazuhiro Sasaki.
I AM KAZUHIRO SASAKI!!! GROZHOPPER! GASHOPPER!! MY FORKBALL MAKE FRANK THOMAS LOOK LIKE PUNK-BITCH!!
Sorry to everyone could could have used this post EIGHTEEN HOURS AGO. Sorry, I really am.
[edit ~7:47p: as Peter noticed, Levesque has been scouring the wild-West-style P-I weblog comment listings, NOT the much more classy (but still wild) Mariner blogosphere. Thanks for getting my hopes up, John. I'll go back to writing crappily now.]
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