Tempted by an old flame

A few weeks ago, I attended a work-related conference in Boise. The conference was about potential flooding issues in the Boise River basin.  An expert panel was persuasively making the case that sometime in the next millennium, maybe even next year, a gigantic flood will breach the three up-basin dams providing flood control and irrigation storage for the Boise valley and wreak havoc on the entire Boise metro area, except for those living away from the valley floor up in the foothills. Since my house is in the foothills, I tuned out for a moment, sneaking a peek at the Twitter feed on my iPhone.

Monica and Clay.
 The bride wore white.


It was a Wednesday and the Seattle Mariners happened to be playing an afternoon game. My close friends are aware that I love the Seattle Mariners in ways that have not always been healthy. On May 2, 2001, for example, I watched the Mariners defeat the Boston Red Sox on ESPN while my wife was in labor with our oldest daughter. Sydney was born at 1:11 the next morning, well after the game was over. My position is that if you don't want guys watching sports during the delivery, don't put a television in the delivery room. Aaron Sele, by the way, was the winning pitcher, and the final score was 5-1. Relative to my family, though, others are even more in need of intervention. On August 31, 2003, my brother Clay and sister-in-law Monica rented a skybox at Safeco Field and exchanged wedding vows (happy anniversary, by the way) before a handful of friends and family shortly before Jamie Moyer threw out the first pitch in a game against the Baltimore Orioles. The Mariners won that game 3-0.

But while my close friends know of my love for the Mariners, only my closest friends know my little secret. Over the past few years, the relationship has lost its momentum. I still love the Mariners, of course, I'm just not in love with the Mariners. We grew in different directions. I grew to expect that my significant other professional sports franchise should not be mathematically eliminated from playoff contention before the season starts. The Mariners' ownership/management regime apparently grew in a direction the left them unable or unwilling to evaluate talent or avoid overpaying for "proven veterans." I'm not saying I don't sometimes stay up late drinking and google the Mariners in a moment of weakness or glance at stories about them in the newspaper or check the standings from time to time to see how they are doing.  But the day-to-day passion had ebbed.

Back at the Boise River flood conference, the first tweet on my Twitter feed caught my eye. The Mariners' young pitching star, the Venezuelan Felix Hernandez, was on the mound against the Tampa Bay Rays. Jeff Sullivan, who writes about the Mariners at the Lookout Landing blog, tweeted that the radar gun showed that Hernandez, or King Felix as he is known to his fans, was increasing his pitching velocity as the game progressed. King Felix throws exceptionally hard so it was interesting that he would throw even harder as a game progressed. But the next part of Sullivan's tweet is what caught my attention:  “Adrenaline is building. Felix knows what’s up”.  Felix knows what's up? This was getting interesting. What had I missed? Seconds later, Larry Stone, the Mariners beat writer for the Seattle Times, tweeted this:

 Heading into the 8th at Safeco, Mariners leading 1-0. Felix chasing immortality.

So now, goosebumps. Prompted by nothing more than  reading no-more-than-140-character Twitter accounts of a baseball game. Stirrings of desires I hadn’t felt for years. Irrational exuberance precipitated by my Mariners. My pulse quickened and butterfly wings fluttered somewhere within the essence of my being. I may or may not have have seen Cupid riding a unicorn over a rainbow. At the Boise River flood conference, a hydrological engineer from the National Weather Service was demonstrating an interactive website that allows visitors to look at a Google Earth map overlaid with projected consequences of flooding in the city of Boise at various stream-flow levels. He pulled up the expected results of a 20,000 cfs load blowing through the heart of the Boise. It was not pretty. But the demonstration indicated that my house was still safe. I glanced at my iPhone. Larry Stone was tweeting again:

Pena goes down swinging as Felix strikes out the side. 24 up, 24 down. Three more outs and we’ve got history. 

This was big. Very big. I’d developed a schoolboy crush on the Mariners in 1977, the year they became a Major League expansion team. I was a 12-year-old first baseman on my little league team in northern Idaho and was thrilled that Major League baseball had finally returned to the Pacific Northwest. I could not have been geekier about the whole thing. I poured over box scores in the Spokesman-Review newspaper, stayed up late to watch scores on the local news, bought baseball magazines featuring rosters and stats, memorized player facts from the backs of TOPPS baseball cards. You know, stuff dorky kids did back before the internet. From time to time I even crossed the Cascade Mountains to visit the Kingdome, the Mariners' original home.

But I'm not a kid anymore and the Mariners over the past decade have failed to build on their brief period of competence lasting from roughly 1995 through 2003. Over the past decade, I've tried to stay in touch, but it was becoming an effort. Back at the Boise River flood conference, a guy from Reno was talking about that city's "billion dollar flood" of 1997, when the Truckee River overflowed its banks. I briefly felt bad and then stole another glance at my iPhone. Larry Stone was back with an update: 

 Down goes Jennings swinging. Two outs to go. 

 Moments later, this:

Keppinger grounds out to shortstop, and it’s down to Sean Rodriguez.

Twenty-six up, twenty-six down. One more for immortality.Now it was time for Sean Rodriguez, a fine young shortstop who one way or another would become part of history. "It's not a question of if, it's a question of when," said a woman at the conference. She was talking about a historic flood one day devastating the city of Boise.  But for me, she was talking about King Felix and his perfect game. Larry Stone broke the news in forty-nine characters: 

Called strike three, and a perfect game for Felix.

King Felix.

I wanted to jump from my stackable plastic conference room chair and hug somebody, maybe exchange a few high-fives and fist-bumps in that distinctively awkward style unique to middle-aged white guys. Instead, I remained seated while my pulse rate jumped to a I-must-be-running-an-all-out-400-meter-sprint rate.  I attempted to discretely share this historic moment with our summer law clerk who was seated next to me, showing him a screen shot on my iPhone and whispering loudly: “Look . . . King Felix just pitched a perfect game.”  The law clerk was from Atlanta and may not have know King Felix from Queen Elizabeth, but he was sufficiently career savvy to nod approvingly. 


That game was two weeks ago yesterday. Since then I have found myself watching the Mariners on TV more frequently.  I've been checking the Mariner box scores in the Idaho Statesman, following the divisional standings. Still last in the American League West, but a lot closer to being first in my heart. It wasn't a question of if, it was only a question of when. Thank you, Felix Hernandez.