It was only months ago, early this year, when everyone in America said Seattle didn’t have a chance. The pundits said Seattle did not play well enough to earn a shot at the playoffs. People believed the game was over before it had even begun. Of course we know how that turned out; the Seahawks defeated the defending champion New Orleans Saints by a score of 41 to 36.

1996 saw another time where everyone dismissed Seattle. The Chicago Bulls had the greatest record in NBA history at 72-10. They dominated the first three rounds of the playoffs, going 11-1 against the best teams in the Eastern Conference. They were being called the greatest basketball team of all time. Then they played the Seattle SuperSonics. Although the Bulls won the first three games, Seattle fought back to win the next two, before finally falling in game six. The narrative changed; the Bulls went from the greatest team of all time, to the greatest Bulls team of all time. Seattle stepped up when no one expected them to and exceeded expectations.

Should I mention the 1995 Mariners coming back from 11.5 games to overtake the Angels for the American League West? After winning the West they fell behind two games to none to the Yankees in the first round of the playoffs, came back to win the next two games, fell behind in game five, came back, fell behind in extra innings, and came back again to win! That’s heart. That’s Seattle.

Can the Seattle Sounders score three goals tomorrow? Well, the 2011 team has scored exactly three points on five separate occasions during the regular season. Four goals? We did it twice. And then there was that amazing six-point afternoon in August.

Were any of those multi-goal matches against a team as good as Real Salt Lake? No, they were not. But that does not mean a damn thing. The fact of the matter is, the Seattle Sounders have the capability of scoring a lot of goals within 90 minutes. And the fact is, Seattle has a long history of amazing comebacks. In less than twenty-four hours, we make history.

Between Felix's sustained dominance, Pineda and Ackley proving to be everything we hoped they would be, and the acquisition of young players like Trayvon Robinson and Casper Wells, this has been a pretty fun season! It seems like everywhere you go, you hear people talkin' Mariners! In honor of this 2011 Mariner squad, I thought I'd look at which Mariners best represent the members of our fair team.

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I love Milton Bradley.

It started last April. When he was acquired by the Mariners the only Milton Bradley I knew was Milton Bradley: Clubhouse Cancer. By the first couple weeks of the 2010 season, however, we saw a different Bradley. This was one who flashed wicked smiles at the camera during interviews, tipped his cap when an opposing player made an impressive play, and pleased us by flipping off obnoxious Texas fans. Then May happened.

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Felix Day is always an exciting affair. So far this year he's thrown four complete games, allowed two or fewer runs in fourteen starts, and had seven or more strike outs in ten starts. All this despite his poor (and unlucky) May!

Then again, maybe this is disconcerting. Because he's been in Major League Baseball since 2005, it's easy to forget that Felix is still a young 24 - his 25th birthday won't be until after the start of the 2011 season. We have all heard horror stories of young phenom pitchers having their careers ruined to injury after throwing too often and too hard at an early age. Should we be worried for Felix's future?

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I've been thinking: "Golly! The Mariners sure have had a lot of talent over the years. Even though they have yet to earn a single World Series title, and they own a mere three division crowns, I bet the talent we have seen on this club could stack up against the talent any other club has enjoyed over the same period of time."

Here is a way to examine the idea. "A fun exercise", if you will. Teams have 25-man rosters, so let's go back to each of the last 25 seasons, including 2010. We will take one player that was on the Mariners from each season, trying to build a 25-man roster this way. Perhaps you will wish to attempt this exercise for other teams! It is my hypothesis that a "super-Mariner teams" would be extremely tough to beat compared to even the best talent the Braves, yankees or Red Sox could put together.

My attempt at creating such a legendary team is below. As a means to quickly judge how productive each player was in each given year, I included their WAR value for the season.

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Maybe you read the title of this FanPost and thought "Ah! It looks like Katal forgot to capitalize the R in rams. I wonder why he made such a mistake."

Oh, I can assure you that no mistake was made. Capitalization denotes respect. There's absolutely no reason to respect the SOSAR. They're a bad team and we're going to beat them today for the tenth time in a row. That will provide us with the necessary momentum to take our revenge against the hated 49ers next week.

Anyway, because it doesn't look like one of the moderators is going to open a front page game thread, I thought I'd start one here. I can't wait for us to RUIN the rams' Sunday!

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Fall is here. Mariners baseball is over. All this means that it's time that we organize a group for some Lookout Landing (NFL style) football.

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                                                                                              Seattle: 58-53

                                                                                             Chicago: 57-55

SUMMARY

                                             Mariners                                      White Sox                             Edge

Hitting (WoBA)                   -59.4                                                -42.3                                  CHI

Fielding (UZR)                  46.5                                                  -17.6                                  SEA

Rotation (pRAA)               -21.9                                                  43.8                                  CHI

Bullpen (pRAA)                -23.8                                                   25.4                                 CHI

Overall (RAA)                   -58.6                                                      9.3                                 CHI

What do you know, the Seattle Mariners managed to take two out of their three games against the Tampa Bay Rays. All despite two starting pitchers performing below expectations. That's what a good bullpen effort, heroics by Langerhans, a strong effort by Ryan Rowland-Smith, and Kazmir continuing his downward spiral will do for you.

But enough about the Rays. We now begin a three-game series against the Chicago White Sox. The Sox, as you can see above, outmatch the Mariners in all aspects of the game except defense. All this, yet we still lead them in the Wild Card race! Chicago has played poorly on the road this year (a .462 WP), and has only played .500 ball since the All Star Break. Also as a fun fact, they're playing exactly to their Pythagorean record.

The White Sox appear to be a clearly better overall ballclub than we are, so let's be sporting & wish them some bad luck through the work week, all the way up until they begin their series against the hated Oakland A's this Friday.

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After a rotten 2008 we finally (finally!) have a new year. This of course begs the question, what will 2009 bring us?

Will the Mariners compete for .500? Do they have any chance of surpising us in a mediocre division and storming into the playoffs? How will Mora do with the Seahawks? Will Kevin Durant's team win another game? Will you attend a Thunderbirds game? If the Storm do anything, will you notice?

Do you have any resolutions? Perhaps you have resolved to find someone to blame for anything that goes wrong. Or do you resolve to drink a new beer? To read the more math-centric parts of The Book? Do tell.

Finally, in honor of 2009, A Poll.

According to ESPN Radio. I haven't heard any word on the number of years or the amount of money involved, but I'll update this FanPost once I have that information.

Assuming this detail is something like 3/$36M, I say the Cubs got a steal. Bradley was clearly one of the most underrated free agents this winter.

It will be interesting to see how this affects the market for Dunn and Ramirez.

The Cubs certainly acted fast. Everyone knew they wanted to move Jason Marquis so they could free up salary to make this move. I just didn't expect the two events to happen within literally minutes of one another.

UPDATE: According to the Chicago Comcast branch, the deal is done but not yet official.

Being that the previous FanPost about LL football has fallen off the rec list & its comments have been closed, here is a new one. This way if anyone wants to check the time or place, or decides at the last minute that they can/can't make it, voila - there is a FanPost for that person's needs.

We will be playing football on Friday at noon at Cal Anderson Park in Capitol Hill. We usually meet near the soccer field. Some times the field is in use. When that's the case we often head over to Seattle University's field.

After the game is over we'll make our way to an eatery for drinks and food.

There's going to be a good crowd there. It includes: Katal, John, Matthew, Graham, Brett, Ningwers + friends, Omerta, Nola, Two Rs and Two Ls, and Tootthekazoo. Robert will even show up later for those who stick around.

It wasn't long ago that Matthew put up a post about holding a Lookout Landing sports gathering sometime during the Thanksgiving weekend. That conversation eventually teetered out, although it's starting to come up again. In order to facilitate a discussion about when to have some LL football, and in order to introduce a poll so that we can have a visual for what days work best, I thought I'd put up a FanPost.

There has also been talk about doing a non-sporting event during the weekend. Let us know if you're down for that, too.

UPDATE: We're looking at Friday the 28th, noon at Cal Anderson on Capitol Hill. There's a shot that we might move to a different park if Cal Anderson is too crowded. Afterwards we'll likely do a thing involving getting food & drink. Be there.

The following people can make it on Friday. Am I forgetting anyone?:

Katal

Johnbai

Omerta

Ningwers + friends

Matthew

Brett

Nola 

Graham

Two Rs and Two Ls

Tootthekazoo

Robert (possibly joining the festivities later)

Anyone else?

Some folks in the latest LL Football thread have been calling to play a game this Saturday, the fourth of October, and frankly I think that's a mighty fine idea.

We started doing LL football a year ago, and it would typically involve meeting around midday at Cal Anderson Park in Capitol Hill. All sorts of ability levels were present, and after a few hours of playing we would usually go do a thing that involved food and drink. Getting exercise, kicking it with good people, and having a fine meal in the early evening is a totally decent way of spending one's Saturday. If you live within the greater Seattle area then you really have no reason not to at least try it out. Go ahead and sign up.

PS: A few people (cough Robert) have advocated playing on Sunday. If you absolutely can't do Saturday, let us know if Sunday works instead. I like Saturday more, but maybe Sunday can still work.

EDIT: Saturday appears to be the consensus for the majority of the people interested in playing. How does 12:00 at Cal Anderson sound to everyone?

It would appear that the following people can make it tomorrow: Myself, Brett, John, Matthew, Camomilk, and possibly Bill. Anyone else?

Geoff Baker has a piece in this morning's edition of the Seattle Times about what problems the Seattle Mariners face as they start to rebuild. The article focuses on the large number of cumbersome contracts the team has attached itself to, but reading it, I couldn't help but be reminded of Derek's recent post at USSMariner about the FO being the key to our lack of success.

Open the article and start searching for the word "Armstrong". I understand that Charlie's meddling is nothing new, but damn did Baker catch him on his game! Saying the team can possibly contend next year? Check. Defending the non-trade of Washburn to Minnesota? Yup. Indicating that he would like the team to resign Ibanez? Absolutely. Maintaining that the team isn't interested in a Cleveland-style rebuild? Uh huh.

After reading USSMariners' take on whether this team will be awful for either weeks or years, the optimist in me was better convinced by Dave. Now, after a fresh dose of Chuck Armstrong's latest quotes, I'm not so sure.

http://kissmesuzy.blogspot.com/

Kissing Suzy Kolber is holding a tournament to see which mascot of all 32 NFL teams is the toughest. The Seahawk is facing off against the falcon today, and as it stands right now, is losing by more than 200 votes. Let's do what we can to push the Seahawk to its rightful victory.