I had the privilege this season of attending the Mariners’ season opener at Safeco… er, I mean T-Mobile Park, last week.
A lot of people from the Olympic and Kitsap peninsulas attended this game, because first of all, it took me about 30-45 minutes of driving around in circles on Bainbridge Island to finally find a parking spot. It got to a point that I started wondering if I parked in a 3-hour zone, would I really get towed?
Anyway, I didn’t have to make that decision. I spent so much time looking for a parking spot that I missed my ferry but I had given myself plenty of time, so I still got to the game well before the festivities began.
Oh, the pageantry. First a Macklemore mini-concert dedicated to Dave Niehaus, a flyover of military jets from the Whidbey Naval Air Station and my favorite part of the day — a tribute to new Hall of Famer Edgar Martinez.
The weather was gorgeous, 60 degrees and sunny. Lots of people showed up at the park wearing parkas and heavy coats expecting the worst from a March evening in Seattle. But, the roof stayed open all night and lots of us ended up feeling over-dressed.
The Mariners were on fire, slugging five home runs and crushing the world champion Boston Red Sox.
I discovered later on Facebook that Rick Ross, athletic director at Peninsula College was at the game, along with a former editor of mine from La Grande, Ore. It would’ve been fun to meet up with them, but, it wasn’t meant to be.
At the time, I thought it was a fluke. The Mariners had a good game and they would come crashing down to reality later in the week.
Well, it’s been eight games now and the Mariners are still not “crashing down to reality.” They’re 7-1, winning by hitting a ton of home runs and in the case of Tuesday night, getting pitching gems from Marco Gonzalez. Even Felix Hernandez had a solid first start.
Like most Mariners’ fans, I didn’t go into this season with very high expectations for this team after Robinson Cano, Jean Segura and Edwin Diaz were traded away and Nelson Cruz was allowed to sign with Minnesota.
But, after a 7-1 start, who knows? They might actually be good. There’s certainly cause for optimism.
I can’t get too excited yet, though, and I urge other Mariners fans to remain calm. Remember 2018? Yeah, that’s the year the Mariners started out 56-32 and ended up missing the playoffs after going 33-41 the rest of the season.
But, the best part of being in first place is right here, right now, the Mariners are in first and are a force to be reckoned with. And who knows what the future holds?
One gripe
My one gripe about the experience? And bear with me here, I don’t want to come off petty. Things like this genuinely bother me. My one gripe — $13.50 for a beer.
Seriously, if you want to drink something other than Coors Light at T-Mobile, it will cost you $13.50.
Is it really necessary to charge that much? Essentially a 125-percent markup from what a person would pay in a bar? I’ve been to Mariners games before and I never remember paying that much. I can honestly say I’ve never paid that much for a beer anywhere, not even in Canada, where they tax alcohol to death.
Perhaps part of the rationale for charging that much is to discourage people from drinking at the games. Maybe it works. I know that’s part of the rationale for taxing the hell out of cigarettes — to make them so expensive that people will quit.
However, having known enough drunks in my time, I know that if someone is determined to get a drunk on, they will find a way, like visiting one of the several bars around T-Mobile and pounding down a few $6 to $7 beers before walking into the stadium.
The easy solution is to simply not drink beer at the game if you don’t want to pay that much, but it’s the idea of gouging that bothers me. I suspect the real reason for a $13.50 beer is simply to exploit a captive audience. And I hate being gouged. It’s one of the reasons I rarely go to movies anymore, because it shouldn’t cost $35 for a movie, popcorn and soda. (I exclude Deer Park Cinema from this. One thing I like about the Deer Park Cinema is that their prices are actually pretty reasonable compared to other movie theatres.).
Baseball is very, very concerned about its attendance issues. Attendance dropped 3 million — about 4 percent — last year, which was the lowest year for attendance since 2003. Attendance is down 12.65 percent since 2007.
So, baseball keeps tinkering with the game, limiting mound visits and considering a “pitch clock” to speed up the pace of the game. I don’t think it’s the “pace of the game” driving down attendance, it’s the cost. It’s the same reason fewer people go to movies today.
The ticket prices at T-Mobile are actually fairly reasonable, especially compared to a Neil Young ticket at the Paramount, but you throw in food and drinks for a family of four and that’s a pretty big chunk out of their budget, maybe $300 total for one game.
And plus, people remember being gouged. And next time they think about going to a movie or a ballgame, they remember how much they paid for that soda or that beer and they say, “to heck with it, who needs it?” Baseball needs to stop taking advantage of its captive audience if they want to stem the tide of lowering attendance, in my opinion.
Anyway, that’s my little rant about what was otherwise a very fun and enjoyable day. And what appears to be a very fun and enjoyable team. Enjoy them while they stay hot and part of the joy of baseball is any team can come out of anywhere and surprise everyone. Maybe the Mariners are the Oakland A’s of 2019.
