Wednesday, June 08, 2005

The Third Amigo

In every phase of life, there are stragglers. Those who dutifully follow the leader. Those who mooch off the ideas of others. Those who benefit from the initiative of groundbreakers. In the world of Mariner Magic: Refusing To Lose, I am that straggler. My name is Pete. Feel my mooch.

Specs:
P Whit
Height-5'10"
Weight-156
Throws-Right
Bats-Poorly
Bunts-Frequently

I'm a huge baseball fan. I have a difficult time holding back tears during certain James Earl Jones monologues. October is sacred. My first heroes were Jimmy Pressley and Alvin Davis. I take great pride in the fact that my little league Kirk Gibson glove is autographed by the likes of Tino Martinez and Pete O'Brien.

I fancy myself a sabremetrics believer. Numbers are cool; nifty multipliers, exciting. However, as a child of the '95 season, I can't help myself from buying into the intangibles and chemistry of it all. Let's face it people: numbers don't win games, Luis Sojo and Doug Strange win games.

I've always loved Junior. I stubbornly believe he will hit 56 homers every year for the rest of the 21st century. Don't be shocked when you see an Ichiro, Beltre, Sexson, Felix, Safeco Field, plus Bavasi's right arm for Griffey Jr. trade proposal at every turn. ...I'll try to spare you from that.

I’m also a Northwesterner. I live in suburban Sammamish. I’m of a relatively normal height. Mike and Travis are really tall. I’ve known Travis since first grade, when the big goof became the man child center of the juggernaut elementary school basketball team, the Dickinson Dragons. We went through a lot in the ensuing 12 years, especially during an infamous ninth grade playoff run (maybe we’ll get to that sometime). Mike and I met in high school and shared a similar experience junior year, buried in classics such as Ethan Frome, The Merchant of Venice, and Word Smart during a grueling advanced English course. Forgive us if we’ve forgotten how to use “verisimilitude” in a sentence.

You can imagine the honor I felt when my gigantic friends asked me to hop on as co-author of this prestigious Mariner-loving enterprise. The sheer magnitude of the readership was enough to send shivers down my scrawny spine. I hope that together we can take this blog where no blog has gone before. I’ll only say this once: I believe that one day, this weblog will have the clout to lift Mt. Rainier from its Northwest soil and drop it on top of Yankee Stadium.

Hope you enjoy our wayward thoughts.

4 comments:

  1. Welcome aboard my well spoken friend, nice to have you with us.

    ReplyDelete
  2. That was hilarious. I'd come up with a witty way of saying how funny it was, but I'd make a fool of myslef after that

    Did anyone else read the one post on "The M's Need to Get?" Weird.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous1:38 PM

    Lovely entry, cowboy. You should get into sportswriting.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Anonymous9:21 PM

    Welcome aboard
    Pete--verisimilitude,eh?? That's waht ;ast year's team was like ,right? Hope to meet you one of these days in Sammamish

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.