Bleacher Report - Articles by Johnny Ballgame

When teams leave town forever- A fan's worst nightmare

Johnny Ballgame — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 06:07:38 -0400

As all sports geeks know- hearts are easily broken when it comes to rooting for your favorite team. Imagine all those poor Boston Red Sox fans that lived between 1919 to 2003 and never saw their team win a championship. Their die-hard fan base was feeling as if they were cursed.

I’ve had my heart broken over sporting events many times.

A tragic event that comes to mind is Dikembe Mutombo embracing the ball while lying on the floor of the Seattle Center Coliseum after the Denver Nuggets defeated the Sonics in the biggest upset in NBA playoff history. Dang, that still hurts me.

That was during the 1993-94 season when Michael Jordan was in his first retirement and pursuing a baseball career. It was basically the only time in which other NBA stars had a decent chance to get a ring during the "Jordan era."

Hakeem Olajuwon and the Rockets took both titles during that time, while leaving greats such as Patrick Ewing, Charles Barkley, Reggie Miller, and Gary Payton (when he was The Glove) ringless.

Losing to the Nuggets that season will always linger in my sports-infested mind. What hurts most was that it was probably the best chance the team has ever had to win a championship during my lifetime.

They did reach the NBA finals in 1996 but faced the Chicago Bulls with their all time best 72-10 record. Everyone knew they had no chance to defeat a hungry duo of Jordan and Scottie Pippen.

The Sonics were the team of my youth. Led by Payton and Shawn Kemp, they won four straight division titles and were a fixture in the playoffs. They won a championship in 1979 but unfortunately I was too young to celebrate.

Keeping faith alive for your teams is what makes us all sports nuts. When faith is gone, hell, I don’t even know what to do.

This leads me to the point of this column. The Seattle Sonics will most likely be leaving the city and moving to Oklahoma City. I know, freakin’ Oklahoma City.

I’m envious of those poor Red Sox fans that suffered through heart ache and never saw a championship. At least they had a team to root for. Sonic fans everywhere will be forced to cope with the loss of a team. This is something Seattle fans have never done.

Sure, we've lost more than our share of star players (Griffey, Randy Johnson, A-Rod, and countless others), but our teams have always fought through it. The Sonics will probably leave after 2010, if not sooner.

I will never root for them once they leave town, too. That would mean I’m supporting Clayton Bennett. The man mostly responsible for moving the team to his home town in Oklahoma.

I realize sports is a business and I actually respect that.

What I just can’t allow myself to accept though is my team leaving town. It’s unacceptable. I don’t want to see Gary Payton’s retired jersey hanging in some arena located in Oklahoma. I don’t want Bennett to take my team’s records, stats, colors or cheerleaders from the Emerald City.

It’s tough for me to root for the Sonics right now because I know they’re leaving and I don’t want to get too attached. I want to buy a Kevin Durant jersey and watch my team rebuild itself into the tradition-rich Sonics I grew up watching. I still won’t do it, though.

Being love sick is the worst thing I know. Whether it’s over a girl or a team leaving town. I hope it doesn’t happen, but anyone who knows anything about the business of the NBA realizes Bennett has his mind set on bringing a pro team to a non major league city.

There's a reason Oklahoma City has no pro teams. It's simply not a major league city, despite what Bennett or David Stern feels.

I’m sure it will hit me when I’m watching SportsCenter and seeing highlights of the new Oklahoma City team. That will be a tough day.

Seattle Mariners: The Dynasty that Wasn't

Johnny Ballgame — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 17:10:37 -0400

I remember a time when my hometown team had the best collection of talent in baseball and winning the World Series seemed possible.

Oh, how times have changed for the Seattle Mariners' fans. Watching the Mariners always reminds me of the team’s glory years, and in my opinion, what should have been a dynasty.

I grew up in the Seattle area and adopted the hometown teams, as any young sports geek would. I don’t have a great story about attending my first game in Yankee Stadium or Fenway Park. My memories were built inside the largest concrete structure in the world (before it was blown up).

Yep, I grew up going to the Kingdome. I remember walking through the tunnel at my first Mariners game, and seeing the bright lights and beautiful green Astroturf—it almost even looked like grass.

I was four-years old at the time and wasn’t the sports purist I am now, which is why I liked Astroturf. I was deprived in that respect. I loved the Kingdome—I remember sneaking beers inside with my friends during high school. Damn, that was easy to do back then.

I remember watching the Mariners when they had no business calling themselves a major-league team. When I was real young, the Mariners were a joke. I remember cheering for guys like Alvin Davis (Mr. Mariner) and Harold Reynolds.

I remember being upset when I heard news that the Mariners traded their best pitcher, Mark Langston, for some guy named Randy Johnson. What were they thinking?

I also remember watching the fortunes of my team change with one at-bat.

I remember watching Ken Griffey Junior’s first big league at-bat on TV. It was in Oakland, against pitcher Dave Stewart, one of the best of his era. Junior hit a double off the wall, and for the glory of this sports geek, that lowly Mariner franchise was never the same.

I listen to people like Bob Costas and Billy Crystal rant about what Mickey Mantle meant to them when they were growing up. I can’t help but feel the same way about Griffey. He was my guy. Hell, he still is.

Griffey went on to become the player of the '90s. He officially gave fans across the country reason to pay attention to the Mariners. He put Seattle on the baseball map. Throughout the '90s, the Mariners put together, arguably, the greatest group of talent on one ballclub in recent memory.

Their upper management did a marvelous job of scouting players, making trades, and signing key free-agents. Not many people cared to notice or remember, but the Mariners of the mid-to-late '90s should have won a World Series or three.

I don’t hate them for it. It’s like hating your puppy for fertilizing the carpet—they didn’t know any better.

Mariners twice had the first pick in the MLB draft (1987, 1993) and took Griffey and Alex Rodriguez. Each would go on to be the player of a decade, Griffey in the '90s and A-Rod in the '00s.

My team would later have a lineup that contained, in the three-through-seven slots: A-Rod, Griffey, Edgar Martinez, Tino Martinez, and Jay Buhner. Beat that, Yankee fans.

Here were A-Rod's stats as a 20-year-old rookie in 1996: .358 BA, 36 HR, 123 RBI, and 215 H. Not too shabby.

By '96, the Mariners' should-have-been dynasty had been built. It was time for winning to take over. They had a future Hall of Fame manager in Lou Piniella calling the shots from the dugout and throwing bases whenever the team needed a boost or comic relief. Only a sports geek could call a base-throwing buffoon a genius, but Piniella is.

The Mariners also had the league's most underrated superstar in Edgar Martinez, who, in my opinion, was the best right-handed batter of his time. Jay Buhner, who hit sixth, averaged 41 home runs per season from ’95-’97.

Don’t forget that the Mariners also had the most dominating left-handed pitcher possibly in baseball history: the Big Unit.

So why didn’t this team win?

I have two theories.

The first was the team’s inability to find a steady bullpen or consistent pitching at the bottom of the rotation. It pains me to say that, because I felt the team did practically everything else right.

They had four, future Hall of Famers in Griffey, A-Rod, The Unit, and Edgar. That should have been enough to make up for their pitching deficiencies. It wasn’t.

The second theory is the hard truth of baseball’s business techniques. During the salary boom of the '90s, it became virtually impossible for most teams to keep their star players. Corporate goons like the Yankees and Red Sox started buying players and offering salaries too high for middle-class teams like Seattle to compete with.

By 1998, the run was basically over. Randy Johnson was traded at midseason. A-Rod would bolt in 2000 for 250 million reasons. People blame him for leaving. I believe the Mariners offered him around 120 million, which was all they could afford

The worst part about A-Rod leaving was that the team was unable to trade him and get anything in return. That’s the harsh reality of the free-agent system the Yankees and Red Sox fans love so much.

This could-have-been-dynasty truly ended in 1999, when Griffey asked to be traded to his hometown Cincinnati Reds. That day ranked right up there with my dog dying.

I’m still not mad at him for wanting to go home. He gave us baseball in Seattle. He was my first sports hero. He built Safeco Field and is the reason my future children will have the opportunity to see natural grass and an outdoor ballpark during their first big-league game.

But oh, what should have been!

Listen to The Johnny Ballgame Show each Thursday at 6:30 PM and Sundays at 3 PM PST on www.kuoi.org.