My Complicated Relationship with Mike Zunino , by Bayram Cigerli

My Complicated Relationship with Mike Zunino , by Bayram Cigerli 

My Complicated Relationship with Mike Zunino

Several years ago our Seattle Mariners took a catcher from the University of Florida (his choice of school could have been a clue) with the #3 pick in the draft.  This catcher was going to be special; he could command a pitching staff and had RAW power.  On paper, Mike Zunino was a unicorn for the catching position, he had a glove and bat that were scouted as plus skills.  After being drafted in June, we saw our first glimpse of our top prospect by September, and it looked like Jack Z had finally hit on a high draft pick.

Mike has gone from a can't miss to a, "God I wish he'd just hit .240 and cut back on strike outs."  I began to refer to him as Mike "0-2 Count" Zunino.  It got to a point I felt like I could get him out by peppering the outside corner with my 75+ mph fastball and an 0-2 breaking ball.  He flailed at breaking balls like the 9 hitter who's parents made him play back in 7th grade summer ball.  Zunino became a disappointment and Jack Z was fired; he was on his way to bust territory, and early this year was replaced by a 38 year old catcher and a guy named Tuffy.  I wanted him run out of town and rid our organization of having to wait for him to arrive.

Zunino became the butt of a lot of jokes on my Twitter account for about a year.  He could do nothing right in the box and it was my way (and other fans as well) of dealing with our lineup's easy out.  Although I kept joking about his failures, deep down I felt a little bad.  By all accounts, Mike Zunino is a great human being; someone young athletes should look up to.  It's probably just the whole Gator look, but he reminds me of Tim Tebow; bad at his position, but an exceptional person.  Unfortunately for Mike and Tebow, in sports low level play leads to hatred from fans.  Not hate in the normal sense of the word, but hate nonetheless.  I didn't want to see Mike suffer an injury or fall out of baseball completely, I just wanted him to finish his career away from Seattle and let someone who could go the other way with a pitch take his AB's in the lineup.

Sports hate is funny.  It's something that we all have, and in tense moments it rises and causes us to yell at inanimate objects like TV's or car radios.  I hate Mike Trout.  I hate Jose Altuve.  I hate Kobe Bryant.  I hate Tome Brady.  I think hate is the wrong word; it describes the feeling, but not the intent.  I don't want Mike Trout to stop robbing homeruns, just against the Mariners.  I don't want Altuve to stop leading the league in batting average as one of the Seven Dwarves; just go 2 for 12 in his series against the M's.  I want Tom Brady to fail, but who doesn't, he's a cheater.  As a Mariner fan my pessimism and the last 16 years have brought my sports hate to our own team.  Mike Zunino took the brunt of my sports hate toward the Mariners.  It was easy, he looked lost.

As April turned to May, everything I had said about Mike Zunino, the baseball player, on Twitter and to friends was true; he had hit a career low and was headed to Tacoma.  I pondered on whether DiPoto should have just thrown him into the Taijuan and Ketel Marte deal just to free up space on the 25 man roster.  Something happened down there in Tacoma.  And no not like in 2016 when he came back from Tacoma and mashed for a month before reverting back to what we saw in April of this year.  He was laying off the outside pitches and wasn't missing fastballs when he got them.  Mike Zunino is currently hitting around .220-.230 with 15-16 HRs and had the month of Junino.  The average isn't great, and he still strikes out a bit, but if this is what we get from Zunino in the box from here on out, and mix it with his Gold Glove caliber defense, I will be happy to call Mike Zunino our catcher.  It isn't flashy; it isn't all star caliber; it isn't what he was "supposed" to be, but it's what he has become, and is serviceable for an MLB catcher these days.

My sports hate for Mike Zunino has faded recently (he's still young, there's time for it to return), and I'm left wondering who to reallocate it towards.  Another Mariner?  Double up on Odor?  That evil ginger in Anaheim, Calhoun?  Well there's still time to figure that out, but from now on Zunino has my trust, as a fan (for whatever that counts), to be the general of our defense and keep becoming consistent at the plate; even if it's .230 with occasional 2B and HRs consistent.

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Of the Seattle Mariners Part - 3 , Baseball has helped fill that void. by Bayram Cigerli

Of the Seattle Mariners  Part - 3 , Baseball has helped fill that void.  by Bayram Cigerli 

Baseball has helped fill that void.  I love baseball.  I don’t think there is a more appropriate way to put it than that; I LOVE BASEBALL.  Everything about it: 10 to 9 games, 1 to nothing pitcher’s duels, how teams are put together, what the stats say about players, nostalgia, and looking ahead.  It’s a game I spent years of my life trying to understand and I don’t take that for granted.  Some call it boring, others say it’s dying; I say you have to understand it to appreciate it, and there will always be those who appreciate it.  It’s been around longer than football and basketball and isn’t going anywhere.  It’s a simple game, but at the same time complex.  The idea of it in a broad sense is to hit the ball and keep the other team from hitting the ball.  The intricacies of the game become apparent when you’re standing in the batter’s box with another guy standing 60 feet 6 inches away preparing to hurl a small, hard ball at you.  You know it’s coming, but where and how.  Is the pitcher left or right handed?  Is it coming at your body or head or over the heart of the plate?  Is it going to be three feet outside or behind you?  Is it going to be 90 mph or 70 mph?  Is it going to be a straight fastball or a breaking ball?  Is that breaking ball a slider which runs away from you or a curveball that drops off the table?  All of this has to run through your head before you decide to swing or not, and you have to make that decision in a split second.  And that’s just the batter, there are 9 players in the field on defense making similar split second decisions on every pitch.  Pitchers are constantly playing a game of chess to try and keep the hitters off balance.  Thoughts like, ôthey think I’m going to throw a fastball, so I’m going to throw a curveball...but if they think, I think they know I’m throwing the fastball, then they might think I’m throwing the curve, so I should throw the fastballà÷  That’s only two pitches, what if he had a changeup or slider?  Warren Spahn put it best, ôhitting is timing and pitching is upsetting timing.÷  A quote that appears simple, yet holds multitudes of possibilities.

Baseball is a game that can change in an instant.  One swing of the bat or one pitch can decide a game.  In basketball and football, you can hold a lead and kill clock at the end of the game to secure a victory; there is no clock in baseball.  Each team gets 27 outs.  That’s 27 outs to score more runs than the other team.  No matter if you have the lead going into the 9th or not, you and your opponent still get 3 more outs, and anything can happen until that final out is recorded.  You have to pitch to the other team whether you have a lead or not, you can’t just hold the ball and wait for the clock to hit zero.

So what does all this mean?  What do the Sonics have to do with why I love the Mariners?  Why do I live and breathe with a team that hasn’t made the playoffs since I was 11?  Why did I name my dog Griffey?  Is it insanity or loyalty?  Or a mix of both?  

The Mariners are a constant in my life between April and through September (October someday).  Not always a positive constant, but a constant regardless.  In 2008, the Sonics were taken from me, and moved to Oklahoma City.  They were my constant as a child who grew up playing basketball and watching games with my Grandma, and they were snatched away, by greed and a man who claimed Oklahoma City was a better economic market for a professional sports team than Seattle, who had supported the team for 41 years, along with the Mariners and Seahawks.  That hurt.  That still hurts.  In 1995, Ken Griffey Jr. and the Mariners made an improbable run that kept the team in Seattle and ultimately built Safeco Field, and that didn’t happen for the Sonics.  The experience taught me a deeper meaning of the phrase, ôyou don’t always know what you have until it’s gone.÷ I knew the Sonics leaving would hurt; I prepared for it.  I tried to be a Blazers fan, but even the proximity of Portland couldn’t fill the void of Seattle basketball.  The memories of Gary, Shawn, Nate, Ray, Rashard, Hersey, and on and on and on, were still there and still haunt me to this day.  I don’t know if I will ever be able to attend another NBA game in Seattle, but I do know one thing, and that is that I can still attend a Mariner’s game.  They may be heart-breakers and trash, year in and year out, but they’re my pile of trash and misfortune.  I already lost the Sonics and, I don’t want to see the Mariners go.

  

If it makes me insane to put so much into a team that rewards so little, then I don’t want to be sane.  What they have lacked to give me in wins or championship rings, they have made up for with memories and an undying love for a beautiful game.  So I thank you, Ken Griffey Jr., Dave Niehaus, Edgar Martinez, Jay Buhner, Brett Boone, Ichiro, Felix, Adrian Beltre, Kyle Seager...hell even you Dustin Ackley.  From the bottom of my heart, I thank and appreciate you.   See you at the corner of Edgar and Dave for years to come.  My, Oh My! 

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Of the Seattle Mariners Part - 2 by Bayram Cigerli

Of the Seattle Mariners  Part - 2 by Bayram Cigerli 

It just so happened that during this time, the Mariners had also decided to be a fun team with winning ways.  The year 1995 was the year of the Mariners.  They had icons of the game, along with a future icon.  The team was led by the greatest player to ever grace the diamond: The Kid, Ken Griffey Jr.  They also had the most intimidating pitcher to ever take the hill: The Big Unit, Randy Johnson.  From the infectious smile of baseball’s brightest star, to the terror opposing hitters showed at the thought of Mr. Snappy, the 1995 Seattle Mariners made an improbable run into baseball’s postseason, and it almost never happened.  Early in the season, Griffey, the team’s heart and soul, crashed into the centerfield fence making an superhuman catch to steal extra bases, but shattering his wrist in the process.  The team hit the skids and floundered through the All-Star Break.  The M’s were out of it and had been written off, and then August rolled around.  As the season was winding down, the team went on a run that sparked the moniker, The Refuse to Lose Mariners.  Griffey returned and the Baseball Gods looked down favorably on this group of players that the rest of the league had forgotten about.  They just kept winning and forced a one game playoff with the Angels.  They won and went on to eventually play the Evil Empire from New York.  The series was in the Seattle and the Mariners were in a must win situation.  What happened next is simply known as ôThe Double.÷  ôThe Double÷ is a moment that still sends chills up my back when I see or hear Dave Niehaus belt out his excitement over the air waves.  ôThe Double÷ encompassed the entire 1995 season into a single play...into a single pitch.  With two men on, future Hall of Famer (yes, I said future Hall of Famer), Edgar Martinez stepped to the plate and with one swing of the bat saved baseball in Seattle.  Junior rounded third and the whole state waved him in; the throw was late and The Kid jumped into the arms of his teammates.  A dog pile ensued with sport’s most infectious smile beaming from underneath an 18 year old Alex Rodriguez and a pile of Mariner players; the Seattle Mariners had beat the Yankees. Yes those Yankees.  The same Yankees that have 27 World Series rings.  The same Yankees that had all the money in the world.  The same Yankees that fielded teams involving Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle, Lou Gehrig, Roger Maris, and keep going on, I’ll wait.  The rumors of the team moving had been, ôlined down the left field line,÷  and when Junior scored, support for a new stadium had a sharp uptick.  The Mariners had us excited about baseball, and the state was screaming, ôMy, Oh My!÷

Two years.  That all happened in two years of my life, at a time when I was fostering Big League and NBA dreams.  I still love basketball as a sport, but not like I love baseball.  The NBA took basketball from me, and I don’t know if I will ever get it back.  Sure I have Gonzaga and Husky basketball, but when you grow up with a Shawn Kemp poster hanging on your wall, sleeping in your Gary Payton jersey, and modeling your jump shot after Ray Allen and Rashard Lewis, the Sonics become a part of your life.  A part that has left a void inside me.  

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