Bench Coach-less Mariners Attempt to Sail On

The Mariners fired bench coach Ron Hassey yesterday. This puts the team in quite a quandary, according to a P-I story.

The Mariners are up in the air about whether they will have a new bench coach for the final few weeks of the season or if they will just make do.

Just make do? Without a bench coach? But how? The bench coach performs a very important function, don't you know. Again, from the P-I.

Bench coaches tend to be the manager's sounding boards and surrogates, and they are the ones who fill in when the manager is ejected midgame.

Good GOD! Without a bench coach, Hargrove might not have a sounding board to stop him from, say, batting his light-hitting shortstop third, or not pinch-running for his slowest runner when said runner is the winning run, or having his best pitcher to throw to the bullpen catcher while his worst pitches to actual batters in a one-run game!

But of course he's already done those things. So prepare yourself for a five-man lineup, or Richie Sexson in centerfield, or God knows what other abominations, when the M's play Kansas City tonight at 5:10. Which is in itself an abomination.

KSTW will be televising the game to an audience consisting of the players' families and people whose remote controls conked out after the 4pm My Wife and Kids rerun.