Local Sportsball Teams Inch Closer to First Place on First Avenue

Both the Mariners and the Sounders are in second place in their respective divisions, and both played the teams ahead of them last night.

We'd promised a friend we'd go to the Sounders game as they were playing their archrivals, the hated Portland Timbers.

The Sounders dominated throughout, they had more speed than Portland, and more energy. Frenchy Sebastian Le Toux provided much of the latter, he flew all over the field.

By the second half, Portland looked tired and were playing awful defense. Roger Levesque outworked a defender on the wing and sent a crossing pass into the box, Le Toux redirected it home. That was the Sounders' second goal, and Portland never really challenged.

The Sounders pulled within two points of Portland and won the Cascadia Cup.

Just down Occidental at Safeco, the M's knew they had to play the first-place Angels, but they didn't know they'd have to be playing their own manager as well.

New skipper John McLaren did his best to keep the team from winning--by, for instance, pinch-hitting with the team's coldest bat, .198-hitting Richie Sexson, and suicide squeezing with the team's worst bunter.

We lit over to the Elysian Brewery just in time to see our friend nearly get kicked out for screaming "Suck IT!" at the Angels hitters, and then suffer a near mental collapse after J.J. Putz served up a game-tying two-run homer to M's killer Gary Matthews, Jr. with two outs in the ninth.

(Note to Gary Matthews, Sr--you ended your career with the M's in 1987--as a favor to your fans, can you ask your son to ease up just a little bit?)

The rest of the bullpen picked Putz up, though, and the M's eventually managed a run, in the 12th, on a walk-off single by Yuniesky Betancourt.

The M's won two of three in their key series with the Angels, and are now three games back.

The Sounders next game is Saturday vs. Puerto Rico, but you're going to want to go Tuesday when they play MLS team Colorado in the quarterfinals of the US Open Cup.

The M's won two of three in their series with the first-place Angels. They have an off-day today, then Boston comes in over the weekend.