Your Seattle Mariners played their biggest series in four seasons this week. With a chance to overtake the first place Angels if they could win three games, the Mariners won zero games. They got outscored 24-8. Ever see that thing they do at the zoo where hippos eat pumpkins? It was like that. Much of the blame is gonna come down on Mariner manager John McLaren, who took the interesting step of using his worst......

Come with us back to our teenage years, will you? Then, the only visiting teams that drew any supporters to M's games were the Yankees and the Blue Jays. Damn it was annoying, to have Mariner fans outnumbered--and we mean this literally--outnumbered--at home games. The Jays no longer draw well, now that, in the A.L. East, they are basically impotent onlookers as the powerful teams battle for supremacy. (Call them the Canada of baseball). Now......

Fueling speculation that the 2007 Mariners ad slogan may be "Mariner Baseball: Wanna Pitch?", the M's signed the author of the 465,629th best-selling book on Amazon.com to a three-year, $24 million contract tonight. Author, searching-eyes-possessor, and 36-year-old right-handed starter Miguel Batista, best known for his work with the Arizona Diamondbacks Writers' Workshop, is the newest Mariner. He won 11 games last year as a starter with the D-backs, after a one-year stint as the Blue......

In yesterday's NL Division Series game vs. the Mets, the Dodgers' Jeff Kent and J.D. Drew got tagged out at home on the same play (video available here). Your loveably loseable Seattle Mariners also once "accomplished" this, in a 1985 game against the Blue Jays, but theirs was even weirder. After a run-down of the players involved, we give you the report from the original Retrosheet box score: Dramatis Personae: Phil Bradley: Mariners leftfielder......

Pass on local boys Tim Lincecum and Travis Snider, instead selecting RHP Brandon Morrow from Cal, who supposedly throws 99 mph. Watch video of him here. Lincecum went 10th to the Giants. It's rumored that he could be in their bullpen by summer's end. Jackson (Mill Creek) High's Travis Snider went 14th to the Blue Jays.......

Friday night, after watching his team lose their fourth game in a row, Mariners Manager Mike Hargrove boiled over. "I was hot, and I let it go," said the manager. "If I had a nickel for every bad word I threw out there, I could retire." Based on Hargrove's age and current salary, a retirement calculator estimates that he will need approximately $5,740,000 to retire at his current standard of living. At a nickel......