KING 5 and the AP are reporting the M's have fired much-debated General Manager Bill Bavasi. Apparently, the booing worked. Bavasi has been replaced by Lee Pelekoudas, who will be acting on an interim basis, while a GM search is conducted. Under Bavasi this season, the Mariners were the worst team in baseball with a 24-45 record. Last weekend, the M's were swept at home by the second-worst team in the majors, the Washington......

In 1987, the British illustrator Martin Handford creates a cartoon character named Wally for a series of children's books. Renamed Waldo for the American edition, he becomes an icon of pop culture. Meantime, Marie-Eve Gilla moves from graduate school in Burgundy to the Pacific Northwest, becoming the first classically trained French winemaker in the Washington, working at Covey Run and Gordon Brothers before being recruited as general manager for the new Forgeron Cellars in Walla......

The Mariners announced yesterday that Manager John McLaren and General Manager Bill Bavasi will both be back next year. McLaren took over in mid-season, the team was 40-41 under his guidance. 2008 will be Bavasi's fourth year as Mariners GM. Out in blogland, they've been calling for McLaren's head since the M's went on a 15 of 17 losing jag, one of the biggest collapses by a contending team in baseball history. The main complaint:......

Quick, someone come up with a word for the blog you write in order to get the last word in after quitting a job. We're not even going to attempt it because we suck at that sort of thing and there's no need to burn a stick of embarrassment in here. Here's the post-firing tell-all blog of the moment, though, lovingly written by Kevin Ken Vincent, long-time KUOW employee, freshly unemployed: KUOW has always had......

When he named Sam Presti the Sonics' new GM yesterday, owner Clay Bennett also stripped Lenny Wilkens of the title of President and retitled him Vice-Chairman. A source told the Tacoma News Tribune Bennett wanted "to put Lenny out to pasture." Ranching metaphors: just one of the many joys of having your team owned by guys from Oklahoma City.From Wilkens’ unsavory handling of the announcement of his position of president to his perceived mismanagement of......

USS Mariner called Mike Hargrove "delusional" today for his advocacy of going north with 22-year-old pitcher Brandon Morrow on the basis of eight innings of spring training relief work. Hargrove, speaking to the Tacoma News Tribune, defended his stance, saying that people called him an "idiot" for wanting to go north with Manny Ramirez when he managed Cleveland in '94. Good point, Hargrove. Except that you are completely full of shit, as anyone with a......

Seattle Metro Transit is reporting that 2006 was a record year for bus ridership with 103.2 million boardings and for some reason we feel like cheering this news. Yay Metro Transit, you're competently running a bus service for the city of Seattle. Way to go. The release claims that this year's numbers represent a 4.3% increase over 2005 and attributes the increase in ridership to additional jobs in the area - The previous high-ridership......

The current problem with Seattle sports teams, besides the fact that a giant douche bag let our NBA team leave town, is that we don't have any athletes from British Columbia on our rosters. British Columbiainerites are showing that they are a force to be reckoned with, and they have the hardware to prove it. Steve Nash has taken home back-to-back NBA MVP awards, yesterday Justin Morneau won the American League MVP, and in the......

The Melody Unit's Kevin Kelly On a Life Spent in SeattleMusic, Why the Band Never Made It, and Why He's So Ambivalent AboutTheir Latest (Greatest) Album We were getting a little antsy sitting around Kai's Bistro in the U-District, because our interview subject, Kevin Kelly, the leader of the band The Melody Unit, seemed to be running late. Finally, a little confused, we stood up and held a copy of the band's last album, Songs......

As the Mariners continue to stagger through the second week of the season our optimism following the 3-1 start has dropped a bit, okay a huge bit. We may need to take a break tonight since we have spent the last few games with our head in our hands. Tomorrow night Felix pitches, which is always fun to watch, and Friday night there is an interesting pitching match up (at least until the game begins)......

It's funny, because just the other day Seattlest was nattering about composer Adam Guettel and his winning ways on Broadway, and now the Met is jumping up and down in our inbox trying to catch our attention with some "let's eat Seattle's lunch" news. Let's just fire up the Contextualyzer first, so you're up to speed. The Met is old. Old, old, old. However, they have bold new plans, courtesy of their new General Manager......

Kenji Johjima, the Fukuoka Soft-Bank Hawks' .300-hitting, 30-homer-slugging, seven-time Gold Glove winner, is your new Mariner starting catcher, according to the Seattle Times. The Times' Bob Finnegan reports that Johjima will leave the Japanese leagues and sign a three-year contract with the M's. Last year, the Mariners tried seven different catchers, including a 42-year-old, a 21-year-old, two guys named Miguel, and Holden Caulfield. All phoneys. Some in the baseball world suggest that Johjima's unilinguality would......

Yes, Pat Robertson's PR guy has had a busy couple of days, but so has Sonics general manager Rick Sund. On Tuesday, Sund http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/sonics/2002450247_soni24.html">re-signed center Vitaly Potapenko. On Wednesday, he secured the services of backup forward Damien Wilkins. Potapenko will be the Sonics' starting center this season. His backups are rookie Johan Petro, the team's first-round draft pick this year, and Robert Swift, the team's first-round draft pick last year. Neither Petro or Swift, though......

You're looking at the official map of Seattle's Downtown Ride-Free Area. You may not know it, but this kind of thing makes Seattlest mad as hell. We have a dysfunctional relationship with Metro where we just suffer silently. Today we're publicly asking who would like to keep their job and earn praise by accomplishing an essential but heretofore-ignored responsibility of Seattle public transit: Where's a useful freaking map, guys? For god's sake, we just want......

Three B's have killed the Mariners this season--Bavasi, Beltre and Boone. Bill Bavasi, the team's general manager, is the mastermind behind such trades as Carlos Guillen (batting .355 for the Detroit Tigers) for Ramon Santiago (batting .225 for the Tacoma Rainiers), and of last year's free agent signings of Scott Spiezio and Rich Aurila, the pop-out twins. His major signing this year was B number 2, Adrian Beltre, who, after hitting 47 home runs in......