Marinerds, etc.

Technically, there's two days left until Mariners Opening Day -- Saturday and Sunday, and then the game is on Monday afternoon -- but whatever, this is Friday Foto, so I'm cheating and just finishing the countdown now.

Did anyone actually enjoy this series? I thought it was an incredibly cool idea when I first started putting it together, and I think it's neat to look at the whole month's worth at once, but since I'm not psychic, I have no idea whether anybody else does. I really should figure out how to put up a poll one of these days to find out which stuff I should spend more or less effort producing here, especially going into the new season. (Marinerds, Season 3: 50 Ways To Ream Your Roster)

Wow. One more weekend, and then another six months of baseball! I'll be in section 143 at Safeco for Opening Day, or you can find me before the game with my huge camera stalking Brandon Buckley Rich Harden.



I simply didn't have a good enough shot of Tsuyoshi Shinjo, so instead I went with switch-hitting Yokohama outfielder Tatsuhiko Kinjoh. It rhymes! Kinjoh was a batting champion as a rookie, and was once the future hope of Yokohama, but has gone through ups and downs since, most recently having an off year in 2006.


Kenji Johjima is the catcher for the Seattle Mariners. I think he had a pretty solid first year in Seattle after his tenure as an all-star slugging catcher in Japan. It's just a shame I didn't stop hating the Hawks until after he left them. Alas.


Nobuhiko Matsunaka is the first baseman for the Softbank Hawks. He's simply an awesome baseball player. He was Japan's most recent Triple Crown winner in 2004, and even in his "down" seasons offensively he still wins batting titles.


The greatest baseball player to ever wear #4. The Luckiest Man.


Michael Cuddyer is yet another one of those magical Twins players who suddenly came out of nowhere and took the AL by storm. He moved from being an iffy backup third baseman into being a simply smashing outfielder -- smashing every baseball that came his way.


Hirokazu Ibata is the best shortstop in Japan and has been for several years, but people tend not to notice because he plays for Chunichi and because he doesn't pound home runs. He pretty much does everything else you could ever want a player to do, though -- get on base, score runs, turn bazillions of double plays, field everything that comes anywhere near him. His only real downside is that he uses DJ OZMA's "アゲ♂アゲ♂EVERY☆騎士" as his at-bat music.


Blessed with looks and charisma that rival those of several popular TV stars in Japan (see his recent Adidas commercials), Tsuyoshi Nishioka is also one of the most exciting young baseball players in the NPB, constantly dueling with the Hawks' Kawasaki for most stolen bases, best fielding, best smile, and most crazy screaming female fans.


This is cheating, I'm sure, to sneak yet another NPB player in here under the guise of an MLB player. But, I happened to be sitting 9 rows back from the field during an Indians game in July 2005 where Jeff Liefer was the DH, and he had two hits and scored a run. He only got 6 more hits that year and I completely forgot about him until I was in Japan a year later and he was mashing baseballs all over the place.


(All of these were taken by me in 2005 and 2006. Years/Stadiums -- Kinjoh: 2006, Yokohama. Johjima: 2006, Safeco. Matsunaka: 2006, Miyagi Fullcast. Gehrig plaque: 2005, Yankee Stadium. Cuddyer: 2005, Metrodome. Ibata: 2006, Hiroshima. Nishioka: 2006, Chiba Marine. Liefer: 2005, Safeco.)

Padilla, Padilla, Padilla -- that's all folks! See you at Safeco!

I actually have tickets to Mariners Opening Day at Safeco Field on April 2 now. I wonder if it will sell out? Never underestimate the power of 50,000 Bremertonians.

Anyway, in our last segment of the countdown, we had counted down to 16. So here's another week worth of numbers, as we're down to about 9 days until Opening Day. Woohoo!



Koichi Ogata is a veteran outfielder for the Hiroshima Carp. In the grand history of Carp players having ambiguous names, he used to share his name with a Giants outfielder, which is not nearly as bad as former Carp outfielder Takuya Kimura sharing his name with a SMAP member, or current Carp rookie pitcher Yuki Saitoh sharing his name with the Handkerchief Prince.


Michael Young is a very rich man. Er, I mean, he's a shortstop for the Texas Rangers.


Yasuhiro Ichiba is a pitcher for the Tohoku Rakuten Kansas City Royals Golden Eagles. He was a highly bribed prized college prospect back in the day, but sadly has still not lived up to his hype potential, and with an FIP of 4.68 to go with his real-life 4.78 and 9-23 record in the last two years, it's unclear whether one can really blame it on Rakuten.


Mike Morse is a bench bat for the Seattle Mariners, as I'm not really sure where he'd fit in with the team right now otherwise. He hit a home run on his birthday yesterday, though. May the Morse be with you!


Okay, so this isn't really Sal Fasano. But back at the start of 2006, when Fasano was extremely popular in Philadelphia, and Billy Wagner had decided to go sign with the Mets, there was quite a bit of animosity towards His Lowness. One of Sal's Pals got creative in recycling his Wagner #13 jersey, and I just thought it was too funny.


Gary Matthews is also a rich guy. Unlike Michael Young, he no longer plays for the Texas Rangers, but instead for our other dire divisional rivals, the Anaheim Angels.


Kevin Millar's a dork, but for some reason I've always sort of liked him. For one, his career's a great story in itself. For two, ever since I saw him on Queer Eye For The Red Sox, I can't see him without thinking of funny scenes from that show. Not many ballplayers could get their back waxed on national TV and get hit on by Carson Kressley and still have a good laugh over it.


(All of these were taken by me in 2006. Young, Morse, Matthews, and Millar were taken at Safeco; Ichiba was taken at Miyagi Fullcast, Ogata at Hiroshima Municipal Stadium, and the Fasano fan was at Citizens Bank Park.)

By the way, I already have #1 - #8 pretty much picked out, so if anyone wants to try to take a guess at them before I post them, feel free. Keep in mind that it has to be someone I was actually able to get a decent shot of their uniform number, which should rule out a few "obvious" choices.

Opening Day at Safeco Field is on April 2, 2007. In our last segment of the countdown, we had counted down to 23. So here's another week worth of numbers, as we're down to about 16 days until Opening Day. Woohoo!

(I had several choices for each of these numbers, but tried to go for a nice variety of teams.)



I bet I know who you all thought would be here for #16, but alas, I think he was eaten by David Wells, who has been known to devour the Mariners batting order from time to time.


Since we won't have Darin Erstad to kick around in the AL West anymore, I figured it was worth putting him and his gritty knee brace in here to make up for the lack of a proper #16. Though, who knows, he seems to be taking pretty well to the White Sox so far, eh. Maybe this is all a complex plot to get revenge on AJ Pierzynski.


Ben Zobrist is one of those scrappy guys that for some reason I decided to like, even if the rest of the M's blogosphere hates him for making a beautiful diving catch of an Ichiro liner that should have given Felix a win at a Devil Rays game last year instead of having Richie Sexson clobber Seth "Closer to Fine" McClung in extra innings.


Just say the word, oh! Scu-scu-scutaro!

(No, the theme for this week is not scrappy white guys. Shut up.)


In all fairness, I wanted to put another shot from the Huston Street Dummy Incident here, but then I wouldn't have any Mariners in the mix this week, and that wouldn't be fair to our super-intellectual closer JJ Putz.


Lefty slugger pitcher Andy Pettitte, shown here taking batting practice, did manage to have a higher batting average than Scott Spiezio in 2005.


Tomoya Satozaki is the catcher for the Chiba Lotte Marines and is also one of my favorite baseball players in the entire world. If I'm a Marinerd, he's a Marinedork.


(All of these were taken by me in the last two years. Wells, Zobrist, Scutaro, and Putz were all taken at Safeco in 2006; Erstad at Safeco in 2005; Pettitte at Citizens Bank Park in 2005, and Satozaki at Chiba Marine Stadium in 2006.)

Opening Day is on April 2, 2007. As of last Friday's entry there were 30 days left or so. Now there's only 23! Where did the last 7 days go? Time flies like a baseball!

(Couldn't keep up with the ex-Mariners theme, so here's just some random pictures I've taken of numbers.)


Ben Broussard is the current Mariners 1B/OF/DH/guitarist. He's a vast improvement over the last rockstar to wear #23 for the team.


Danny Haren is a pitcher for the Oakland Athletics. He never has a bad hair day, even when pitching in Seattle.


Shuuichi Murata is the third baseman for the Yokohama Bay Stars. He can really smash the tar out of a baseball, but he needs to someday have less strikeouts than hits in a season.


Naoki Matoba is a catcher for the Fukuoka Softbank Hawks. He has the unlucky fortune to be an extremely good catcher and an extremely bad hitter, who had to replace an extremely good hitting catcher named Kenji Johjima.


Motonobu Tanishige is the catcher for the Chunichi Dragons. He has quietly been one of the best catchers in the history of Japanese baseball. Someday people might even actually notice.


Raul Ibanez is the left fielder for the Mariners. Raul enjoys hitting home runs, throwing people out at home plate, and making statheads who thought his contract extension was a bad idea eat their words.


Chris Carpenter is a pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals. He spends most of his time mowing down National League hitters and making Gil Meche wonder what's wrong with his labrum.

(All of these were taken by me in 2006. Broussard, Haren, and Ibanez pictures were taken at Safeco Field; Carpenter picture was taken at PNC Park, Murata was taken at Yokohama Stadium, Matoba at Miyagi Fullcast Stadium, and Tanishige at Hiroshima Municipal Stadium.)

Every day on the Rattler Radio blog, he has a "countdown to opening day" and a number and a player that represents that number.

I thought it'd be funny to do something like that here today, except as I started to search through my hard drive for not-yet-uploaded pictures I'd taken of guys wearing the number of days left, I realized I wasn't actually sure which way is the proper way for counting this sort of interval.

Mariners Opening Day at Safeco Field is April 2, 2007.

Today is March 2, 2007.

How many days are there until Opening Day?

If you count from tomorrow until the day before Opening Day, there are 30 full days in between now and Opening Day. The most recent ex-Mariner to wear #30 was Aaron Sele.


Aaron Sele is now in spring training camp with the Mets as an NRI, where he just watched his former Mariners teammate Clint Nageotte ninja the win in a Grapefruit League game today.

Now, isn't it sort of cheating to say "days until Opening Day" and not count today, since today has barely started? Therefore, I can see an argument saying that there are 31 days until Opening Day. The most recent ex-Mariner to wear #31 was Francisco Cruceta.


Francisco Cruceta was claimed off waivers by Texas back in October, and is now probably in the Rangers camp trying to get Mike Young to buy everyone a round of tequila.

Theoretically, if you're just going by 24-hour chunks of time, though, one could come up with an argument for having to count both today AND April 2nd towards the count, because it's actually slightly more than 31 days from right now until the time the first pitch will be thrown at Safeco Field. And well, we all know who the most recent ex-Mariner to wear #32 was...


Chris Snelling was traded to the Washington Nationals with Emiliano Fruto for Jose Vidro in December, and is now in spring training camp with them, hoping to win out in the Battle of the Outfielders, and in the meantime still providing great one-liners when writers interview him:

Q: Do you surf?
A: I've tried. I'm not really good at it, especially after seven knee surgeries.