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Perhaps Oklahoma City would also be interested in a baseball team

OK, probably not — they already have a pretty good triple-A minor league team. So what the heck is going wrong at Safeco Field?

Maybe they just need some home cookin'

Maybe it's a lot worse than that. The Mariners finish a dismal 1-5 road trip.

Seahawks draft pick is a real star — on YouTube, anyway

The National Football League draft this past weekend yielded its usual array of players unknown to all but the growing legions of college-football-talent specialists. The rest of us may not know a long snapper from a red snapper, but we certainly know a YouTube star when we see one

With Safeco gone, what will we call the Field?

Locals may gaze across the landscape past the inexplicably lit-up-all-day-and-night Qwest sports facility and see that other Elysian field: Safeco, where the Mariners play. This week, in reference to the latter, we hear or read: "You will not be going to Liberty Mutual Field, I can assure you of that."

The Mariners in the playoffs? What you might miss while obsessing over the Sonics

Intergalactic visitors, depending on their reference point, might view our old globe upside down. Upon closer inspection maybe they would see that the most viable country just now is in what we dismissively call the Southern Hemisphere. Brazil has no debt, plenty of oil, sustainable growth and — most promising of all — no New York Yankees or Boston Red Sox, much less the Los Angeles Angels and Seattle Mariners.

Reveling in ex-M's failings

Baseball schadenfreude, the best thing since Monday-morning quarterbacking, is sort of an anti-national pastime. It means perusing the box scores and reveling in the otherwise lamentable performances of former members of the Seattle Mariners organization.

M's win three-game series but lose it on injuries

The Seattle Mariners had a base to give during the third inning Sunday (April 13), what with Los Angeles Angels runners on second and third and two out. The not-so-angelic batter? It just had to be Bad Vlad Guerrero, aka, Nightmare on Brougham Street (looking even more horror-movie worthy this year with hair that would scare Javier Bardem).

Mariners update: six games, many questions

With six games elapsed, your 2-4 Seattle Mariners may have left you with more questions than answers, though, perhaps mercifully, they aren’t necessarily the questions and answers anybody expected.

Mariners win, 5-2

Spring training went into extra innings today as the Seattle Mariners forestalled the start of the 2008 season until the sixth frame. Then they scored for the first time, eventually putting away the Texas Rangers 5-2 in front of a capacity crowd, many fans obviously glad that a roof kept away every kind of weather except the baseball kind.

The Mariners in the playoffs this year: a big if

A promising roster means the playoffs are within the realm of possibility, unless individually, the players don't play — or aren't positioned to play — to their strengths.

Mariners may make mincemeat of Morse

With but a week left before the Seattle Mariners commence the 2008 campaign at Safeco Field (March 31), perhaps it's fair to ask whether spring-training stats and performances are accurate harbingers of the actual baseball season.

More phoniness than hope in the air this 'spring'

There's something patently phony about major-league baseball spring training, not the least of which (as we know today, March 13, in drippy-and-50° Seattle) is that most of it takes place during winter.

As home opener approaches, an eye on the box scores

Local baseball patrons and mavens are inclined to try to keep one eye on the calendar this time of year and another on the daily box scores from Seattle Mariners Cactus League games in Arizona. Such optical acrobatics reveal, of course, that the March 31 home opener is approaching, with hopeful fans imagining the first playoff season since the 116-win campaign of 2001.

The Huskies had the three-pointer down this year, but twos and ones, not so much

As the University of Washington Husky men's basketball team heads to the Bay Area this week for two of its final three league games, maybe players ought to be thinking about signs of a brighter future rather than a less-than-successful past. The most conspicuous sign being waved in the student section of Hec Edmundson Pavilion last Saturday, Feb. 23, read: "Thanks, Ryan, for three years of threes."

Featured on TV this weekend, it's the NBA in decline

The ongoing paradox about the National Basketball Association's annual All-Star Game is that defense is considered offensive. That's why the final score of the Sunday, Feb. 17, spectacle (TNT, 5:30 p.m.) may resemble the Obama-Clinton delegate count.

Here and elsewhere, the predicament facing the NBA and its gradually failing franchises ought to underscore (if such a term is even appropriate for an NBA all-star game) the desperation and absurdity of staging a weekend of "nothing's-wrong-here" frivolity. This would be the case even if it weren't all happening in, of all places, New Orleans.

Another arena, more history

Another standing-room-only crowd was crammed into yet another local arena Sunday, Feb. 10, and Barack Obama had nothing to do with it. Many of us were at Hec Edmundson Pavilion to witness the best team in Pac-10 men’s basketball, few of us imagining that it would prove to be the Washington Huskies. The Dawgs may well have the proverbial rude awakening on their Valentine's Day date with Oregon, but for now the overachievers will always have a nearly wire-to-wire 71-61 win over the UCLA Bruins for boasting purposes years from now.

Ivy League star power

At precisely 11:30 a.m. on Friday, Feb. 8, a TV viewer with picture-in-picture options could watch simultaneous broadcasts featuring perhaps the two most famous American blonde women with Ivy League connections. NorthWest Cable News had Hillary Clinton (Yale Law) speaking to a campaign crowd in Tacoma. Sibling station KING-TV (5), meanwhile, welcomed Paris Hilton, a guest on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. Hilton's Ivy League claim? Just two days earlier, she'd been pegged Woman of the Year by the Harvard Lampoon and her visit to the hub of higher learning included a frat party and other fun stuff. "Harvard is hot," Hilton observed, and who would know better?

Err a 'Zona

Some of us huddling in our Northwest homes Saturday, Jan. 26, awaiting the evidence of yet another questionable snow warning were warmed as noon approached with the prospect of the University of Washington Husky-Arizona Wildcat men's basketball game promised on Fox Sports Northwest. Fans didn't count on a broadcast delay of more than half an hour while the network finished coverage of the two-overtime North Carolina-Maryland women's tiff, which doesn't traditionally draw a lot of audience interest in the Pacific Northwest.

Hoop hopes are high for the Huskies, but the Sonics seem like goners

The University of Washington men's team is showing promising signs of turning around the season. The Sonics seem to have promised to perform as poorly as possible to hasten an exit to Oklahoma.

To the bitter-cold end, Mike Holmgren plays it safe

It's fourth and two, there are 12 minutes left, and you're down by 22 points. Punt or go for it? Typically, Holmgren punts.

Free-thrown for a loss

Classes start Monday, Jan. 7, at the University of Washington. Perhaps profs should receive a campuswide edict to make all students first report to a gym, where the first one to shoot better than five for 13 from the free-throw line would receive a full scholarship and a place on the men's basketball team.

The Seahawks interrupt a national sob story

The inspired-by-tragedy Redskins were no match. Next nationally hyped playoff opponent: Green Bay.

Seahawks: They are definitely not Giants

Despite the fact they are both playoff-bound and have identical records, there's just no comparison. The Giants, after all, nearly beat a 16-0 team. The Seahawks lost to a 4-12 team.

Ray Allen back in the house, briefly

Celtics show a packed Seattle SuperSonics crowd how it's done.

2007 in review: 10 to remember from the wide world of sports

It was come and go time for sports stars, coaches and of course, a whole team.

Seahawks practically stroll to victory

Hey, at least there's one successful pro sports franchise in town. What's coming between now and the playoffs...

A quarter mile's worth of punts

It's not often that Seattle Seahawk fans get treated to a game-long Ryan Plackemeier highlight film, but that was the case against Carolina Sunday, Dec. 16. The most memorable aspect of the Hawk 13-10 loss was the Seattle punter thumping on fourth down to end his club's first eight possessions. Old-timers would later say they couldn't recall such futility since they last toted up Liz Taylor's attempts at successful marriages. The punter moved the ball about a quarter mile. The rest of the Hawks (9-5) were good for 280 yards, many of those gathered during a meaningless TD drive as time expired.

Pre-steroids athletes: It couldn't be so

A former Portland boy wonders — but only for a moment — what performance-enhancing drugs might have done for workaday, obscure heroes like Mickey Sinnerud.

A Seahawks dynasty by default

When your opponents are 12-27, juggernaut is not quite the right term. But the fact is the Seahawks have now won a fourth consecutive division title.

If not for television, a W for UW

Those of us who were present with two eyes ranged from the hoi polloi to the highest echelons of state public life: at least one former guv (Booth Gardner) and the University of Washington's omnipresent Mark Emmert, "one of the best [college] presidents in the whole damn country," according to UW regent Bill Gates Sr., borrowing from sports-programming parlance. It didn't matter, however, that the best and worst of us who were two-eyed witnesses Saturday at Hec Edmundson Pavilion thought Justin Dentmon's buzzer lay-up beat the clock. All that mattered was the judgment of a dispassionate cyclops: the television camera recording the event for Fox Sports Northwest. Even after the game refs allowed the scoreboard at the UW basketball court to read UW 76, Pittsburgh 75, the officiating crew members had another gander at the recorded last play. Then they had a few more.

The UW prez now examines Ty Willingham's 11-25 record

The University of Washington Huskies football offense looked formidable the first time it was shown this season, and such was the case on the final occasion. Unfortunately, first appearances, as many divorcees and used-car buyers know, can be deceiving. Yes, the "O" looked pretty promising that first time out: last spring at the annual intra-squad game. The last time, Saturday night, Dec. 1, in Honolulu, the Dawgs hustled up a 21-0 lead against unbeaten Hawaii, mainly on turnovers and an impressive running game. But the now 12-0 Hawaii Warriors prevailed as an intoxicatingly hot Saturday night in paradise became a cold-sober Sunday morning in Seattle. The Huskies failed to score during the second half, losing 35-28 and finishing another bad-Dawg season 4-9.

Paying the SuperSmart to watch the SuperSmarter

The conceit has been that if you're rich you must be smart. This even applies to those who actually happen to look kind of stupid. Think of Ebenezer Scrooge, Scrooge McDuck, or their modern equivalent, Clay Bennett. The latter, undeniably wealthy and stupid-looking, in fact may be a brilliant lead owner of the Seattle SuperSonics. Just look at what he accomplished merely by having his management guys free the team of unneeded shooting guard Ray Allen and expendable forward Rashard Lewis, the two Sonics marquee mainstays of the past few seasons. Not only did he help make Allen's new club, the 11-2 Boston Celtics, better than it's been since the Larry Bird years. He also raised the Lewis-led Orlando Magic to perhaps the best team in the National Basketball Association.

An ordinary, average, mediocre sports town

The unremarkable Seahawks continue their midling march to the playoffs. And the other local teams are totally unexcellent, too.

The Huskies and Hawks both stuff some Bears

Both teams gain some redemption with wins at home over the weekend. The Dawgs enter next week's Apple Cup at 4-7, while the Seahawks lead the NFC West with a 6-4 record.

The Seahawks don't blow it

The mighty wind of the NFC West is at their backs as the team, with only an air attack, breezes to the playoffs.

There is hope on the gridiron, and even the Sonics won't soon be out of it

Three reasons for Monday-morning quarterbacks to be optimistic:

  • Yes, the Washington Husky gridders (3-7) have lost to four top-25 teams (Oregon, Ohio State, Arizona State, and USC), but they also beat one (Boise State, otherwise undefeated at 9-1).
  • Yes, the Seahawks can lose to the 49ers tonight and still have a share of the division lead at 4-5.
  • No, the 0-7 Sonics (aka, the Oklahoma Soonics) can't possibly be mathematically eliminated from the postseason until at least January.

Will they start charging half price for tickets?

Seattle has become something of a half-assed sports town, and that half happens to be the first. On Sunday, Nov. 4, both the Seahawks and the Sonics were competitive going into the second halves of games against, respectively, the Cleveland Browns and Los Angeles Clippers. Late during both games, the other club pulled ahead. Sound familiar?

The man's got wants and needs

The Sonics open a season of discontent, or discontinuance, or something — no one's quite sure, maybe not even the lead owner, Okie Clay Bennett.

Renovate Husky Stadium? Banish them to Qwest Field

Or perhaps a high-school stadium. In any event, the University of Washington has a football program in trouble, and has been for a long time, and venue would seem to be the least of the school's problems.

Experienced at the 'fitty' yard line, even the Rams sounded good

The Seahawks sounded even better, but then, they lead the NFC West with a 4-3 record.

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Death by sun! Film at 11

If you watch local TV news, there's always something to worry about. Take this week's weather: sunny, warm ... and apparently a coiled snake ready to strike! Local stations are famous for over-hyping storms as reporters lean into Alki breezes as if they're the next Katrina or race up to Snoqualmie Pass to prove that — you won't believe this scoop — it's snowing in the mountains in the middle of winter! But it's not enough to exaggerate rain and wind: A little bit of sun is enough to spread alarm.

The P-I's D. Parvaz will head to Harvard

Your chance to join the Mod Squad

Arts Beat »

Capitol Hill Arts Center goes home-shopping

The cultural institution is looking for a new home, hoping to stay as an anchor of Capitol Hill creativity.

What's killing small theaters? Paying the rent

A dissent on Rauschenberg, darling of the avant garde

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Business / Technology »

Boeing Machinists re-elect the current leadership

A reform slate of candidates called the Unity Coalition was defeated by a wide margin by members of the International Association of Machinists, the union representing Boeing factory workers.

Paine Field attracts the interest of an airline, which riles foes of commercial service

Calif. winemaking patriarch Robert Mondavi died today at age 94

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Flip Side » Hillary Clinton.

Hillary Clinton, will you please go now!

Flip Side: With apologies to Dr. Seuss and Maureen Dowd.

An alternative reality show

John Moe: Sorry, Seattle, I'm moving away

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