Mariners Update

Published 9:00 pm Monday, September 3, 2001

Opponent: Tampa Bay Devil Rays

When: 7:05 p.m.

Where: Safeco Field

TV: Fox Sports Net (cable)

Radio: KIRO (710 AM)

Pitchers: Seattle right-hander Freddy Garcia (15-5, 3.17 earned run average) vs. right-hander Tanyon Sturtze (8-11, 4.70).

Comeback trail: Playing a simple game of catch on Sept. 3 isn’t the way Gil Meche envisioned making his 2001 debut at Safeco Field.

But given what Meche has experienced the past 15 months, it never felt so good.

The right-handed pitcher, who had shoulder surgery last winter, threw for about 10 minutes Monday afternoon to Mariners pitching coach Bryan Price in the outfield.

Meche will spend about two weeks with the Mariners, then report to their training facility in Peoria, Ariz., for the fall instructional league.

“I’m actually looking forward to the instructional league,” he said. “That’s the first time I’ve ever said that, but I just want to pitch.”

Price said he’s well on his way.

“I thought he looked like a normal major league pitcher playing a game of catch, which I couldn’t say last year,” Price said.

Last year, Meche tried numerous changes to his mechanics to solve a mysterious soreness in his arm, with no luck. The team sent him to muscular and vascular specialists with no solid clues, then decided to shut him down at mid-season. After a lengthy period of rest didn’t help, he underwent surgery on Feb. 6 to repair a frayed labrum.

“Last year it was always a case of trying to figure something out,” Price said. “There was always a soreness and I remember how odd that was. You could tell there was something about him that wasn’t normal.”

There’s still occasional soreness, but Meche handles it with the confidence of a patient who is recovering, rather than one who wasn’t sure why he was in pain.

“The surgery was meant to satisfy the problems with his shoulder,” Price said. “But I also think it satisfied a lot of what was going on in his mind.”

“I know what’s going on now,” Meche said. “Last year, just talking to anybody – the players, the media, the coaches – and not really knowing what’s going on, that was definitely a mentally frustrating time.”

The Mariners believe Meche should be at full strength when spring training begins in February.

“The steps I’ve taken this last month show me that I will be,” he said. “The bullpen I threw last week, I was really impressed with what I saw and how I felt. I know it’s there, it’s just a matter of getting that everyday feeling where I go out there and feel good.”

The Hooters guys: They paraded through the corridors of Oriole Park and onto the Mariners’ team bus, then flew across the country to Seattle dressed in the signature outfits of the Hooters restaurant waitresses.

After Mariners players Ryan Franklin, Joel Pineiro and Ichiro Suzuki and coach Dave Myers survived the team’s annual hazing of its rookies on the trip home from Baltimore, the clubhouse reviews were almost unanimous:

Suzuki filled his outfit – skin-tight orange shorts and a barely legal sleeveless tank top – better than the others.

“Ichi, no doubt,” Pineiro said.

“Who looked best? I ain’t saying,” Franklin said.

For most of the trip, it was a display reserved for whistles and catcalls from their own teammates.

“When we were leaving (the stadium) the Baltimore team bus was loading and a lot of their wives got a good look,” Pineiro said.

It was a new tradition thrust upon Suzuki, a rookie from the Japanese League, where such hazing doesn’t happen.

“Ichiro was great,” first base coach John Moses said. “He took it really well and had a good time with it.”

Pineiro took his rookie medicine for the second consecutive year. Last year during a late-season callup from the minor leagues, he had to wear a woman’s dress on a plane ride home, then was forced by the relief pitchers to carry their bubblegum and sunflower seeds to the bullpen in a Barbie backpack the rest of the season.

Ignoring the inevitable: Don’t bother asking manager Lou Piniella how much he’ll rest his regulars before the postseason until it’s certain there will be a postseason for the Mariners.

“You guys are putting the cart before the horse,” he said, lightly scolding a couple of sportswriters in his office Monday. “Right now we’ve just got to continue to play. There’s plenty of time to do what we need to do. We’ve still got some work to do here.”

Still, Piniella didn’t start first baseman John Olerud for the second straight game.

“We’ll get him in there tomorrow,” Piniella said. “Nothing’s wrong. Just a day off.”

Carlos Guillen, who didn’t start over the weekend in Baltimore because of a sore wrist, was in the lineup Monday. Guillen hurt the wrist while sliding into second base last Tuesday against Tampa Bay.

“It had already been sore from a checked swing, but the slide kind of put him over the edge,” trainer Rick Griffin said.

Kirby Arnold