First off, I wish them well. I really do.
We need a party along about now. Too bad I won’t be there. I’ve never been on baseball’s bandwagon, not even this year. It’s too late to join the Mariners party now.
This is an early warning. While the rest of our known world talks nothing but M’s this week, I’ll seem curiously silent.
That’s because I don’t get it. That’s because I don’t watch it.
Playoffs? Who are they playing?
That’s OK. I can read it in the paper — if I have time.
I have felt all alone this baseball season. It was the oddest summer. I’d be in my backyard and I’d hear them, through screen doors and windows, glued-to-the-tube fans, shouting and cheering.
I tried to keep up. There was some guy named Ichiro, I heard about him, and something about bobbleheads. There was that All-Star Game — I think I saw one inning of it — and that Ripkin fellow.
Mostly, I ignored it. I had the same reaction when "Star Wars" opened in 1977. I got so tired of hearing how great it was that I didn’t see it for 10 years. Not a bad movie, was it?
I discovered Friday that there are others out there who don’t care. There’s a whole colony of aliens on Planet Mariners.
There’s Chuck Wilson, 69, who teaches computer classes at the South County Senior Center in Edmonds.
Although he’d like the team to go all the way, he hasn’t watched a game this year. And he’s retired, with all the time in the world.
"I like how they can get it down to less than two minutes on the news — and a lot of that is showing the temper tantrums," Wilson said.
There’s Bryan Mounsey, the 29-year-old manager of La Pointe Spa in Arlington.
"I’m completely out of the loop as far as the Mariners are concerned," Mounsey said. "I hope they win the World Series, but it’s not going to change my life.
"I actually find baseball rather boring, all that looking around and spitting," he said.
He hasn’t seen the Mariners, but he did go to a California Angels game once. It confirmed his bias — boring.
I agreed with Mounsey. I used to take books to the Kingdome. We’d have these discussions, my husband and I.
Baseball is OK, I’d tell him, when they hit and run and score a lot. But those 1-0 games, forget it. He’d say it was a thinking game, a mental battle between batters and pitchers. I’d tell him that watching people think was as entertaining as seeing paint dry.
So we disagreed on this tiny point, this thing called the American pastime.
My son, hearing I was looking for folks who aren’t fans, had a stroke of genius.
"Find some vegetarians," he deadpanned. It made me laugh, but I didn’t trust his theory. I know one loyal M’s fan, Herald writer Sharon Salyer, who’s an even more loyal vegetarian.
But sure enough, the kid was right. I wandered into the Sno-Isle Natural Food Co-Op in Everett Friday and hit the jackpot.
Employee Sarah Rushing, 28, said, "I’d like to get paid to chew and scratch myself, too," when I brought up the Mariners’ magic season.
She said she’d "kind of heard" the team was doing well, but added, "I don’t watch any sports and I rarely watch TV."
And no, she doesn’t eat any meat, either.
Kerrie Janik, 25, who was stocking shelves with organic treats, has been to one M’s game. "The cute guys there," on the field and in the stands, were what she liked, "more than the game."
Shopper LuAnn Fino, 47, is more than bored by baseball. The Everett woman, who works in the Federal Building in downtown Seattle, became livid at the very mention of the M’s.
"I know who they are," she said. "I know where their stadium is. People said ‘No, we don’t want a stadium. No, no, no.’ And my office looks right out at their stadium.
"People are getting paid that much for playing games, while teachers are not getting paid anything," Fino said angrily. "I have a low tolerance for the Mariners."
Jeepers, guess she won’t be watching those playoffs.
By the way, she does eat chicken and fish, and likes rodeo, too.
Co-Op clerk Anita Stone, 36, said she and her husband, Alastair, "don’t even know what the World Series is."
"We do active sports, hiking and biking. We’d rather read, or play outside," Stone said.
Good news for us, Anita.
For the next few weeks, while all of Washington watches baseball, we can play anyplace we like.
We can go to the movies, ride the ferry, take in a concert, go shopping. There will be no lines, no crowds, nobody out there — nobody but the vegetarians and me.
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