This just in…
The trio of Matt Tuiasosopo, Kanekoa Texeira and Steven Baron — known in entertainment circles as “Hawaiian Punch” — has won the Mariners’ American Idol-like competition this morning.
They performed a near-perfect Haka dance. Mike Sweeney, playing the role of host Ryan Seacrest, said Baron was an absolute doll in his grass skirt and coconuts, although he lost the coconuts by the end of the performance.
The competition didn’t end without a major dispute. The group known as El Cantando Batteria de Venezuela (Guillermo Quiroz, Mauricio Robles and Luis Oliveros) lost by one vote, apparently because catcher Eliezer Alfonzo’s wife broke his cell phone last night and he couldn’t submit a text vote. Alfonzo was visibly steamed afterward, claiming his vote should have counted.
Yes, the team had a high-tech way of voting. Bullpen catcher Jason Phillips stayed in the clubhouse and accepted text voting from players in the multipurpose room where the performances were held.
The judges were Ken Griffey Jr. (Randy Jackson), Eric Byrnes (Ellen DeGeneres) and Ryan Rowland-Smith (Simon Cowell), along with guest judge Ichiro Suzuki (Posh Spice?). Hard to picture Rowland-Smith being a perfect ass, but he mustered up enough of a jerk attitude to tell pitcher Ricky Orta he shouldn’t have used a BeDazzler to decorate his shirt.
Ichiro would hold up signs with such words as “Fantastic” or “Brutal” and speak to the contestants in Japanese. Griffey then would translate into English, although “I think it broke down in the process,” manager Don Wakamatsu said.
Perhaps the most pleasant surprise was the performance by Bad Bodies Swinging Big Bats (beefy first basemen Brad Nelson, Tommy Everidge and Mike Carp).
In a routine they put together at 7 o’clock this morning, they flung bagels into the audience and, at one point, Carp pulled a Burger King Whopper out of his pants. Sweeney called it the most disgusting part of the entire show, although the team liked it enough to vote the Bad Bodies into third place.
The Bad Bodies actually thought they might finish higher in the voting.
“I thought we had the most energy,” Carp said. “I think it was the best performance. But they said they couldn’t hear the lyrics.”
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