Today’s game
Opponent: Cleveland Indians
When: 1:10 p.m.
Where: Safeco Field
TV: Fox Sports Net
Radio: KOMO (1000 AM)
Pitchers: Seattle right-hander Carlos Silva (4-11, 5.46 earned run average) vs. left-hander Cliff Lee (12-2, 2.31).
Grady’s guys
Four men sat in the first row behind the visiting dugout at Safeco Field on a spectacular blue-sky Saturday.
To them, the sun shined directly on Cleveland Indians All-Star Grady Sizemore.
Bob Smithson, Lou Stevenson, Gary Axtell and Tom Gaffney — who all helped shape Sizemore during his school years in Everett — watched proudly as the former Cascade High School star faced the Seattle Mariners.
Smithson, who coached baseball for 14 years at Cascade, visited with Sizemore in the Indians’ dugout before the game.
“The first two years he came back here as a major leaguer, we didn’t have a chance to talk a little bit,” Smithson said. “But this has given me a great opportunity to sit down with him and talk for a few minutes.”
Stevenson coached Sizemore’s summer league teams, Axtell is the former principal at Cascade and Gaffney is a former American Legion coach.
They saw him make numerous great plays in baseball, football and basketball, but perhaps their best memory of Sizemore’s high school years was the way he carried himself around his classmates.
Smithson will never forget seeing Sizemore, then a high school senior, after he’d been drafted by the Expos in 2000.
“Walking down the halls at the high school, he didn’t expect the waters to part and people to be in awe of him,” Smithson said. “He was just another guy in the high school hallway, although he’d just got $2.1 million to sign a contract.
“On a daily basis, he was as modest as he could be. He wasn’t one of those high school jocks who expected people to be in awe of him and worship him. He was an everyday, normal guy at the high school level. That’s what impressed me most.”
Putz update: Mariners manager Jim Riggleman said closer J.J. Putz probably would come off the disabled list before today’s game. Riggleman, pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre and interim GM Lee Pelekoudas planned to meet late Saturday afternoon to discuss the situation.
“I’d say there’s a good chance we’ll activate him,” Riggleman said.
Putz pitched 1 2/3 hitless innings Friday night for the Class AAA Tacoma Rainiers against Tucson in what he hoped would be his final rehab outing after being on the DL more than a month because of a hyperextended right elbow.
Of note: Bryan LaHair’s first major league start resulted in a forgettable 0-for-3 performance at the plate — with one walk — but a memorable day nonetheless with his wife and father at the ballpark. Before the game, he stood behind the batting cage as he and his father, Norman, posed for a photo together. … The Mariners allowed seven doubles in a game for the first time since May 18, 2007 against the Tigers. … Sizemore’s four walks Saturday were a career-high.
Kirby Arnold, Herald Writer
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