Reliving 2001

SEATTLE — For a few minutes Saturday night, Safeco Field was theirs again.

From former general manager Pat Gillick and manager Lou Piniella to utility player Charles Gipson, 22 members of the 2001 Seattle Mariners gathered this weekend for a 10-year reunion of their record-tying 116-victory

season.

Most are a little heavier now and some are a lot grayer, along with a few who don’t have enough hair to turn gray. Some are living in the luxury of retirement and enjoying their wives and children, others are coaching anything from pro to youth baseball, and for a couple their eyes sh

ow the anguish that life can deliver regardless of a person’s past fame.

They got together Friday for a private dinner party that lasted late into the night, and the stories continued to flow Saturday during an afternoon cocktail hour, then a pregame ceremony that ended with a team photo on the pitcher’s mound.

To a man, nothing was quite like the 2001 season and the sense of camaraderie and success that Mariners team achieved.

The bond seemed as tight Saturday night as it was 10 years ago.

“Until that year, I’d always thought team chemistry was a bunch of B.S.,” former second baseman Bret Boone said. “That year made me truly believe that chemistry does make a difference. I’d never played on a team when I’d want to go to dinner with all 24 of my teammates. I’d been on other teams with guys who were good teammates, but I wouldn’t want to go to dinner with every one them. But that team, we were buddies.”

Ryan Franklin, a rookie in 2001, said the veterans made him feel as important to the team as they considered themselves. Franklin, released a few weeks ago by the St. Louis Cardinals, said the 2001 Mariners taught him how to be a big leaguer.

“My five years in St. Louis, we were a close-knit team, but it was not as close as this,” Franklin said. “Guys took me under their wing and taught me the right way to play the game.”

Gillick, who will be inducted into baseball’s Hall of Fame next weekend, had assembled the foundation of the team in 2000 when, in their first season without Ken Griffey Jr., the Mariners won the American League wild-card and advanced as far as the American League Championship Series before losing to the Yankees.

For 2001, Gillick had to make up for the loss of another superstar when Alex Rodriguez signed a $252 million contract with the Texas Rangers. The Mariners signed Suzuki from Japan and Boone, who’d gone through an injury plagued year with the San Diego Padres in 2000.

Nobody expected Boone to replace Rodriguez’s home run and production numbers, but he nearly matched them with 37 homers and an AL-leading 141 RBI.

“He did a whale of a job, and he was cheaper, too,” Gillick said, laughing.

Boone said the Mariners realized they had a strong team when they broke from spring training, but despite going 20-5 in April he wondered if they were that dominant.

“But I realized it when we got into May and we duplicated what we did in April,” Boone said.

They went 20-7 in May, on the way to a season when they finished 70 games over .500. Piniella was asked if it seemed possible a team could dominate a season like that.

“With the parity I see in baseball today, I don’t see it happening again,” he said.

Gillick said the 2001 Mariners simply played the game the right way, and that was the key to their success.

“Our execution was excellent,” he said. “If we needed to move a runner, we did. If we had a runner on third base, we got him in. We played the game right. That’s a credit to Lou and the coaching staff.”

Piniella in turn praised Gillick for assembling a roster that featured strong starting pitching, great late-inning relief, tight defense, hitters who could work an at-bat and provide power.

Suzuki and Boone each finished with more than 200 hits, DH Edgar Martinez drove in 116 runs and center fielder Mike Cameron 110.

The Mariners led the major leagues with 927 runs and their pitching and defense allowed the fewest in baseball, 627.

Jamie Moyer won 20 games, Freddie Garcia 18, Paul Abbott 17, Aaron Sele 15 and John Halama 10. Closer Kazuhiro Sasaki recorded 45 saves.

They didn’t reach their ultimate goal of the World Series, and that still bothers Piniella just a little. The Indians pushed them to five games in the first round of the playoffs, and Piniella said it messed up his pitching plan for the ALCS against the Yankees, who beat the Mariners in five games.

Piniella, now a consultant with the San Francisco Giants, wonders if he should have pitched Moyer on just three days of rest in Game 5 against the Yankees instead of going with Aaron Sele. But he thought if the Mariners had won that game, he’d have a more-rested Moyer for Game 6 and Garcia for Game 7.

“In retrospect, I might have made the wrong decision,” Piniella said. “To beat the Yankees, you had to throw something really hard at them or really soft. They hit the in-between stuff. Jamie had a really nice touch with that team.”

Nobody else was second-guessing this weekend. They came back to Seattle from various pursuits in their lives to re-live, for many, the best year of their baseball careers.

For outfielder Al Martin, it was perhaps a release from the personal tragedy he has endured the past two years. Martin’s 17-year-old son Brandon was found dead in 2009 from what he said was an accidental drug overdose from something he drank at a party. Martin, who lives in Arizona, has founded BSMART, a nonprofit outreach program for youth.

Gipson is a high school behavioral specialist in Spring, Texas.

Catcher Tom Lampkin is coaching high school baseball in Vancouver, Wash.

Abbott is the pitching coach for the Boston Red Sox’ Class AAA team in Lowell, Mass.

Reliever Norm Charlton operates a fishing boat out of Corpus Christi, Texas.

And Moyer, now 48, is recovering from Tommy John surgery and is determined to pitch again.

“See you next year,” Moyer said.

And he wasn’t referring to another reunion.

Read Kirby Arnold’s blog on the Mariners at www.heraldnet.com/marinersblog and follow his Twitter updates on the team at @kirbyarnold.