True M’s fans are the ones who will never jump ship

  • Larry Henry / Sports Columnist
  • Sunday, May 9, 2004 9:00pm
  • Sports

SEATTLE – You want to know what a true Mariners fan is?

It isn’t someone who jumped on the bandwagon in ‘95 and is about to jump off now that the M’s are struggling. And it sure as heck isn’t one of those cell-phone packin’ yuppies who calls up his buddy in the middle of a rally, then stands and waves at the TV camera while everyone around shouts for him to sit down.

No, a true M’s fan is someone who’s been there from the very beginning. Someone who’s sat through all those losses. Someone who went inside an ugly dome on beautiful summer afternoons to watch the M’s fall deeper into the cellar. Someone who can recall the team’s first triple play. Someone who sat there with her friends and played baseball trivia.

Someone like Patty Skommesa.

She has not only been there from the very beginning, she was there before the M’s ever played their first regular-season game.

“Spring training, 1977,” she said. “My mom and I were the only paying persons in the ballpark.”

Which isn’t much of an exaggeration. Hardly anyone went to spring training then.

“To me, it was fun just being there and seeing the players,” Skommesa said. “You could go down and talk to them.”

You could even get an autograph instead of the look-ahead-stare that players adopt today as they walk by fans pleading for them to sign.

Yup, things have changed dramatically. No longer do the M’s play before empty stands in spring training. No longer can you walk into a Phoenix-area hotel and get a room without calling months in advance. No longer can you clearly hear a disgruntled batter who’s just taken a called third strike ask the umpire, “Where was that pitch?”

But while some things have changed, one thing has remained the same. Patty Skommesa is usually there in the spring to check out her beloved M’s in the Valley of the Sun. The M’s have had 28 spring training camps and Skommesa has attended all but five.

You think that’s something? Consider this. She’s missed just 23 regular-season home games in the past 27 years, the last one in April of ‘97, when her brother, John, died in the middle of a homestand. Which means, if my calculations are correct, she has been to 2,114 of a possible 2,137 games, including this year.

She has purchased season tickets every one of those years, starting out with two, expanding to three, and for the last several years investing in four.

Her first season tickets at the Kingdome cost $375 apiece. Now they run her $38 a game or $3,078 for the season. She keeps one for herself and is usually able to sell the other three.

“Last year I lost about $700,” said Skommesa, a Seattle native and a retired data base administrator. “So many games in April are hard to sell because it’s so cold.”

That was one nice thing about the Kingdome. She never had to worry about the weather. “I knew how to dress,” she said. “Here I freeze quite a bit of the time.”

Don’t get her wrong, she likes the new ballpark. But she misses the old one, too. “Partly, it’s selfish,” she admitted. “I had excellent seats.” First row, right behind the M’s dugout. “I could put my stuff up there.”

When the M’s moved to Safeco, her first-row seats became 13-row seats. They’re still darn good, third-base side, behind the visitors’ dugout. “I should be down there,” she said the other night, as she settled into her section 137, row 13, seat 1 spot. “Chuck Armstrong and I go around and around on this.”

That’s right, she’s on a first-name basis with the M’s president. When you’ve been an M’s fan as long as Skommesa has, you get players stopping by your table in restaurants to say hello, as Ken Griffey Jr. did one time at spring training. “I like Kenny,” she said. “He was always very pleasant to me.”

In the old days, before the M’s became the sexy team in town, Patty Skommesa and the other diehards in her section would root-root-root for the homeboys as if they were the world champs instead of the world chumps. The fans developed a camaraderie that just isn’t felt today. “You got to know people,” she said. “Some of those people are still here, but a lot don’t come as often.”

Some of the new fans “haven’t a clue about what’s going on,” she said.

Like the guy in the charter seats who stands up with two outs and the bases loaded to call his friend on his cell phone hoping that he’ll get on TV. “You tell them to sit down and they go ‘huh?’” Skommesa said, shaking her head.

Someone like her has seen baseball from its most hilarious to its most sublime. She recalled that the first triple play the M’s pulled off (April 22, 1977) ended with catcher Skip Jutze waiting at home plate, ball in hand, to tag John Mayberry of the Kansas City Royals.

That tells you what kind of fan she is when she remembers Skip Jutze.

She has some stories to tell, she does. Like the time she sought the autograph of Danny Kaye, one of the original team owners, at spring training. “I’m here to watch baseball,” the entertainer informed her. “So am I,” she said. “That’s why I’m here between innings.” He signed her baseball.

Despite that little episode, she felt the first owners were the best owners because “they knew how to treat people.”

She also has a least favorite owner: Jeff Smulyan. Which shows that she’s a good judge of character.

She’s also a keen evaluator of what was missing from the last two M’s teams. “Stan Javier,” she offered. “He always seemed to me like he cared about people. A team player.”

Skommesa was in the dome the night Gaylord Perry won his 300th game, and she was present the time Yankees manager Billy Martin brought the lineup card out, mouthed off to the umpires and got ejected before the first pitch.

She also has a baseball autographed by Martin … along with all of the M’s players. The one person’s name she didn’t want on the ball was Maury Wills, the M’s manager at the time. She didn’t care for him.

Of the current team, she likes some of the new acquisitions (“Aurilia puts his heart into it”) but she’s still not so sure about the manager, Bob Melvin. “He hasn’t won me over yet,” she said. “Is that a polite way to put it?”

She’s not only well versed on the big leaguers, but she can tell you who to keep an eye on in the minors. “Gregg Dobbs looked good this year (in spring training),” she said, referring to the third baseman who’s shining for Class AA San Antonio. “Last year I was hoping he’d make it up (to the M’s) in September.”

Skommesa is more than just an M’s fan. She’s a quintessential baseball fan. She’s visited 21 major league parks, and she’s been to the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., four times, the last when Robin Yount and George Brett were inducted in 1999. And she’ll be there when M’s batting coach Paul Molitor goes in this summer. “I’ve always liked him,” she said.

Just as she’s always liked Edgar Martinez. “When Edgar goes,” she said, “I think they’ll miss him.”

If the fan in section 137, row 13, seat 1 ever goes, the M’s will miss her, too.

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