No baseball spirit in Dallas
Let me tell you how shocking it was to actually go to a place where baseball matters. Over the weekend I visited the University of Washington, and convinced a high school friend who goes to school in Tacoma to accompany me to a Mariners game.
Seattle, as far as I can tell, is the sports antithesis of Dallas. Baseball is king, but I suppose when your football team is the Seahawks, one of the most non-descript franchises in the history of pro sports, that this is a logical conclusion. As the old Texas saying goes, in Texas, there are two sports: Football, and spring football. This is for sure aided by our diamond heroes being the Texas Rangers, perhaps a baseball equivalent of the Seahawks. They have had a couple of good players, but never really did anything special.
You can go to a Rangers game and pick up a $5 ticket an inning into the game at pretty much any point during the season. So you could imagine my surprise when we walked up to the ticket counter at Safeco Field, five minutes before the game started, asked what the cheapest tickets they had left were. The response was, “um, none sir. We are sold out today.”
A baseball game? Sold out in September? Wow.
The Mariners were all but mathematically eliminated from the playoffs, and yet people kept coming. There had to be an explanation for this. First I figured it was because they were playing the Anaheim Angels, in the thick of the American League West and Wild Card race. But then I thought, the Rangers played the Athletics and the Angels lately, and I heard nothing of a sellout.
These people actually just care that much about their baseball team. The rest of the game proved this point to me. The crowd’s emotions ran perfectly along with the happenings in the game, showing that most everyone actually knew what was going on. Not one person around me stood up in the middle of the inning, in the middle of my line of sight, to go get a beer. Not one in my entire section!
Little kids knew all the players names. They even wondered aloud which relief pitcher the Mariners would bring in when the time came. A full stadium, full of people that would be there whether the Mariners were good or not.
Now, I am from Dallas and I love this city and its sports, but our hometown sports fans are not die-hard. I can use this almost as a blanket statement. This is a bandwagon, fair weather fan town. How many people liked the Cowboys in 1989 and openly admitted it? How many people liked the Mavericks two years ago? How many people like the Rangers now?
Sure, Seattle is aided by having the likes of Ichiro, Freddy Garcia and Edgar Martinez on their roster, but the Rangers have Alex Rodriguez, the best player I have ever personally seen play. These people actually care, I thought in my seat, absolutely shocked.
Walking through Seattle, I found the Mariners were the talk of the town. Baseball was the talk of the town. It is absolutely amazing to me that there is somewhere in this country where football takes a back seat to baseball.
Normally, not being a real big baseball fan and having a bad taste in my mouth from this latest strike shenanigan, I would say these are ridiculous people who don’t know a good sport when they see it. But to see in person how much Mariners fans cared, how knowledgeable they were, how little they cared that their team probably wouldn’t make the playoffs, made me realize I was in the middle of what everyone who loves baseball talks about.
It is the great American sport. Funny, I’d never experienced it in this part of America.
