Results tagged ‘ Felix Hernandez ’
OD A to Z
Opening Day, by the letters:
And away we go . . .
Bonifacio! Simply Bonifacio!
CC? Not even so-so.
Don’t Mess with Texas.
Eight homers with the roof closed. That’s enough, Chase.
Felix Hernandez, keep pitching like this and you’ll earn the King nickname.
Griffey. Mariners. Homer. Woo-hoo.
Hiroki Kuroda: A stealth ace, and the best Japanese starter this side of Dice-K.
Inside-the-park homers are fun. Just ask . . . Bonifacio!
Johan Santana looks like he’s got it going on, as usual, with the win.
K-Rod made sure of it.
Lee’s numbers fell off the Cliff pretty quick, eh?
Manny didn’t do much, didn’t have to.
New York, Eww York.
Orioles have some talent.
Pirates undefeated, Phillies winless.
Quentin and the rest of the White Sox will be back in action Tuesday.
Rays-Red Sox still on tap for Tuesday, too.
Steals are back in vogue — at least if Bonifacio! has anything to do with it.
Teixeira didn’t have much of a homecoming in Baltimore.
Unbelievable: Tony Clark and Felipe Lopez (?!??!!!) both homer from both sides of the plate.
Verlander. Seriously. What happened?
Webb didn’t feel too good after his first start, not good news for the snakes.
X Nady got himself an RBI ground-rule double, plus his name starts with X so he always gets in the A to Z things.
Yawkey Way will be hopping Tuesday, won’t it?
Z, Big. He was.
Yakyu Haiku
That’s the American tradition of baseball in Japanese, and here’s an Americanized version of a Japanese tradition:
Think back, oh Junior,
Back to the springtime of youth –
Once a star, always
Party like its 1999, Seattle
Leave it to a guy nicknamed Junior to make going home look so good.
The reunion of Seattle and superstar on Wednesday just fits, always has, and probably should have happened some time ago. All you needed to see was Ken Griffey Jr.’s homecoming two years ago when he was with the Reds and the continued adoration last year while with the Sox to know: This is how it should be.
Yes, he’s a senior Junior with a recent medical log that doubles as his locker stool. No, he’s not the Kid anymore who spiked the wall and pushed 50 homers every year. Guess what? This isn’t the move to put the Mariners over the top. The top’s a bit beyond his reach right now, even back in the day.
Call it marketing, call it whatever you want. The Kid is back, and if there’s something wrong with that, there’s something wrong with this picture.
For one thing, it’s been a hard, hard sports year in the Northwest, don’t you know? The Mariners didn’t do so hot, the state’s two major college football teams went historic in a bad way, it’s hard for anyone outside Seattle to tell you much about the Seahawks and, well, the Sonics simply live in Oklahoma City now. And they’re as bad as their uniforms, so maybe it’s spreading.
But the Mariners are trying to start anew with GM Jack Zduriencik, who’s bringing in a rebuilding process from within and from the outside. With Ichiro as a cornerstone, they’re remaking themselves, but ready for King Felix to go all royal on the AL for a season and for a few others like Adrian Beltre to deliver the goods. If they succeed in 2009 and compete in the AL West, they will have surprised us all — and themselves.
It’s a pretty good guess right now that Junior’d be a big reason why. And wouldn’t that be something?
What’s wrong with a little flashback, back, back to the wall in center? Didn’t your mind flash back to that dog pile with the laughing kid at the bottom, or that smooth swing in its prime? Doesn’t it now? The No. 1 pick whose rise through the ’90s in the Kingdome led to Safeco Field, returning to the scene of the prime. It’s a good thing.
And so Wednesday was about stars returning, whether it’s to that place where it all started, or that place where it’s always been — see: Derek Jeter, holding court in the dugout in Tampa. They’re filing in to camps, one by one and in bunches. They’ll all be there soon.
That includes Junior heading back to Peoria, en route to Seattle.
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