Tales from the Seattle Mariners Dugout

by Kirby Arnold

  As a leadoff hitter with blazing speed, Suzuki obviously wasn’t a 40-homer guy who would replace all of Rodriguez’s offense. But he’d hit for good power in Japan—25 homers in 1995 with the Orix Blue Wave—and scouts said he could turn on a ball and hit it out of a ballpark with ease.

  When spring training began in 2001, that wasn’t the hitter Piniella saw, and it concerned him.

  Suzuki, a left-handed hitter, poked every ball the opposite way, including more than a few over Piniella’s head in the Mariners’ third-base dugout at their Peoria, Arizona, training complex. The Mariners had invested more than $5.5 million in a batting champion, but all Piniella had seen was a skinny slap hitter who couldn’t seem to get around on a spring training fastball.

  “I’m worried about this kid,” Piniella told his bench coach, John McLaren. “If you can’t even pull the ball in spring training, you’re going to have a long year.”

  Before an exhibition game the next day, Piniella made a simple request of Suzuki.

  “I want to see you pull the ball,” Piniella asked.

  In his first at-bat, Suzuki smoked a line-drive single to right field and, after the inning, returned to the dugout and asked Piniella, “Is that pulling the ball OK?”

  The rest of that game, Suzuki went back to his old pattern, slapping everything to the left side. All Piniella and his coaches could do was let their new player prepare for the season the way he knew best.

  “Ichiro had a game plan,” McLaren said. “He was learning the pitchers and staying back on the ball and hitting it the opposite way. That’s how he prepared.”

  The rest became history.

  Suzuki rolled through his first major-league season with a league-best .350 average and an incredible 242 hits. He also stole 56 bases, becoming the first player since Jackie Robinson in 1949 to lead the majors in average and steals. He became the American League MVP and Rookie of the Year, joining Fred Lynn (1975 with the Red Sox) as the only players to win those awards in the same season.

  Suzuki rarely walked, but he beat out numerous infield grounders and pressured opposing defenders into mistakes because of his speed. As the best leadoff hitter in franchise history, Suzuki jump-started an offense that tore through the American League and set the Mariners on course to their record 116-victory season.

  It was hardly by coincidence that Suzuki became a Mariner. The team’s principal owner at the time, Japanese businessman Hiroshi Yamauchi, was the former president of Nintendo who turned that once-small company into a giant in the video game industry.

  Ichiro Suzuki takes the field on Opening Day in 2006. Photo by Jennifer Buchanan/The Herald of Everett, Washington

  With that connection and Seattle’s standing as a Pacific Rim city that embraces its large Asian population, the Mariners saw themselves as a good fit for Japanese players. They had signed pitcher Makoto Suzuki in 1993, and he remained in their system until 1999 when they traded him to the Royals.

  By then, another Japanese pitcher had caught the Mariners’ eye.

  Kazuhiro Sasaki, Japan’s all-time saves leader, signed with the Mariners before the 2000 season and became their much-needed closer. Sasaki faced not only the pressure of the ninth inning, but also the burden of representing a nation. The curiosity in both Japan and the US was considerable.

  “I could sense it because there were so many interviews,” Sasaki said. “I definitely felt it. But I also was able to have a lot of fun.”

  The attention on Suzuki became even more intense.

  He had achieved rock-star status in Japan and the scrutiny didn’t lessen after he became a Mariner. At his first spring training, Japanese media followed every move he made, going so far as to note where he hit each pitch during batting practice.

  The Mariners got a sense of it two years earlier when they invited Suzuki to spend the early part of spring training with them in 1999 before he reported to his Japanese team, the Orix Blue Wave. The Japanese media made a big story of that every day.

  Suzuki hung out with Ken Griffey Jr. and experienced some of Jay Buhner’s crude pranks. He also learned a lot about the difference between baseball in the major leagues and Japan.

  On Suzuki’s first day with the Mariners, the team headed back to the clubhouse after their two-and-a-half-hour workout when Ted Heid, the organization’s Pacific Rim scouting director, pulled McLaren aside.

  “Ichiro wants to know if that’s all we’re going to do,” Heid said.

  “That’s it. We’re done,” said McLaren, who looked up to see a puzzled expression on Suzuki’s face.

  “They’re used to practicing five hours a day in Japan,” Heid told McLaren.

  After Suzuki signed with the Mariners in 2001, even more Japanese media swarmed him, both on and off the field. Photographers would arrive early in the morning, sometimes before sunrise, and station themselves at the entrance to the Mariners’ parking lot, and they didn’t turn their lenses away from Suzuki until he drove away after practice. Even then, some of them followed Suzuki to his apartment.

  “Just looking at where he was coming from and what he brought here to Seattle, I know it had to be stressful,” said Mike Cameron, the former center fielder who became a good friend of Suzuki’s. “He never had a chance to unwind or relax. During that time when we were in the clubhouse by ourselves, we used that time to do that. What he did was amazing. Any time you break a barrier it can’t be easy. But he not only was breaking a barrier, but he was dealing with different traditions.”

  The obvious question before Suzuki’s first major-league season was whether he would hit as well here as he did in Japan. It didn’t take him long to prove he could.

  He never batted less than .312 in his first five seasons. In 2004, he batted .372 and broke one of the longest-standing records in baseball. His 262 hits broke George Sisler’s single-season record of 257, set in 1920.

  In 2006, Suzuki topped the 200-hit mark for the sixth straight season. Only two other players in baseball history have done better than that, Willie Keeler with eight straight from 1894 to 1901 and Wade Boggs with seven straight from 1983 to 1989.

  Suzuki has admitted that he couldn’t find much joy on the way to those achievements. The constant quest to set records and live up to expectations doesn’t make the game as fun as it was.

  “I don’t know what the meaning of having fun is in baseball,” he said after breaking Sisler’s record. “When I go out there, as a professional, I’m not going to laugh or smile. You feel the pressure of Major League Baseball and you want to do your best, and it’s hard for me to do that.

  “When you’re a kid, you have fun playing baseball. When you become a professional, there are responsibilities and expectations. Stepping up to the plate becomes a scary thing. In Japan, I didn’t have fear. I didn’t know what baseball could do to you. Here in America, I know that fear. That makes a record like this a bigger accomplishment and a bigger achievement.”

  Suzuki played 12 seasons with the Mariners before being traded to the Yankees in 2012, then moved on to the Marlins from 2015 to 2017. He told reporters he planned to play into his 50s, but at age 43 his playing time dwindled with the Marlins career lows of 136 games and 215 plate appearances.

  The Mariners, seeking outfield depth, re-signed him before the 2018 season, but Suzuki simply wasn’t the player he once was. The Mariners obviously weren’t expecting that, but after 15 games and 47 plate appearances, with Suzuki batting just .205, they couldn’t keep running him out there. The Mariners named him as a special assistant advisor, which meant he would work out with the team before games and assist players any way he could.

  He and the Mariners refused to say he was retiring.

  “When I start using a cane, that’s the time that I think I should retire,” he told reporters.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  The Record 2001 Season

  AFTER THEIR PLAYOFF RUN IN 2000, the Mariners established themselves as the team to beat for the division championship in 2001. The
y returned a nice mixture of speed, defense, starting pitching, veteran leadership, a solid bench, and that outstanding bullpen.

  The Mariners believed they were a good team. How good? Nobody quite knew.

  For the second straight season, the Mariners had to replace the anchor to their offense.

  In 2000, they overcame the loss of Ken Griffey Jr. This time it was shortstop Alex Rodriguez, who became a free agent and signed a 10-year, $252 million contract with the Texas Rangers. He had led the Mariners with 41 home runs and a .606 slugging percentage in 2000, plus 132 RBIs and a .420 on-base percentage that were second on the team to DH Edgar Martinez.

  The greater concern in Seattle was how the M’s would make up for his lost offense.

  Part of the solution was Bret Boone, a free-agent second baseman whose knee problems in 2000 thwarted what had begun as a nice season offensively. Boone gave the Mariners much more than anyone expected. He hit 37 home runs, drove in 141, and narrowly missed winning the American League MVP award. He lost that honor to another newcomer who became an instant hit, not only in Seattle but around the major leagues.

  Jamie Moyer pitches against the Cleveland Indians in Game 2 of the 2001 ALDS. Photo by Michael Oleary/The Herald of Everett, Washington

  Ichiro Suzuki, the first position player to come to the majors from Japan, became the leadoff hitter that the organization had sought from the beginning in 1977.

  Suzuki used his slap-hitting approach and blazing speed to lead the league with 242 hits—most ever by a rookie—a .350 average and 56 steals. He irritated pitchers with his ability to make contact with anything in or out of the strike zone, and his speed forced opposing infielders to play him shallow, opening lanes for base hits. Once on base, he forced opponents into mistakes.

  Suzuki won both the American League Rookie of the Year and MVP awards.

  Boone and Suzuki became the perfect additions to a lineup that already featured the potent bats of Edgar Martinez, Mike Cameron, and John Olerud.

  On the mound, the Mariners didn’t have a true ace in the starting rotation, but they rolled out five starters who gave them a chance to win every day. Backed by the improved offense and the best defensive team in the league, the starters flourished. Veteran Jamie Moyer won 20 games for the first time in his career, going 20–6. Freddy Garcia went 18–6, Paul Abbott 17–4, Aaron Sele 15–5, and John Halama 10–7.

  The bullpen became the strongest in team history, with Norm Charlton, Jeff Nelson, and Arthur Rhodes forming a perfect left-right-left setup for Japanese closer Kazuhiro Sasaki, who set a single-season franchise record with 45 saves the previous year.

  The combination of offense, defense, and pitching carried the Mariners to an incredible 116 victories, tying the 1906 Chicago Cubs’ major-league record for most victories in a season and breaking the 1998 New York Yankees’ American League record of 114.

  “Once we started playing in spring training, we realized we were pretty good,” Cameron said. “But we didn’t know we were going to be that good.”

  Playing a second straight year without a departed superstar, the Mariners succeeded because of their strength throughout the roster and manager Lou Piniella’s practice of playing versatile Mark McLemore regularly while giving the starters frequent days off. Every player on that team performed a key role in the successful season, and they maintained a killer instinct that didn’t wane as they built a big lead in the standings.

  “We would win eight games in a row and then lose the ninth one 3–2, and guys were flat-out pissed off because they’d lost a winnable game,” pitching coach Bryan Price said. “We had that rare sense over the entire season that we were going to win 100 percent of the games. At no time did we ever feel we were out of a game.”

  Bret Boone and Mark McLemore celebrate at home plate during the Mariners’ record 116-win season in 2001. Photo by Stephanie S. Cordle/The Herald of Everett, Washington

  The Mariners beat Oakland 5–4 in the season opener at Safeco Field and never cooled off. They won 20 of their first 24 games in April.

  “There were so many things we did well,” Cameron said. “We hit and pitched well, we hit with people on base and our situational play was unreal.”

  When the Mariners needed a ground ball to push a runner from second to third with nobody out, they did it without worrying about the dip in batting average. They used the big gaps at Safeco Field to drive extra-base hits and cut down on rally-killing strikeouts. Most of all, they pitched well, played great defense and, with that strong bullpen, needed only to have a lead after six innings to virtually ensure victory.

  “We could feel that other teams were weary, or maybe leery, of playing us,” Boone said. “They knew if they made a mistake, we were going to beat them. What’s incredible is that the group we had was the farthest from being an arrogant group of guys. It was the most humble team I’d ever played on, but it was a confident team.”

  Edgar Martinez, John Olerud, Dan Wilson, and Stan Javier were the quiet backbone of the 2001 Mariners. Boone walked with a swagger but absorbed as much needling from his teammates as he dished out. Cameron lifted the clubhouse with his smile. And Piniella, of course, pulled it all together with his intensity.

  “For years and years in my career, I never thought much of the cliché that teams click because of chemistry,” Boone said. “You have good players, you win. We had a lot of talent that year, but it wasn’t the greatest assemblage of talent ever. But when game time came, the attitude was, ‘Let’s go get ’em.’ As the season wore on, it snowballed. It became clear to me that chemistry is important in this game.”

  The Mariners’ romp continued through May and June, including a 15-game winning streak from May 23 to June 8 that raised their record to 47–12.

  “Anybody who was a part of that team was blessed to be going through a season like that,” Price said.

  September 11: Tragedy Amid Their Greatest Triumph

  The Mariners were in cruise control at the All-Star break, with a 63–24 record and a 19-game lead over second-place Oakland in the AL West. Eight Mariners made the American League All-Star team—Bret Boone, Mike Cameron, John Olerud, Edgar Martinez, Ichiro Suzuki, Freddy Garcia, Jeff Nelson, and Kazuhiro Sasaki—in a game that became a Seattle showcase. Played at Safeco Field, the AL won 4–1, and Sasaki recorded the save.

  The All-Star break hardly cooled off the Mariners. They went 53–22 the rest of the season and won the division by 14 games over Oakland. The Mariners didn’t lose more than two games in a row until the final month, a testament to the focus of a veteran team.

  As August turned into September, only two questions remained: Would the Mariners stay hot and beat the 1906 Cubs’ major-league record of 116 victories in a season? And when does the World Series start?

  The Mariners could almost taste the champagne after they beat the Angels 5–1 on September 10 to begin a three-game series at Anaheim. It gave the Mariners a 17-game lead over Oakland with 18 to play, leaving them on the verge of the organization’s third American League West Division championship. Better yet, the Mariners won for the 104th time, pushing them closer to the 116-victory mark.

  They went to bed that night at the Doubletree Hotel in Anaheim enjoying one of the most successful seasons a team has ever accomplished. The next morning, they woke up to horror.

  Ron Spellecy, the Mariners’ traveling secretary, was rattled awake by the ring of his cell phone. His girlfriend was calling from Seattle.

  “Are you watching the news?” she asked.

  “Hello? Its 6:30 in the morning,” Spellecy said.

  “Just turn on the news,” she said, without telling him why.

  Spellecy grabbed the clicker and turned on the TV, but he couldn’t comprehend what was happening. Commentators were talking about an emergency at the World Trade Center in New York, and cameras were focused on smoke billowing from one of the twin towers.

  “Just then, I saw a plane go into the second tower,” Spellecy said. “I sat there thinki
ng, ‘This can’t be true. Who’s playing this game? It can’t be happening.’”

  It was, and soon Spellecy and the Mariners learned how little baseball mattered. The world changed on September 11, 2001.

  Nineteen men affiliated with al Qaeda had hijacked four planes on the East Coast, crashing two of them into each of the World Trade Center’s twin towers and another into the Pentagon. A fourth went down in a field in Pennsylvania, apparently headed toward the US Capitol building before passengers wrestled control away from the hijackers.

  Stunned by the daylong reports from the East Coast, playing a baseball game didn’t seem important to the Mariners. That night’s game against the Angels was called off.

  “There were so many real-life things going on that were important besides baseball,” Cameron said. “What happened put things in perspective to the point that the game itself wasn’t important. It put a halt on all that we had accomplished to that point in the season, but what could we do? It’s life we were dealing with.”

  The Mariners spent the day glued to the TV and wondering when they would play again. What about the final game of the Anaheim series the next day? And the four games that were scheduled Thursday through Sunday in Seattle against the Texas Rangers? With air space closed because the threat to U.S. security remained uncertain, how would the Mariners get home for those games?

  Spellecy booked a banquet room and called an afternoon meeting of players, coaches, team executives, families, and media to try to answer those questions. General manager Pat Gillick and Spellecy addressed the group, neither able to deliver a firm plan of what would happen the next few days.

  “We’re going to sit here in Anaheim until we know what we’re going to be doing,” Spellecy told everyone. “Right now, this game has been cancelled. We don’t know about the next day.”