Lawyers Road Review

From ancient times, a place of refuge where you were secure from your enemies has been called “a sanctuary”. It is a place set apart from the profane and vulgar world. In Seattle that place has been known as “The Safe” and has served as a venue to forget your cares for an afternoon or an evening now for a generation.

Let us stipulate there is something mystic about baseball in America. Dreams are made and shattered in cathedral like settings we have decided to call “parks” because it is a place that families go to share an experience and transcend the ordinary. Safeco field, now referred to officially as T-Mobile Park, will always be called “The Safe”.

And as for the home team, many fans of the Seattle Mariners will tell you, one has to have faith.

It was 20 years ago, July 15^th  1999, my law partner Lisa Micheli and her then fiancé Steve somehow couldn’t use the tickets they had to the opening night of Safeco field. She graciously yielded them to the other two lawyers in the firm at then, my father and me.

For reasons that are lost to time we elected to drive my father’s old Ford truck, which wasn’t so old at the time, to the park that evening. Parking was at a premium, some spaces near the park going for $40.00.  We drove and we drove, and ultimately parked for free at a business that had shut down for the evening a mile from the park. It was a good walk.

Of course upon arriving in front of Pyramid Brewing directly in front of the park we found a free place open, waiting for some lucky fellow.  We laughed, crossed the street, and passed through the turn styles for the first time. We rode the escalator up to the first deck under the baseball bat sculpture.

Apparently this sculpture lights up whenever the Mariners hit a home run, but it is situated in a place where no one can see it if they are watching the game.  Curious decision I thought.  We then moved on to inspect the diamond.

As we approached the first deck bleachers the expanse of storied geometry appeared before us. This new emerald green infield field leashed in by a brown dirt diamond, the white foul lines and bags had been impeccably prepared for the sacrament that blesses America’s cities and towns. We are of many faiths but a baseball park is our collective palace of peace. On that night in July 1999 my father and I stood there in the vestibule and breathed in the grace of our new park, and ascended the stairs to our pew.

I believe it was early in the second inning where a much younger than now Ken Griffey Jr. took the timber to the plate and smacked a ball served up by the Padres pitcher far, far into center field. In the old concrete enclosed stadium, the Kingdome, this would have been a home run. In the heavy marine air of Safeco field, the ball fell short on the warning track, easy pickings for the outfielder. Baseball in Seattle had changed forever. The knowledge we had built the new stadium in the wrong place swept through the stunned congregation like the discovery of heresy. My eye looked up and over the left field bleachers to the Kingdome, still standing, but being readied for demolition. Give me that old time religion, I thought.

No longer was this the long ball the primary threat here. Gone were those college days when sitting in the cheapest seats available in the Kingdome I was nearly struck by a ball sent to the left field bleachers by Reggie Jackson, an answer to a 7^th inning barrage of home runs the Mariner’s had served up. Instead Seattle had unwittingly become a team which had to focus on fundamentals; getting one man on base, and advancing him around the sacks, perhaps at most a double could be expected. Suddenly a team built around home runs found itself in home field that was for different talents. We need not worry about missing the baseball bat sculpture lighting up.

Nonetheless the Mariners took the lead at some point. I decided to wander out onto the flying buttresses of our new cathedral and take in the view. The salt air which frustrated our team filled my lungs. The sun was setting, rendering the windowed towers of the Emerald City alight. July really is the best month here.

But upon returning to my seat on the base line I could see the people in right field had learned what it meant to come to the park on a nice evening. They were blinded by the sun.

Going into the 8^th I thought, as did the rest of those in attendance, that the relief pitcher was doing well. Perhaps it is written somewhere, never to be changed, not even for a new park, the Mariners must find a way to lose. Perhaps it was only adherence to that scripture that lead to the reliever being pulled, but I have long suspected there was something in the relationship between the manager Lou Pinella and his closer that required Jose Mesa to take the mound that evening.

Thus as Holy Writ prescribes, when Jose Mesa is put in for the final innings before long the bases will become full of the opposing team’s runners. I do not recall the exact sequence of events but somehow the visiting team took the lead. Finally our “closer” generated the requisite three outs and we entered the bottom of the 9^th. The Mariners struggled to put men on base and overcome the deficit. They failed. The Mariners had lost the first game ever played in their new ball park, Safeco Field.

And Jose Mesa wept.

Well the years have worn on. Steve and Lisa did marry and had a child and now like I take my Dad to the park, Steve takes his son Paul. Great moments are shared, like the delivery to Paul of a baseball from Robinson Cano. It happened at “The Safe”, the sanctuary.

Ken Griffey has gone on to be inducted into the hall of fame, and locals from our town have traveled all the way to Cooperstown for the event. Like pilgrims on some spiritual journey they arrived at the source, much like Christians travel to the Holy Land, there to witness a saint being canonized.

No one has been able to explain the barbed wire outside of Cooperstown. Is it there to keep the greats in? Or Pete Rose out?

And so we close the books on Mariners another season at the All Star break. Once again by the end of June the likelihood of a play off spot appears dim. Still I look at the standings every day, root for out of division teams playing those ahead of the Mariners in the American League West, which is all the other teams in the American League West.

It is said our team is in a three year rebuilding phase, and this is year one. History advises that things will likely not change much by year four of this project but it will make no difference to me. I will hang in there, wear the team jersey and just be happy major league baseball is in town.