=== In Baseball ===
Two big takeways for the Mariner fan here.
(1) The baseball fan is fortunate, in that that umpires have much less ability to decide games. Not only are their decisions subject to much better forensic analysis, but -- as Baseball Prospectus has shown -- their decisions play a relatively small part in impacting the game. It would be tough for an umpire to change a 5-3 win into a 6-4 loss, when all he has to work with is a handful of ball-strike calls and a few inches' margin.
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(2) The largest forces in sports care about money, not about on-field competition.
... When David Stern sends Kevin Durant to a Seattle team with one foot in Oklahoma, he's not thinking about fair play and sports drama. He's thinking about the emergence of a robust, profitable sports franchise within the net of his influence.
As Bill James pointed out decades ago, the fabric of baseball history consists of dynasties beating up on chumps. Major League Baseball needs 100-loss teams for the Yankees and Red Sox to beat up on. As far as MLB is concerned, the Mariners can sink or swim. That goes for this year and for the next 50 years.
As baseball fans, we can rejoice that our sport seems to suffer from much less off-field influence than do most other major sports.
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The NFL has very little problem controlling those who might otherwise hold it accountable. Season tickets, perks, wining and dining, sweetheart deals are all that is necessary to foster cozy relationships with the local authorities.
In Seattle, the local media situation is not much different. Access, friendly inclusion in the periphery, is more than enough to insure that the reporters in the clubhouse are V-E-R-Y careful not to say anything that management doesn't want to hear.
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The Seattle ownership committee?
Not in terms of preordained outcomes, but in terms of the weight it places on [winning] vs [financial strength] is a microcosm of that represented by the mega-organism that are professional sports. Usually the local teams do all they can to win, "get carried away" by the pennant chase, and leave it to the league to oversee what's best for the league. In Seattle it is different.
Geoff Baker has, single-handedly and courageously, refused to accept the invitation to join the Mariners' sweetheart periphery. Baker, on a daily basis, tells the truth about the Big Picture in Seattle, the way that gutsy old-style East Coast beat writers used to do. Once in a while, SSI shoots around the corner with him; we burned out on the heavy lifting during the 2001-2006 period.
Baker gets the same reaction here, that critics of the Super Bowl XL officiating get. Hey, dude, never ascribe to sinister motive anything that can be explained away by sheer incompetence.
Zduriencik, like Gillick before him, is one component of the authority pyramid that --- > wants to win at all costs. He says that he's excited that ownership has now committed resources to do that going forward. The Mariners did offer Fielder a contract. As we go into the July 31 deadline, we'll learn more about this 2013-14 script.
Cheers,
Jeff