FARE THEE WELL MY MARINERS

by Laura Onstot, l-onstot@northwestern.edu

I'm leaving. It's not you, it's me. It's just that, while you've been there for me during some difficult times (4 a.m. webcasts in England during the 2001 playoffs) we've grown apart. A nd now, I just can't bring myself to care — about you.

I was going to write this on scented pink stationary in red pen and leave it in the mailbox for Ichiro or Moyer, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. Plus the flunky they hire to read mail would just throw it away. So instead, I'm leaving quietly in the night with no notice. I'll have a friend get my stuff, but leave the blue and green. I'm shacking up with the blue and red.

Two weeks ago, as the series with the Red Sox wrapped up, I left the Seattle Mariners for the Chicago Cubs.

My life as a Mariners fan began the day I dropped a strike on my sixth grade softball team. I stumbled around struggling with the catcher's mask while that bitch from the Hamblen Huskies stole home. Until that moment, I wanted to play professional baseball. But as I returned to my crouch, face burning red, hot tears hitting my small face, several things became clear.

1. I am a girl.
2. I am not athletic.
3. I am not coordinated.
4. I can't field, catch, hit or run.
5. But I can sing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" backwards so that's cool.

Obviously, second soprano on the National Anthem would be the closest I came to a life on the baseball diamond so I turned to the next best thing: Fanaticism.

I own three Edgar Martinez cards, in three different uniforms. I memorized Ken Griffey, Jr. stats. I learned their mothers’ names and lived and died with their triumphs and defeats. In those days, the late eighties and the early nineties, they weren't particularly good. Bobby Ayala walked in the winning run during the ninth inning of a White Sox game I witnessed in the old Kingdome. But winning wasn't the point. T hey were my team and I loved them. We kept waiting as they floundered near the bottom of the American League West. Come on guys! I still believe! I was like a pathetic child who thrills to a two minute phone call from a payphone from their absent father. They broke my heart, but we were in this tragi-comedy of an American past time together dammit!

And then, it paid off. The absent father returned, bearing gifts. The 1995 season was wrapping up and the wild card rule was in effect. As usual, we were still just rooting for a .500 season, but it wasn't over until the steroid-inflated man hit his last home run so I kept believing. And then the series with the Rangers. They won and kept winning. We watched the wild card as it came into reach and then, oh and then! They kept right on winning! And oh joy, a pennant, a glorious pennant was coming to our stadium!

After that it just kept getting better. Randy Johnson would start again with only one game to rest. Griffey kept pounding them out of the park. And in one sweet moment eleven innings in, the unthinkable. The Yankees were out! There were tears of joy, family rifts forgotten, the prodigal son was welcomed home, and oh what a feast it was.

They didn't make it to the World Series that year. And still haven't. But for the next several years, just being a part of the tradition, the winning tradition, was enough to inspire even the most disappointed Seattlite.

And then the tide began to turn. In 2002, they started the season with a record number of wins. By the end, they didn't make the playoffs. They stopped trying. Their best players would, like all best players, eventually end up with the Yankees by way of Texas or Massachusetts. And we were left with a greater hitter and a community-minded pitcher in a stadium that didn't allow obscenities. A sneaking thought began to plague my subconscious. W hat's the point?

We had been here before. But then things changed, like you promised they would, and for awhile, it was great. But then the old habits began to creep back in. First it was a loss or two in the ninth. But suddenly the crowds were gone, the hot dogs became stale, and the hits lacked luster. And again, I was rooting for a .500 season, but it was hard to have much enthusiasm. Especially since you didn't seem to be trying any more. I can't make this work by myself, I told the counselor. I need you to meet me half-way.

But you didn't. And now, it's time. I won't be the woman who forgives her cheating boyfriend again and again despite the advice of her well-meaning friends. But I'm not ready for a winner. I'm not comfortable with the arrogance, the ego. I want a perennial loser. Someone I can encourage and believe in. Someone who can't let me down. Someone who won't prove that they could have been great all along only to slip back onto the couch, beer in hand, telling me: "woman, make me a sandwich."

And that's why I'm going to the Cubs. They're already on that couch. They always have been.

Plus I'm allowed to curse in their fucking stadium.