Art Thiel is a longtime sports columnist in Seattle, for many years at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and now as founding editor at SportsPressNW.com.
In terms of pressure on a leader to fix wayward local institutions such as Boeing, Seattle Police or the Mariners, Mike Macdonald was down the list a bit. Then...
The Seahawks under new coach Mike Macdonald open Sunday at home against the Denver Broncos, aka the Russell Wilson Survivors Bowl. Participants are expected to share stories and photos and show scars. The more dramatic story is over at Montlake, where the Huskies opened Saturday with a 35-3 thumping of Weber State of the Big Sky Conference.
If longtime readers sense a repetitive theme here, I wish I could offer otherwise. But the top of club ops is the through-point that explains the mortal embarrassment of being the only MLB team without a World Series appearance.
It would almost be easier if these Mariners were like the teams of the 1970s and '80s, which were hapless. Today's Mariners are, well, hap. Or maybe that should be half. As in half good. They can hang, but participation ribbons are faint recompense.
Well before his broadcast personality made him an ebullient, irreverent national sports-culture hero in his final years, Bill Walton as a youngster was something of a budding sports nemesis....
As you may have surmised by now, a pattern has emerged. Nothing about the current Mariners has gone to standard baseball form. They are as predictable as puppies under a blanket.
Where Macdonald's ends up on that spectrum will be the highest Seahawks drama of the 2024 season. As with the presidency and many CEO jobs, it will be defined by crisis management.
Except for a two-run, welcome-back homer by Haniger, plus a two-run dinger from pinch-hitter Dylan Moore, the Mariners disappointed a sellout crowd of 45,337 with a 6-4 loss to the Boston Red Sox.