It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a team playing in a indoor stadium, must be in want of a roof. The 2025 Tampa Bay Rays, meet the 1994 Seattle Mariners.
I knew this incident had happened, but I did not understand the extent of the other teams seemingly going out of their way to attempt to harm (or perhaps even kill) the Seattle Mariners until reading this article.
It's fascinating how the MLB has perpetually continued to exist as a unit divided against itself. The opposing teams' players cared absolutely none for the plight of the poor 25 Seattle Mariners (plus coaches) who theoretically weren't going to see their families at home for two consecutive months. Normally the owners at least look out for the other owners, but $6 ticket prices to unplanned home games were not about to help Seattle stay in business at all. It was everybody against one. I'd hate to think that baseball at large was still angry about the 1970 lawsuit that forced the industry against its will to try Seattle again, but pettiness is everywhere in this game. That wouldn't surprise me.
Did the impending strike that the owners planned to force the players into play a big role in this? Probably. Everybody knew that this was going to be a two week plan instead of a two month plan, but imagine if there'd been a last second deal worked out, and it turned out that the rest of baseball had just crucified the Seattle Mariners. In that circumstance, there may have been yet another lawsuit for unfair practices causing the loss of the team, that would've put yet another coerced expansion baseball team into the Seattle market by court order, and we could've done this song and dance all over again.
Perhaps then we would've had to wait until approximately right now for baseball to make another orchestrated effort to kill itself in Seattle, just like it'd done in 1994, and like it's done in the modern day to Oakland.
I cannot believe the pettiness on display here, and I can't believe that somebody wasn't able to work something out that wasn't such an open display of contempt for the Seattle Mariners.
If it laid the groundwork for the ‘95 season, I’ll take it!
Excellent piece, as usual 🥰
Great work and love the "Rip Van Griffey" bit from your sources! A guy does get snoozy with so much travel.
This is a fantastic read!
I knew this incident had happened, but I did not understand the extent of the other teams seemingly going out of their way to attempt to harm (or perhaps even kill) the Seattle Mariners until reading this article.
It's fascinating how the MLB has perpetually continued to exist as a unit divided against itself. The opposing teams' players cared absolutely none for the plight of the poor 25 Seattle Mariners (plus coaches) who theoretically weren't going to see their families at home for two consecutive months. Normally the owners at least look out for the other owners, but $6 ticket prices to unplanned home games were not about to help Seattle stay in business at all. It was everybody against one. I'd hate to think that baseball at large was still angry about the 1970 lawsuit that forced the industry against its will to try Seattle again, but pettiness is everywhere in this game. That wouldn't surprise me.
Did the impending strike that the owners planned to force the players into play a big role in this? Probably. Everybody knew that this was going to be a two week plan instead of a two month plan, but imagine if there'd been a last second deal worked out, and it turned out that the rest of baseball had just crucified the Seattle Mariners. In that circumstance, there may have been yet another lawsuit for unfair practices causing the loss of the team, that would've put yet another coerced expansion baseball team into the Seattle market by court order, and we could've done this song and dance all over again.
Perhaps then we would've had to wait until approximately right now for baseball to make another orchestrated effort to kill itself in Seattle, just like it'd done in 1994, and like it's done in the modern day to Oakland.
I cannot believe the pettiness on display here, and I can't believe that somebody wasn't able to work something out that wasn't such an open display of contempt for the Seattle Mariners.