Tales from the Seattle Mariners Dugout Read online

  Even in the lousiest conditions, there’s a magic to spring training. There’s a sense of anticipation for even the bad teams, because it’s a time when everybody is tied for first place and anything is possible.

  That romantic interlude has applied to scores of lousy teams in major-league history … but not the 1977 Mariners.

  They knew who they were—mostly castoffs from other teams made available in the expansion draft, veterans in their final years, and young prospects getting their first taste of the major leagues.

  “An expansion team just didn’t get anything in terms of players,” pitching coach Wes Stock said. “We ended up with a bunch of old guys who couldn’t play or a bunch of young kids who weren’t ready. All of us knew what we had and what our job was ahead of us. As coaches, it was just a matter of keeping ourselves up emotionally because we had to keep the players up. If we had given up, then the players would have given up. But you certainly didn’t go into it thinking you would win the pennant.”

  The original Mariners included Dave Collins, a fast young outfielder known in his hometown as the “Rapid City Rabbit,” who had played two seasons with the Angels before the Mariners got him in the expansion draft; second baseman Jose Baez, a rookie who lost his job to speedy 22-year-old Julio Cruz at midseason; left fielder Steve Braun, an established veteran with the Twins who played 15 seasons in the majors, but less than one with the Mariners before they traded him to Kansas City in 1978; right fielder Lee Stanton, who was near the end of his nine-year career; third baseman Bill Stein, who played 14 seasons with the Cardinals, White Sox, Mariners, and Rangers; first baseman Dan Meyer, who spent five years with the Mariners before they traded him to Oakland after the 1981 season; center fielder Ruppert Jones, a flashy young player who became the Mariners’ first All-Star that season; catcher Bob Stinson, a tell-it-like-it-is veteran who played four seasons in Seattle to finish a 12-year career; and shortstop Craig Reynolds, a promising young player who had his best years with the Astros after the Mariners traded him in 1978 for pitcher Floyd Bannister.

  Veteran right-hander Diego Segui, who had pitched for the Seattle Pilots in 1969, became the Mariners’ opening-night starter in ’77. Glenn Abbott, Dick Pole, Gary Wheelock, and John Montague got a majority of the starts, although the Mariners essentially were an evolving—and revolving—staff that used 17 different starting pitchers that season.

  The Right Man for the Job

  The man charged with pulling those young and old players together was manager Darrell Johnson. Mariners general manager Lou Gorman hired Johnson, a former catcher, because of his reputation as an old-school baseball man and disciplinarian, but also for his patience.

  Johnson had managed the Red Sox to the American League pennant and the memorable 1975 World Series, which they lost in seven games to the Cincinnati Reds. The Sox, though, wobbled below .500 much of the 1976 season, and Johnson was fired after 86 games. Gorman hired him to lead his expansion Mariners, and Johnson brought a background of success and an image as a hard-nosed intimidator.

  “I didn’t really know who Darrell Johnson was,” said Julio Cruz, then a 22-year-old second baseman. “I remember seeing him in the ’75 World Series, and when the cameras would zoom in on him in the dugout, I thought of him as a grouchy-looking man.”

  The Mariners soon learned that Johnson wasn’t the unyielding taskmaster they had envisioned. At spring training, he was patient. He was a teacher. He cared about his players.

  Darrell Johnson was named the first manager of the Seattle Mariners. Photo courtesy of the Seattle Mariners

  “He had just come off arguably the greatest World Series ever played in ’75 between the Red Sox and the Reds. He had gone from the penthouse to the crapper to come here,” Mariners broadcaster Dave Niehaus said. “But he was an awfully patient guy and he was the right man for the job at the time. He was a hard worker. He was very good to those young players and he cared about them.”

  It’s not that Johnson was all smiles and pats on the back. He occasionally would lay into a player, but he’d do it for all the right reasons. Mostly, he treated the Mariners in a way that would help them improve.

  “He was a hard-nosed guy and there were times when he would yell at me,” Cruz said. “But he told me up front, ‘If I stop yelling at you, that’s when you worry. If I yell at you, that means I know you have talent and you can play this game.’”

  Pitching coach Wes Stock said anyone who believed that Johnson was overly rough, impatient, and intimidating had based that opinion on reputation, not on how he handled the young Mariners. That’s how he’s remembered in Seattle.

  Twenty-seven years after Johnson took those fledgling Mariners for what became an adventurous three-and-a-half-year run as their manager, he died of leukemia on May 3, 2004, at age 75.

  “When he took the job with the Mariners, he knew we were all young and fragile and if he threw out any bad vibes toward us, we might all crawl into a shell,” Cruz said. “I loved the man.”

  A Grand Opening

  The 57,762 who packed the Kingdome on April 6, 1977, weren’t there just to see a victory, and that turned out to be a good thing. California Angels pitcher Frank Tanana shut out the Mariners 7–0 in the first game in franchise history.

  The big picture was what mattered, and Seattle was thrilled that baseball had returned after the bad experience with the Pilots. For one night, the fans loved the Mariners win or lose.

  “I will always remember the excitement the town had for the return of baseball,” Niehaus said.

  Before the opening game, the city honored the team with a parade through downtown and, even though the weather was gray and the players rode open convertibles, there was warmth from all the fans lining the streets.

  “It was colder than heck and it was a miserable day,” Niehaus said. “But there were people lined up Fourth Avenue welcoming baseball back after that terrible memory of the Pilots in 1969.”

  The good feelings continued in the Kingdome, where US Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson of Everett threw out the ceremonial first pitch from a box near the Mariners third-base dugout. Alongside were commissioner Bowie Kuhn and the Mariners’ owners, including entertainer Danny Kaye.

  “It was a proud moment,” Niehaus said. “They all had such a wonderful time.”

  Right-hander Diego Segui, who pitched for the Seattle Pilots eight years earlier, threw a strike to Jerry Remy with the first pitch in Mariners history. Then, beginning a trait followed by Mariners pitchers for years, Segui issued a leadoff walk.

  In the bottom of the first inning, Dave Collins became the first batter in Mariners history, and he set a tone for other Seattle hitters over the years. He took a called third strike from Tanana.

  The Angels scored runs in each of the first five innings, including the first Kingdome home run by Joe Rudi in the third, and Tanana pitched a nine-hit complete game to shut out the Mariners 7–0.

  “The score was incidental and it didn’t make a difference who won that ballgame,” Niehaus said. “Major League Baseball was back in the Pacific Northwest, and I was happy to be a part of it. Everybody went home happy even though we got shut out. There was a buzz in the town about baseball and we looked forward to the next game.”

  “Unfortunately,” Niehaus added, “reality set in.”

  What the Mariners faced the next night may have been worse than reality. Nolan Ryan threw his blazing fastball down their throats in a three-hit complete game—and another shutout, 2–0.

  “I was beginning to wonder not only if we were going to win a game, but if we would ever score a run,” Niehaus said.

  The Mariners did both in their third game.

  They scored twice in the bottom of the ninth off Angels reliever John Verhoeven when Bob Stinson and Larry Milbourne hit RBI doubles in a 7–6 comeback victory. It made left-handed reliever Bill Laxton the Mariners’ first winning pitcher.

  Gary Wheelock, making his first major-league start, held the Angels to four hi
ts in six innings of the fourth game of the five-game series, and Ed Montague pitched two scoreless innings for the save in a 5–1 victory that pulled the Mariners’ record to .500.

  “I didn’t have a very good spring training that year and I was nervous for my first major-league start,” Wheelock said.

  Angels manager Norm Sherry watched in disbelief as Wheelock, who had come up in the California system before the Mariners took him in the expansion draft, beat his team.

  “I remember Norm saying, ‘The guy couldn’t get anybody out in spring training, and now he comes out and beats us here,’” Wheelock said.

  The Mariners’ winning ways didn’t last long. They lost the next three games and never reached .500 again that year.

  Rupe and Cruzer, the First Fan Favorites

  Julio Cruz and Ruppert Jones had a standard greeting when they got together for old-timers’ functions.

  “Rupe, thanks for taking all those pitches for me so I could steal bases,” Cruz would tell him.

  “That’s OK, Cruzer,” Jones would reply, “because I always knew I would get fastballs to hit.”

  The Mariners didn’t win over their fans with victories that first season, but they did produce a few players who became favorites. Two of the most popular were Jones and Cruz, a couple of rookies who brought enthusiasm and speed to the ballpark every day.

  Jones had been the No. 1 pick in the expansion draft, but he came to the Mariners with just 51 major-league at-bats the previous season with Kansas City and absolutely no identity among Seattle fans.

  That changed quickly.

  Jones patrolled center field at the Kingdome with a flair that foreshadowed the amazing feats of Ken Griffey Jr. a dozen years later. Jones became the Mariners’ first All-Star in 1977 and played two more years in Seattle before the M’s traded him to the New York Yankees.

  The ’77 season in Seattle was special, simply because Jones had become so popular with the fans. They loved his name, and every time he would come to bat or make a big play, chants of “Ruuuuuupe! Ruuuuuupe!” would echo through the Kingdome. During the seventh-inning stretch, when fans would sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” they altered the words in order to “Rupe, Rupe, Rupe for the home team.”

  “Everybody got energized because of the name,” broadcaster Dave Niehaus said. “Ruppert was the first guy to capture the imagination of Pacific Northwest fans. He had a little flash to him and he had some swagger when he went out to center field. He had a little power and a good arm. He was not a superstar by any stretch of the imagination, but he was our superstar.”

  Jones hit a career-high 24 home runs that season and drove in 76. After Cruz was called up in July, they complemented each other in the lineup.

  “Rupe was a big reason I stole so many bases, because he would take a pitch for me,” said Cruz, who stole 15 bases his first season, then 59 in 1978 to rank second in the American League. Cruz was the Mariners’ leadoff hitter, and Jones batted either fourth or fifth, and when Cruz reached base, he had a signal for Jones to indicate when he would run.

  “I would put a finger in my ear hole, and that meant I would go on that pitch,” Cruz said. “He would take the pitch or fake a bunt, just to give me that little edge. But it gave him a little edge, too, because the other teams all knew I was going to run and they would throw him fastballs.”

  Cruz had spent the first half of the 1977 season tearing up the Pacific Coast League for the Mariners’ Class-AAA Calgary team, hitting .374 with 40 steals and 74 runs. The Cannons played a game in Phoenix on July 3 when the equipment manager tipped off Cruz that he was headed to the major leagues.

  Ruppert Jones. Photo courtesy of the Seattle Mariners

  “He said, ‘Cruzer, they’re going to call you up tomorrow,’” Cruz said. “I was having a big year and I was thinking, ‘Why would they want to call me up? Just let me keep playing here.’”

  The next morning, Cruz flew to Seattle and got his first glimpse of the Kingdome as he rode toward downtown from Sea-Tac Airport.

  “I saw it from the taxi, and my first thought was, ‘What is that? It looks like a flying saucer,’” he said. “Then I thought, ‘Geez, I’m going to be playing there.’”

  Tired from the trip to Seattle and from answering reporters’ calls after he checked into his hotel, Cruz figured he could relax a little when he got to the ballpark. Surely, Cruz thought, he wouldn’t be playing that night.

  He arrived at the Kingdome and pulled on the knit Mariners uniform—wearing No. 6 in honor of his favorite major leaguer, former Cardinals great Stan Musial—and anticipated a night on the bench to unwind from the whirlwind previous 24 hours.

  Didn’t happen. The Mariners hadn’t called Cruz up to sit him.

  “I looked up at the lineup and I was in there,” he said. “I was the leadoff guy.”

  Facing right-hander Francisco Barrios of the White Sox, Cruz flew out to center field in his first at-bat, but singled to center in the fourth inning for his first major-league hit.

  Julio Cruz steals third base. Photo by The Herald of Everett, Washington

  As much as his big-league dream came true that night, Cruz relived another that season, on August 30 in New York, when the Mariners played in Yankee Stadium. It was a homecoming for Cruz, who was born in Brooklyn and lived there until his family moved to California when he was 14.

  “I remember the day we left, we passed by Yankee Stadium and I said to myself, ‘The next time I come to New York, I’m going to play in that stadium,’” Cruz said. Eight years later, he returned as a major leaguer with the Mariners.

  “I stood in the same batter’s box where Lou Gehrig stood,” he said. “I used the same shower that Babe Ruth used. It was such an exuberant feeling. I went early to the ballpark, knowing I was going to play that night in front of my people, in front of my relatives.”

  Cruz played 60 games for the Mariners that season, batting .256 and stealing 15 bases. In 1978, his first full season, he became one of the American League’s top base stealers. He finished second in the league with 59, including a record 32 straight without being thrown out.

  Cruz became a quality defensive player at second base, where Hall of Famer Bill Mazeroski, one of the best defensive second basemen of all time, helped hone his game while on the coaching staff in 1979 and 1980.

  On June 7, 1981, less than a week before the players strike shut down baseball for two months, Cruz played one of his greatest games. He handled 18 total chances without an error in nine innings, setting an American League record for second basemen. When the game went 11 innings, he handled one more chance and came up one short of the major-league record.

  Cruz made his final statement in that game with his legs. With one out in the bottom of the 11th and the score tied 4–4, he singled off Mike Stanton, then stole second base. Tom Paciorek singled to center, and Cruz sped home with the winning run.

  Unfortunately, any joy by the Mariners in those days was an occasional thing, and the losses were hard on Cruz, as they were on the whole team. He endured not only the 98-loss season in the Mariners’ first year, but also two others with 100 or more losses.

  “We just didn’t have the talent to compete at that level, and we knew it going in,” he said. “But we had to play the schedule out. It was tough, but personally, I enjoyed every minute I was able to be on the field. I celebrated the fact that I was playing the game of baseball. If I had thought just about wins and losses, I would have gone crazy.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Lowlights, Highlights, and a Cast of Characters

  MARINERS FANS LEARNED NOT TO EXPECT MUCH from their team in the early years, and the M’s didn’t provide a lot with the hodgepodge of young and old players they threw onto the field. They lost 297 games their first three seasons, and their accomplishments became as much fodder for folklore as anything to brag about.

  Take the Mendoza Line. Please take it, Mario Mendoza would say.

  Mendoza, a good-fielding, light-hitting s
hortstop who the Mariners acquired in a trade with the Pirates before the 1979 season, wore the franchise’s first label of futility. As his batting average lingered around the .200 mark that season, it became known as the “Mendoza Line”—that statistical barrier separating a poor hitter from a putrid one.

  George Brett of the Royals made the term popular, once saying after he’d scanned the batting averages in the newspaper, “I knew I was off to a bad start when I saw my average listed below the Mendoza Line.”

  A couple of Mendoza’s teammates with the Mariners, Tom Paciorek and Bruce Bochte, also are credited with using the term during interviews in 1979, and in later years TV broadcaster Chris Berman brought it into everyone’s living rooms with constant references to the Mendoza Line on ESPN.

  Whatever the origin, it’s Mario Mendoza, the former Mariner, who has been stuck with the label since 1979, when he batted .198 in 148 games. He, Steve Jeltz, and Carlos Pena are the only players to have batted less than .200 while playing at least 148 games since then. Jeltz, an infielder with the Phillies, batted .187 in 1988 and Pena, a first baseman with the Rays, batted .197 in 2012.

  What’s nearly forgotten about Mario Mendoza is the role he played so skillfully in preventing Brett from batting .400 in 1980. After a slow start to the season, Brett’s average topped .400 on August 17, and he was batting .394 when the Royals began a late-September trip to the West Coast, beginning with three games at Seattle. Easy pickings, right?

  Brett stung the ball throughout that series but was robbed of hits several times on spectacular plays by Mendoza. Brett wound up with just two hits in 11 at-bats through three games at the Kingdome, and when he left Seattle the average had fallen to .389. His run at .400 had suffered a big blow, and he said Mendoza was the reason.

  “I still think I should have hit .400 that season,” Brett told Jim Street of mlb.com during a 1995 interview. “The reason I didn’t was Mario Mendoza. Mendoza took three hits away from me, all right up the middle, on unbelievable plays. I needed five more hits for .400.