Mariners and Safeco

"1st inning highlights: Vlady hits a dinger off of Moyer for the 6495619th time and Colon strikes out the side. Your 2006 Seattle Mariners!

signs of life. Colon is on tilt. Moyer's pumped up. I heard this Johjima kid was good. I'll take an oppo dong and a nice assist as a pretty good MLB debut. And the game's not over....."

Those were the Treo updates from the game. Sadly this will be the only Mariners' game on my roadtrip. I had a lot of fun, even in defeat. The Mariners could be good in a few years, it all depends on how Future(Felix) holds up and whether Reed can ever learn to hit. I don't need a ton of production from my middle infield but I can't live with .250, 10 dingers and 50 Ribbies from an outfield spot, no matter how well he plays in center. Johjima looked real good, making a heady assist at 2nd and stroking a bomb the other way. My favorite moment though was when he battled Colon, fouling off pitch after pitch until Bartolo ended up hitting him to load the bases with none out and chasing lst year's Cy Young winner. It was a real, quality, MLB at-bat. It's just too bad that the Angels' bullpen is unbelievably sick and they slammed the door on us. God I'd love to trot Romero, Shields and K-Rod out there in the late innings. The only question in my head about Johjima is that it looked like the ump was squeezing Putz on the Figgins at-bat and that may be because of poor framing by Kenji? I hope someone reading this can chime in on that since I didn't have the greatest view from deep in left field. All told, it was better than getting our butts kicked but effectively showed us why we aren't in the Angels' class. It's definitely weird rooting to finish .500 but it's nice that we're doing it with youth and there's some hope for the future. Go M's!

I'm hoping to start the trip tomorrow but I don't have the van yet. I'm a little leery about buying it from a used car dealership on Highway 99 that has signs all over stating, "No Credito? No Hay Problema!" The van they have definitely feels like it might be stolen. I ran a carfax report and it came up clean but who knows. Buying a used car is so scary, especially when you have to immediately take the car on a 11,000 mile roadtrip. Bleh. I'm going u tomorrow to take one last look but the worst case scenario will be that I take my Prius. I feel badly for Kenny "Bones" because I told him he could borrow the car for the time I was on the roadtrip. Bones is coming up with me tomorrow to look at the van and help me drive it back down here if I decide that I want it. God I'm such a procrastinator.

I'm off to bed. Hopefully I'll be at Redwood National Park by this time tomorrow, in a used minivan.