.500

Well, they will fly 500 miles
And they will fly 500 more
Just to be the team to reach .500
While they're on a west-coast tour


Yes, the Mariners are 39-39. They no longer have a losing record, thanks to being the best team in the NL West.

For the record, though, the AL is beating the NL 117-70 in interleague as of right now. The Mariners, Twins, and White Sox are 11-2 in interleague, Detroit is 12-2, and Boston is 12-1. Only 4 AL teams out of 14 are posting losing records in interleague, whereas only 2 NL teams out of 16 are posting winning records. This is pretty insane.

In case you're wondering, I kept my streak of only catching one inning of the game alive: I got home after walking Greenlake with my housemates and the dogs, just in time for the ninth inning. It was 7-7, Ibanez was coming up to bat with two outs (and apparently Beltre on second), and I joked to the rest: "It's okay, I'm home, they can win now." Within the next three minutes, Ibanez was intentionally walked, Richie snagged that low pitch for a double to score Beltre, and Johjima launched that home run into the left field stands scoring the other three, putting the score at 11-7.

I was pretty dumbfounded, but it was pretty cool.

I was in the midst of telling my housemates what a lefty-masher and speed demon Eric Byrnes is when he got his double off Jake Woods, and I was pointing out that Conor Jackson and I share a birthday as he walked. And as Putz came in to face Gonzalez, they asked why we were bringing in a righty to face a lefty, and I said, "Because Putz is awesome. He's going to get this guy out," and he did.

You could have played a pretty good drinking game with the postgame show on the phrases "haven't been at .500 since..." and "Kenji Johjima's consecutive 2-homerun games".

Felix is up tonight, and I've got a decent plan for ignoring all but one inning of the game tonight too, so they should win this one as well.

(In other random things, I realized I never linked to Miguel Cabrera refusing to be intentionally walked, which is one of the coolest things I've ever seen in my life. I always wondered if someone could pull that off.)

(Also, if you have good karma to dish out, send some to Peter Gammons, who is recovering from surgery for an aneurysm. Get well, PG!)