20 years from now, anyone who is a Mariners fan will remember how they watched Felix Hernandez dispatch the final 3 Tampa Bay Rays to pitch the 1st perfect game in team history. This video from the Jackson General, the Mariners AA team, is tough to beat.

Interesting quote at the bottom of this article about Jorge Posada’s retirement:

“Swinging with pine tar on his hands, and without batting gloves, he was a five-time All-Star, caught David Wells’ perfect game in 1998, and played in 125 games in October. He is a borderline Hall of Fame candidate, but his legacy as a Yankee probably means more to him.”

Ok, this graph took longer than I expected to pull together. So I hope everyone appreciates it.

The question is whether Ichiro has ANY chance at getting to 200 hits. By my count, as of Sunday 8/14, he has 133 hits thru 119 Mariner games, an average of about 1.12 hits per game. That pace gets him to about 181 hits total.

So, my math says he has 43 more games to get 57 hits, an average of 1.56 hits per game. For comparison, if you got 1.56 hits per game over a 162 game schedule, you’d end the season with 252 hits. Now, he’s been averaging 4.18 AB per game, so at that same rate, he’d need to hit .373. So, it is a doable feat for someone like Ichiro.

However, here’s the bad news. In 2011, the highest hits per game he’s averaged is about 1.4 per game. So, he basically needs to have a traditional “Ichiro-like” stretch for 43 games, in a season when he has never been “Ichiro-like.”

In the charts below, here’s what you get:

Chart 1:
- Green line is the day to day pace anyone would need to be on to get to 200 hits.
- Red line is his actual day to pace thru 2011 to date, and then the pace he needs to accelerate to.
- Blue line is his projected season hit total over 162 games, calculated by the number of hits he had at that point in the season.

Chart 2:
- Ichiro’s Average hits per game.
- What Ichiro needs to accelerate to on a hits per game basis in order to get to 200.

Let me know if you have any questions. Math is hard.

For all you M’s and Niehaus fans.

“Honey, you’ll protect me if there’s a fly ball, right?”
“Absolutely dear.”
“OW!” You said you’d protect me!!!”
“Well not if it’s hit THAT hard…”

In 1988, Ken Griffey Jr and I had similar career goals.  We both wanted to play Major League Baseball.

Now, while I was busy fighting for playing time at Interlake High School, Griffey was an 18 year old in San Bernadino and Vermont, already in the Mariners farm system.  But still, at that point in time, there was still technically a “chance” that we’d play on the same field.

On April 10, 1989, my friend Cale and I bailed out of practice early to get to the Kingdome, parked ourselves in the 300 level, and watched Griffey play his first game in Seattle. He only got one hit that game, but it was his first career home run, in his first at bat.  And still at that moment, I had a chance to play major league ball with Griffey.

Fast forward 21 years.  June 2, 2010.  Griffey retires.

So big sigh.  

I knew this day would come.

Now at one point in time I could tell you every stat in baseball.  But we all re-prioritize, and now I know the names of more senators than 3rd basemen.  I have a better chance beating the stock market than winning a fantasy baseball league.  

But Griffey’s retirement is symbolic.  He’s the only player close to my age who I watched from his first to last day.  

Now realistically, I knew by 1990 we weren’t going to ever play on the same baseball field.  But now that I think about it, I guess have a new “realistic” goal.  Hey Ken, we play softball every Tuesday night up at Kasch Park.  We’d love to hear all the stories and thank you for all the memories.  We have room for another outfielder….you can even play center.  

Hey, there’s always a chance.

I was going to put some notes together on the passing of Detroit Tigers Broadcasting legend Ernie Harwell.  However, before I had a chance, the North Sound division of AndyBoyer.com but together this list which I’ll forward here:

• Was born two years before the radio was invented.
• Was a bat boy for the Atlanta Crackers (really) at age five.  He never had to buy a ticket for a baseball game since then.
• Broadcast games for the Atlanta Crackers but was traded to the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1948 for catcher Cliff Dapper becasue Branch Rickey liked Ernie and Brooklyn needed a third guy to substitute for Red Barber who was sick with an ulcer.
• Broadcasters were fired often because as the teams’ radio sponsors — mainly beer companies like Strohs, Gunther, Goebel — won contracts, the new sponsor often thought the broadcaster identified too much with the old sponsor.
• Vin Scully replaced Ernie Harwell for the Dodgers
• In Harwell’s first broadcast for the Tigers in 1960, there was not room for him or his color guy in the Cleveland press box so they had to do the broadcast from a table set up in the upper deck.  It was 35 degrees and windy.  The 15 inning game lasted almost five hours.
• Rick Rizzs did the unthinkable by spending a year as Ernie’s “replacement” in 1992.  Bo Schembechler made this decision and resigned a year later.  Ernie was broadcasting for Detroit again in 1993.
• In 2002 the Cleveland Indians named their visiting radio booth for Harwell
• When he retired, he had twice outdone Cal Ripken’s consecutive games streak.  He missed two games in his career.  One for his brother’s funeral and the other for his Hall of Fame induction.
• It’s Harwell’s call of the 1963 World Series you hear in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”
• He and his wife Lulu were married for 68 years

Photo borrowed from http://rodgerdodgerowl.wordpress.com/2009/09/15/ernie-harwell/