Out of Left Field : How the Mariners Made Baseball Fly in Seattle

Rating:
Summary: A good read for Mariner fans like me
Review: Art Thiel is known an Seattle as a brutally honest writer who is not afraid to take on sport's sacred cows. However this book is in no way an expose, no heroes are brought down or made into villains. Instead we get an entertaining book on how The Mariners went from what was once considered the worst baseball franshises of all time to being one of it's most successful teams both on the field and financially.
Art touches on Slade Gorton's efforts to bring baseball to Seattle after the Pilots left and the woeful first 18 odd years in the Kingdome. He also brings to light reasons of why Nintendo became involved with other local based corporations in purchasing the team.
He tells us how Ken Griffey,Jr and Ichiro became Mariners and gives many more glimpses of the team that eventually won the hearts of the Seattle area.
One item that I think merits special note is Art's coverage of the 2001 season. In his mention of the 9/11 tradgedy, you really feel the loss and sadness of that day and aftermath.
Art covers the controversies behind the building of the new stadium, but a big absence is that he neglected to mention the roll that Seattle's first sports radio station, KJR had in pounding the message that building the Stadium and baseball are good for the community, nor does he give any ink to Chris Van Dyke and the opponants of the stadium.
This book is an easy and entertaining read for both Seattle sports and baseball fans!

Rating:
Summary: A good read for Mariner fans like me
Review: Art Thiel is known an Seattle as a brutally honest writer who is not afraid to take on sport's sacred cows. However this book is in no way an expose, no heroes are brought down or made into villains. Instead we get an entertaining book on how The Mariners went from what was once considered the worst baseball franshises of all time to being one of it's most successful teams both on the field and financially.
Art touches on Slade Gorton's efforts to bring baseball to Seattle after the Pilots left and the woeful first 18 odd years in the Kingdome. He also brings to light reasons of why Nintendo became involved with other local based corporations in purchasing the team.
He tells us how Ken Griffey,Jr and Ichiro became Mariners and gives many more glimpses of the team that eventually won the hearts of the Seattle area.
One item that I think merits special note is Art's coverage of the 2001 season. In his mention of the 9/11 tradgedy, you really feel the loss and sadness of that day and aftermath.
Art covers the controversies behind the building of the new stadium, but a big absence is that he neglected to mention the roll that Seattle's first sports radio station, KJR had in pounding the message that building the Stadium and baseball are good for the community, nor does he give any ink to Chris Van Dyke and the opponants of the stadium.
This book is an easy and entertaining read for both Seattle sports and baseball fans!

Rating:
Summary: History of how the Mariners came and stayed in Seattle
Review: Art Thiel's "Out of Left Field" is a well-paced history of the Seattle Mariners, with as much information about the behind the scenes figures as those who played on the field.

Mr. Thiel's sports columns appear in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and I have to admit that I often find his brutally honest articles mean-spirited and overly sarcastic. He also seems to be fond of his own writing and clever turning of a phrase at the expense of his subject. It makes me wonder if he ever played sports, or even likes watching the games.

Had I not read several excerpts of the book that appeared in the P-I last year, I probably would not have wanted to read it. Those excerpts demonstrated that Thiel had more substance than his columns. In "Out of Left Field" he doesn't try too hard to impress us with his wit, and the book is all the better for it. We are able to enjoy the tale without author intrusion.

This book will primarily appear to those in the Seattle Mariners' Pacific Northwest region fan base. As a long-suffering fan who attended the M's first game in 1977, I was very familiar with the cast of characters. Thiel dug further, providing information about how the Seattle Pilots left town after only one season in 1969. He also detailed the role that Slade Gorton, a local attorney and later U.S. senator, played in not only getting an expansion team in the city in 1977, but also in building a new ownership team in 1992, and then helping to push through the program to build Safeco Field.

While much of what has transpired with the Mariners over the years is fairly well-known, we also get more background of how Hiroshi Yamauchi came to purchase the team, along with executives from Nintendo, Microsoft, McCaw Cellular, and a host of local politicians. The story is as much about Minoru Arakawa, John Ellis, Howard Lincoln, etc. as it is about Lou Piniella, Ken Griffey, Jr., Alex Rodriguez and Randy Johnson. The part about how the M's almost passed on Griffey as the number one pick is interesting. The behind the scenes look at the player personalities and egos at work also sets up how and why various players departed.

We get Seattle's wild ride in 1995 over the Yankees in the ALDS, and how they survived the departure of their marquee players and then Piniella after 2002. Jay Buhner, the M's long-time right fielder, provides a number of colorful quotes.

For any baseball fan, it's a good read that doesn't inundate the reader with too many statistics. It's about people, luck and fate. Thiel covers the who, what, where, when, how and why with little nonsense and a balanced style.

Rating:
Summary: History of how the Mariners came and stayed in Seattle
Review: Art Thiel's "Out of Left Field" is a well-paced history of the Seattle Mariners, with as much information about the behind the scenes figures as those who played on the field.

Mr. Thiel's sports columns appear in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and I have to admit that I often find his brutally honest articles mean-spirited and overly sarcastic. He also seems to be fond of his own writing and clever turning of a phrase at the expense of his subject. It makes me wonder if he ever played sports, or even likes watching the games.

Had I not read several excerpts of the book that appeared in the P-I last year, I probably would not have wanted to read it. Those excerpts demonstrated that Thiel had more substance than his columns. In "Out of Left Field" he doesn't try too hard to impress us with his wit, and the book is all the better for it. We are able to enjoy the tale without author intrusion.

This book will primarily appear to those in the Seattle Mariners' Pacific Northwest region fan base. As a long-suffering fan who attended the M's first game in 1977, I was very familiar with the cast of characters. Thiel dug further, providing information about how the Seattle Pilots left town after only one season in 1969. He also detailed the role that Slade Gorton, a local attorney and later U.S. senator, played in not only getting an expansion team in the city in 1977, but also in building a new ownership team in 1992, and then helping to push through the program to build Safeco Field.

While much of what has transpired with the Mariners over the years is fairly well-known, we also get more background of how Hiroshi Yamauchi came to purchase the team, along with executives from Nintendo, Microsoft, McCaw Cellular, and a host of local politicians. The story is as much about Minoru Arakawa, John Ellis, Howard Lincoln, etc. as it is about Lou Piniella, Ken Griffey, Jr., Alex Rodriguez and Randy Johnson. The part about how the M's almost passed on Griffey as the number one pick is interesting. The behind the scenes look at the player personalities and egos at work also sets up how and why various players departed.

We get Seattle's wild ride in 1995 over the Yankees in the ALDS, and how they survived the departure of their marquee players and then Piniella after 2002. Jay Buhner, the M's long-time right fielder, provides a number of colorful quotes.

For any baseball fan, it's a good read that doesn't inundate the reader with too many statistics. It's about people, luck and fate. Thiel covers the who, what, where, when, how and why with little nonsense and a balanced style.

Rating:
Summary: The Mariners weren't always bad?
Review: As someone who moved to the Pacific Northwest in 1995 I've only known the "good" Mariners. This book sheds excellent light on the "bad" Mariners and the process by which they have become one of the top contending MLB teams. I would have liked to hear from more of the players and managers and from more of the local sportwriters. Granted, the book can only be so long...however, I do wish it had been much longer. For the baseball aficionado, you can never have enough information.

Rating:
Summary: The Mariners weren't always bad?
Review: As someone who moved to the Pacific Northwest in 1995 I've only known the "good" Mariners. This book sheds excellent light on the "bad" Mariners and the process by which they have become one of the top contending MLB teams. I would have liked to hear from more of the players and managers and from more of the local sportwriters. Granted, the book can only be so long...however, I do wish it had been much longer. For the baseball aficionado, you can never have enough information.

Rating:
Summary: The Mariners weren't always bad?
Review: As someone who moved to the Pacific Northwest in 1995 I've only known the "good" Mariners. This book sheds excellent light on the "bad" Mariners and the process by which they have become one of the top contending MLB teams. I would have liked to hear from more of the players and managers and from more of the local sportwriters. Granted, the book can only be so long...however, I do wish it had been much longer. For the baseball aficionado, you can never have enough information.

Rating:
Summary: A baseball team in exchange for dropping a lawsuit!
Review: Baseball came to the Great Northwest in 1969. The Seattle Pilots played one season of major league baseball before the owners saw a quick chance for profit and sold the team in 1970 to Bud Selig, who then promptly moved the club to Milwaukee. Then Washington state attorney Slade Gorton filed suit against the American League for breach of contract. In exchange for dropping the lawsuit, Seattle was awarded a baseball team in the 1977 expansion. Thus begins the saga of the Seattle Mariners.

So the Mariners start their run, not with public support, but as a trophy in a legal battle. It didn't get much better for a while. Art Thiel is a local Seattle sportswriter who chronicles the team in exceptional detail. As an adolescent in Seattle I remember those Mariners. He gives details, funny anecdotes, and describes the incredible playoff run in 1995 after two decades of futility that saved the team for Seattle. That run led to the new ballpark and the historic 2001 season.

For a casual baseball fan this book is well written and fascinating. However, for any Seattle fan it is priceless. While what happened on the field is known, Art describes what went on behind the scenes. Japanese owners, Microsoft money, and Presidents of the United States were all involved in the process to secure the team to Seattle through their current ownership.

A special moment for me was Art noting the back to back games against the Yankee's in the early lean years when Tom Paciorek hit home runs in the bottom of the ninth to win. I was at those games with my father and those are fond memories indeed.

A wonderful book, highly recommended to all baseball fans.


Rating:
Summary: The Birth of Baseball Lore
Review: Having lived my entire life in the Northwest, and having grown up with the expansion Portland Trailblazers, Seattle Seahawks, and of course the Mariners, I was skeptical of the well-known beat writer's abilities to capture the true essence of frustration amongst the pro sports fandom in our little corner of America. Art hits a salami with this endeaver.

The casual reader (Who is Randy Johnson?) will be emersed in the process of creating franchise lore - that force that drives us ardent fans to keep coming back year after year - looking for the necessary incredients for potential glory. If you wonder why your husband, father, best friend is the way they are - tears well up and goose bumps appear when certain highlights are replayed - this book will teach you the reasons.

To the devoted lifer fan, Art fills out the history you think you know with insights and access only available to the public via a media insider like himself. I have never been a fan of Thiel's columns, his travels with the team, etc. or that of Bob Finnegan's for that matter. However this book represents what a quality writer can do with some devoted and concentrated effort in the name of full disclosure.

If I could find a specific fault purveyed through out the book it would be the lack of reflection on the media coverage. Dave Niehaus and Rick Rizzs have become the conduit between MLB and 99% of Mariner fans. This needs more coverage and development. Also, the sports media has also bumbled and stumbled its way along for the ride with the franchise. The baseball folks are not the only bafoons and bumblers to mold the history of the Mariners.

Rating:
Summary: Good history, good insider stuff, good book
Review: In one of my favorite episodes from my favorite TV show, the late and much lamented "Mystery Science Theater 3000," a child in a short-subject film is trying to press through a crowd in order to see a baseball game. But, as the narrator observes, "he finds a five-year-old can't get close enough to see anything." To which Tom Servo cheerfully adds, "Besides, the Mariners are playing, so who cares?" That episode aired in the early '90s. How the Ms got from being the laughingstock of MLB to very near the top in just a few years, and got a new stadium in the bargain, is the focus of Art Thiel's very good book.

From its founding in 1977, the result of a legal settlement, until the mid-1990s, the Mariners were, as Thiel reminds us, a really, really bad team. Even with the glory years of the late '90s, the Ms still hold the mark for lowest total fan attendance in both the 1980s and the 1990s. Along the way, however, a change of ownership, a fiery new manager, and several key player acquisitions turned the Ms into a powerhouse.

The author does a fine job of taking us through those steps. As a result, this is much more than just a summary of several baseball seasons (though he does take us through the 1995 and 2001 seasons, in particular, in some detail). He also takes us behind the scenes, into the business side of the game where the key decisions are made, and also gets into some serious local politics surrounding the funding and construction of Safeco Field. Central episodes in this book include the arrival of the new ownership team, the hiring (and later release) of Lou Piniella, the drafting (and, again, subsequent loss) of Ken Griffey, Jr., and Alex Rodriguez, the Randy Johnson trade, and the arrival of Ichiro Suzuki. Personally, I found this last to be the most interesting part of the book, but maybe that's because I find Ichiro the most interesting player in baseball.

Throughout it all, the author's exclusive interviews with Jay Buhner and Lou himself provide spirited and insightful insider quotes. I should also commend the author's ability to make criticisms where they're required, calling out both poor baseball strategy and bad business decisions.

The casual Seattle baseball-watcher looking to relive some great seasons will find a lot here to enjoy. But the more serious fan, who really wants to go behind the scenes and see how the Ms became who and what they are today, will definitely want to add this to his shelf.