If you happen to be the sort of baseball fan I am, which is pretty much "Oh, is it baseball season again?", there's quite the little baseball drama unfolding with our usually-mediocre-at-best Seattle Mariners. As of this moment, they seem well on their way to their 14th victory in a row. One more would tie the all-time club record. They've also crawled out of the basement and into contention for at least a wild card game in the playoffs.
All this came in the wake of one of the more spectacular "bench emptying brawls" I have ever seen --- someone almost hit someone with a pitch, which led to someone else hitting someone with a pitch in the next game. There had been a good deal of "Listen here, we don't forget, you (several non--TV words that one commentator helpfully had translated by a lip reader)" and lots of finger-pointing -- not the index finger -- so things were pretty clearly premeditated. Then a huge, sort of terrifying, donnybrook that went on and on and ended with a lot of folks being thrown out of the game and getting multi-game suspensions. The suspensions included a 10 game suspension for the Angels coach, speaker of the above mentioned "Listen here" stuff.
As one of our suspended players left the (Angels') playing field he favored the crowd with a hearty double-bird salute. (After the game he apologized to a very upset little girl by giving her a baseball and telling her he was sorry he got thrown out of the game. She bought the non-apology and was all smiles.)
The suspensions were of important Mariners players and required a bunch of second-stringers to play.
For reasons that would probably keep a whole cohort of psych students busy for years, all that seemed to lead to a tremendous turnaround for the team.
I may have to buy a Mariners cap.
