Wrong Man, Wrong Place, Wrong Time.

Trading emblematic athletes is always a minor tragedy of sorts for the particular franchise and fan base losing them, but it's also a whiplash-inducing event for fans at large.  The sight of a great player who has long been synonymous with a team suddenly wearing different colors never sits right in the mind's eye.  Some visuals just rattle your insides with cognitive dissonance.  Joe Montana as a Kansas City Chief.  Steve Nash as a Los Angeles Laker.  And now, Ichiro Suzuki as a Yankee.

(Don't you feel just a little bit sick after reading that last sentence?) 


The departure is not surprising in and of itself.  Aside from Ichiro's rookie season when Seattle won a monumental 116 games, the Mariners have been perpetual occupants of the American League's sub-basement for pretty much his entire career.  Like Nash, who also left his longtime franchise at age 38 for greener pastures, it's entirely understandable that he opted to be dealt to a contender before twilight too fully dulls his transcendent (and already in considerable decline) skills.  For the M's, their superstar's diminishing value made it logical to trade now, giving their younger outfielders increased playing time and getting what they can in return.  Tactically, the trade made sense for both teams.  (Though there is more than a little incredulity regarding the fact that the Yanks somehow got back cash concerns as part of the deal.  What, they needed the money?  Really?  Someone should have told Brain Cashman to cram that particular stipulation up his ass.) 

I won't rehash all the angles of what acquiring Ichiro means for New York; read this piece on Grantland by Jonah Keri if you're interested in the details.  What I want to talk about is how monstrously unfair this all feels.  To Seattle, to the rest of the AL East, and to Yankee haters (read: right-thinking individuals) everywhere. Of course, this is a far cry from actual unfairness, which only exists in sports when a) someone cheats, b) there's a blown officiating call so egregious that it will be recalled with perfect clarity and anger decades hence or c) you live in Cleveland.  But this has the unmistakable feel of unfairness; the sickening and wretched sensation of karmic impropriety.  To paraphrase Chris Rock: "that s*** just ain't right!"

First, Seattle fans have really seen and suffered enough.  There was the unconscionable hijacking of their beloved Sonics, the metaphysical descendents of whom just played their first of what will likely be many thrilling NBA Finals.  They have the most likeable and exciting young core in the game, a once-in-a-generation talent in Kevin Durant, and a well-run organization who are apparently also luckier than is really OK.  (See: Perry Jones III, drafting of.)  Then there are the Seahawks.  Despite a respectable seven playoff appearances since 1999, and a great run of NFC West titles from '04-'07 Seattle has never been thought of as a great or even a semi-formidable team.  And of course their lone Super Bowl appearance, against the Steelers in 2005, saw them get phenomenally hosed by some of the worst officiating in NFL history.  Aside from Marshawn "Beast Mode" Lynch, who incidentally was recently arrested on a DUI charge and may be suspended for the beginning of the 2012 season, they haven't had a legitimately electrifying player since, well, ever.  (No disrespect meant to Matt Hasselbeck, who was a very good quarterback, but he didn't exactly make you gasp in awe with his play.)  Oh yes, and the Mariners are the only MLB franchise other than the Nationals to have never played in, much less won, a World Series.  For Seattle fans, watching their last great player leave town to don the pinstripes must be a nasty a kick in the teeth.  Surely no one begrudges him trying to find a contender after giving his soul and his considerable gifts to Seattle for so long, but running straight into the arms of the Evil Empire ... it's just so grimy.  Oh well, at least they have the Sounders.

And if you're another team in the AL East, you have to feel like North Texas playing Alabama last year.  You've already been blown out and utterly thrashed, and now they're just shamelessly running up the score.  Granted, Ichiro is not the devastating force he was four years ago, but he still improves a team that already has baseball's best record and a seven game division lead.  It's just piling on at this point.  You almost have to throw something.  Like the Gatorade jug in the dugout.  Or the towel.

For the Yankee haters out there, that feeling of abject disgust rising in your gut is comprised of the two components: firstly and obviously there's anger because of everything I just mentioned above and the fact that there has been no exemplar of "the rich get richer" in sports (and maybe life) quite so blatant and glaring as the Yankees.  And secondly, because most baseball fans genuinely like and admire Ichiro.  Yankees should not be genuinely liked and admired, they should be reviled.  Hell, I have the utmost respect for Derek Jeter's remarkable career and abilities, but his thinly veiled egomania and never-ending slew of bullsh*t cliches and platitudes make me positively ill every time they flash his smug, robotic "I'm just happy to be playing ball and gosh I hope I'm making my parents proud" smile across the TV screen.  Having a likeable guy, full of legitimate quirks and personality, makes it much more difficult to just kick back and hate the Yankees in peace.  Ichiro's mere presence on the roster has upset my and every other non-Yanks fan's baseball ethos.  New York's unassailable and inherent evil is ever so slightly diluted.  How dare they deny us the right to hate to the utmost by trading for a gem of a guy like Ichiro?!?!?  It's annoying, damnit!

Anyway, best to Mr. Suzuki with his new team, condolences to Seattle for yet another sucker-punch sporting occurrence, and here's hoping things don't get any worse for the rest of us.  I trust no one is stupid enough to believe it, but we can hope.

Oh, and as always, damn the Yankees.

Mo.

In the interest of full disclosure: I hate the Yankees.  In fact, that hatred is so smoldering and omnipresent that I mean it in two different senses of the word "hate."  There's the general, "everyone who doesn't have Gotham roots and thinks the team, their outsized payroll, and their fans are an obnoxious (and just plain noxious for that matter) blight upon the rest of the sporting world" hate.  There's also the hyper-specific, "you beat humiliated the Braves in the 1996 and 1999 World Series and I will despise you for it for the rest of eternity" hate.  The point is, I truly, deeply loathe those pinstripe-clad abominations.  So just know that when I say this, I mean it with all sincerity:

It's a damn shame about Mo.

He said he'll be back next season.  I don't know if it's possible.  I don't know if a 42-year-old, even one as phenomenally durable as this man has been, can make the full recovery necessary to return to form after an ACL injury.  Those insidious buggers have been making the rounds recently.  First Derrick Rose, then Iman Shumpert, and now The Great Mariano.  Ligaments, as it turns out, have an agenda to ruin everyone's fun this week.

If # 42 once again dons those iconic pinstripes somewhere down the line, if he can still push off the rubber in his accustomed manner, then we can probably look forward to a few more quality seasons.  Even if his age matches his jersey number, Rivera is among the best-conditioned athletes in baseball, and I certainly wouldn't lay any timber against his return.  While the hue and cry has gone up from the uninformed about what a star closer was doing shagging fly balls during BP, it's long been a claim of Those Who Done Seen It that Mo could have been one of the best defensive center fielders of his generation if he weren't such a brilliant pitcher.  The chance to snatch baseballs out of the sky during those pregame times was, I am sure, cathartic and exhilarating for a player who might not see the field at all that night depending on the situation.  Unfortunately for Rivera, it proved a costly avocation the other night in Kansas City. 

That one man with one pitch excelled so completely for so long is a marvel.  That cutter, that inscrutable, nigh-un-hittable cutter, has been the single most dominant pitch in baseball since 1996.  We can argue all livelong day about the statistical viability of the "closer" role and how and if specific pitchers ought to be utilized in that capacity, but Mo Rivera and that pitch made about as convincing a case in the affirmative as is possible.  He was so good that when he gave up a run or even a hit, it seemed anomalous.  When your only job is to shut down your opponent's last remaining threats on a nightly basis, and you select "Enter Sandman" as your heraldry music and it works for you like a tailored suit, well, you're a freaking boss.  You simply had to love watching the dude work.  Unless it was against your team; then you were just scared s***less.

So, assorted jerks of Yankeedom, you have my condolences.  You lost a class guy this week.  I hope you get him back.  I hope he's not done.  I'd like to see that cutter in action a few more times.  Not against the Braves, mind you, but still.