McGrath: Gutierrez is healthy, so Mariners are, too
JOHN MCGRATH; THE NEWS TRIBUNE
It begins the first week of April, as the scissor-handed NCAA tournament champions are waiting for their turn to cut down the nets. It ends the last week of October, when football tailgate parties become less a festive occasion than an inclement-weather ritual for the hardy.
Between six months of a regular season and three weeks of playoffs, baseball, as the broadcasters remind us daily, is a marathon, not a sprint.
And yet a team’s fortunes can change in the snap of a finger. At a few minutes after 5 on Tuesday afternoon, the Seattle Mariners were improbable contenders in an AL West race too close to concede to the L.A. Angels. The Angels still were in control – still the prohibitive favorites to win their fifth division title in six years – but the Mariners were hanging tough, hanging gritty, hanging around.
And then Franklin Gutierrez fought the wall, and the wall won. The center fielder, in an eerily uncanny re-enactment of Ken Griffey Jr.’s collision with the Kingdome fence in 1995, appeared poised to make the sort of catch worthy of his nickname: “Death to Flying Things,” originally applied to 19th century outfielder Bob Ferguson.
As Griffey once did, Gutierrez took a leap with one leg stretched almost horizontally at the point of impact. As Griffey once did, Gutierrez fell to the ground and didn’t move. Griffey ended up with two broken bones in his left wrist and a trip to the disabled list that was supposed to last three months, seemingly dooming any chances for the Mariners to remain relevant through the summer.
I recall leaving the Kingdome the following night – the shell-shocked Mariners had lost to Baltimore, 11-4 – and picking up a ticket stub. I put the ticket in my wallet, thinking: This was the beginning of the end. Not merely the end of the season, mind you, but the end of the Seattle Mariners, as there was no momentum for public ballpark funding that the organization deemed necessary to stay in the Pacific Northwest.
The long-term consequences of Tuesday’s crash into the Comerica Park fence did not figure to be as dire, except, well, for Gutierrez, who hit the fence with such force that a catastrophic injury was not inconceivable.
As manager Don Wakamatsu sprinted out of the dugout, all the issues that have loomed so large – the ever-evolving marketplace before the July 31 interleague trading deadline, the unresolved futures of pitchers Erik Bedard and Jarrod Washburn, questions about the back of the starting rotation – turned moot once the center fielder collapsed on the grass.
Where are the Mariners without Gutierrez? As Felix Hernandez is the losing-streak stopper and David Aardsma is the lights-out closer, as Griffey and Mike Sweeney are the heart and soul of the clubhouse, as Wakamatsu is the Minister of Trust, forever preaching the value of a belief system, Gutierrez’s contributions have been consistently tangible.
He’s given the Mariners a glove that converts potential extra-base hits into highlight-video outs. He’s given the Mariners a bat that’s virtually slump-proof, and he’s good to go anywhere he’s slotted in the lineup. No questions, no fuss, just give him a glove and a bat, and there’s a better-than-even proposition he’ll do something memorable.
Gutierrez did something memorable Tuesday. He chased down one of the many rocket shots the Tigers launched off ready-for-the-Rainiers starter Garrett Olson, and his ensuing confrontation with the wall – more specifically, it was the field-level scoreboard – can best be described with the kind of superhero comic-book term that demands an explanation point.
Splat!
“The amazing thing,” Wakamatsu said after the game, “is he almost caught the ball.”
Another amazing thing: Gutierrez is OK. He suffered some major knee and elbow bruises – “contusions,” in sports-medicine parlance – but X-rays revealed no breaks. When word came from the training room that Gutierrez’s status was day-to-day, it superseded everything bad about Tuesday’s developments (the Angels, who swept Kansas City in both games of a doubleheader, fattened their first-place lead to 3 games) and everything good (two home runs by journeyman Mariners third baseman Jack Hannahan, recently rescued from Oakland’s Triple-A affiliate in Sacramento).
Put it this way: The Mariners lost 9-7, and they fell farther behind the Angels, and it still qualified as a very good day.
Because for a minute or two, the season was done. For a minute or two, Gutierrez was a candidate to be removed from the field on a stretcher. For a minute or two, any hopes the Mariners still had of staying alive in this six-month marathon looked shot.
A baseball season can take forever. A game can take forever. Heck, if Miguel Batista is on the mound, a simple at-bat can take forever.
And then, with one pitch and one swing and one fearless plunge into a wall, everything can change.
Or not.
The Mariners lost a game Tuesday, but they salvaged a season with a sweet-sounding update from the trainer’s room: Franklin Gutierrez is day-to-day.
Whew.
john.mcgrath@thenewstribune.com
