As you probably are aware, I'm not much of a baseball fan. I have mentioned in an earlier entry (before this handy dandy, automated web journal; I'll have to dig out the essay and re-post it) my take on the whole organized sports thing -- how, ultimately, it tickles the same parts of some peoples' brains the same way other serial stories, like Star Trek or General Hospital or The Sopranos might appeal to others'. While I confess to following *some* organized sports and particular teams (NFL football, Cornell and ECAC hockey, et al), I have not tended to get similarly interested in major league baseball.

Nonetheless, I catch the occasional game. I've seen the Yankees take on the Red Sox at Fenway, and I chanced to witness the exciting '95 Mariners make their improbable playoff run at the Kingdome. The year 2001 finds me again in Seattle, where another interesting baseball story is unfolding.

Last night, I attended my first baseball game at Safeco Field, the new baseball park in Seattle. Unlike the now-imploded Kingdome next door (the rubble of which is being recycled to build a new open-air football stadium on the same site), Safeco Field *feels* like a baseball park, with all of the good and bad that that entails. Good: natural grass, open air, friendly facilities. Bad: crowd noise gets lost easily and there's a quality to the crowd of... distraction. Unfocused attention.

At the Kingdome, the building was concrete gray, the lighting was entirely artificial, and so was the turf. But, the acoustics were amazing. When something interesting was taking place on the field, you could feel the electricity. The hush or the rise in the crowd was amazing. A group dynamic like that is hard to capture when the sounds are lost within the heavy sea-laden atmosphere of a port town's open-air park. Of course, that's just one man's observation, and there are others out there who can wax much more eloquently than I on the relative merits of our nations sports facilities.

Nonetheless, there is a bit of magic in the air in Seattle these days surrounding their baseball team, the likes of which I never expect to happen (or have seen happen in the past) around the city's football or basketball teams even when they experience success. Even though the acoustics of Safeco muffled some of the buzz, there was something palpable in the crowd's excitement last night as the Mariners hosted the Tampa Bay Devil Rays.

The last time I saw a baseball game in person, I watched Ken Griffey, Jr. hit two home runs in a meaningless game where the local team was visibly falling apart in a stadium that was likewise literally falling down (even before it was demolished, parts of the Kingdome would tumble to the ground at inopportune times). Last night, I watched a team where one of the "stars" of the team -- Ichiro Suzuki -- very deliberately hit a sacrifice in order to get a runner into scoring position (and who did end up scoring). We saw a bad call by the ump give way to the tying runs of the Devil Rays, and we saw the Mariners hold it together and work their way back into command of the situation.

In the eighth inning, Ichiro (which must always be pronounced with an exclamation point at the end: ee-chee-ro!) hit a beautiful double, then stole third base on the next play and, thanks to a very interesting error by the Devil Rays, was able to turn that into a run for home. It was in the eighth inning that this close game was finally sewn up by the home team.

It was a fun game to watch, and the Mariners are a team that is obviously playing together and playing well. I am still not as much of a fan of baseball as I am of any number of other forms of entertainment. Nonetheless, it is always fun to watch folks at work who enjoy what they are doing enough to put it all together *as a team* and make good things happen. It's inspiring.