It wasn't meant to cast aspersions on Wedge's intelligence or awareness; more to wonder if Wedge would get tripped up putting a National League lineup together in his own park. Because of a U2 concert scheduled at Sun Life Stadium, the Florida Marlins had to come cross-country to play a series of three "home" games at Seattle's Safeco Field instead of welcome the Mariners to their own park. As such, pitchers would hit in an AL park for the first time since the inclusion of the designated hitter in 1973.
"I hope not," Wedge said when asked whether confusion would reign. "It'll definitely be different with the National League rules and with being the visiting team … in our own ballpark, and hopefully, it'll be fun for a lot of people. This is the first time there will be National League rules in an American League park. That will be more unusual than anything."
As it turned out, a great many things were unusual about the first game in which the Mariners ever took the field at Safeco in the bottom of the inning, wearing their road grays. The fact that NL rules applied seemed like a mere novelty by the time the same was over and the M's took a 5-1 win.
First, the numbers from this game were a bit convoluted. The attendance was unusually low (15,279) because these games are not included in season ticket packages. According to the Mariners' PR staff, the attendance will be counted as a Marlins home crowd, but the game stats from the series will be Mariners' home stats. Problem is, those stats will be seen as Marlins home/Mariners road splits until Major League Baseball changes them on Monday.
The only area that was anywhere near full was the "King's Court," that band of yellow-clad goofballs who take up their own left-field section whenever Felix Hernandez pitches. Though Hernandez started out rocky ? 21 of his first 42 pitched were balls, and it took him a couple innings to get in the swing of things ? he eventually got it together and even contributed a single to right in the third inning.
Unfortunately for Hernandez, that was the second straight game in which a Mariners' pitcher got the team's first hit ? Michael Pineda did the same against the Washington Nationals on the team's just-finished road trip ? which should tell you everything you need to know about the tepid state of Seattle's offense. When Adam Kennedy scored in the seventh on a fielder's choice line drive that Miguel Olivo hit to third, it ended a 20-inning scoreless streak for the team. Eventually, Franklin Gutierrez's two-run single eliminated a lot of bad juju from a brutal offensive series in Washington D.C.
The Marlins weren't doing much with Hernandez, either. The only run Hernandez gave up was on a third strike that would have ended the fourth inning had it not bounced off Olivo's glove. As Marlins manager Jack McKeon pointed out after the game, it's tough to win when you have more hit batsmen than hits.
Olivo had his own group of admirers in the "King's Court" group.. They mixed up their cheers nicely all night, and eventually settled on an "O-liv-o Oooooooh" chant (sung to the tune of the march of the Evil Witch's soldiers from The Wizard of Oz) and were rewarded when Olivo hit a ninth-inning home run just on the right side of the foul pole where the group was gathered.
Hernandez was, in the popular vernacular, 'effectively wild.' With two out in the second inning, second baseman Omar Infante apparently was hit by a pitch. It took the umps about five minutes to discuss it, and Infante eventually took his base after the men in blue had confab with McKeon and Wedge. Infante was the second batter in a row Hernandez hit with a pitch, and the third in the game. Through two innings, Hernandez had walked two batters, hit two more … and had a no-hitter going. But he followed that up with two strikeouts and nine total pitches in the third, and from there, he was rolling.
Of course, the only thing he wanted to talk about after the game was that one hit. Hernandez mentioned that he "really wanted that last at-bat" before receiver Brandon League came in to spell him in the ninth, but that Wedge had told him to expect the hook. No specific approach to his somewhat lumbering swing mechanics, though ? when I asked him what thoughts he brought to the plate, he said, "Just swing!"
The Mariners have played home games on the road before ? they went on a 20-game road jag to end the strike-shortened 1994 season after tiles fell from the Kingdome roof and the place was shut down until repairs could be made. But this was a very different feel, starting when the Marlins and starting pitcher Ricky Nolasco hit the field to the tune of U2's "Where the Streets Have No Name," proving that the person in charge of Safeco's music has an interesting sense of humor. The PA announcer got into it as well, announcing that the home team's weather in Florida was "80 degrees and rainy."
The evening may have been odd, but as far as shortstop Brendan Ryan was concerned, odd was just fine. As he said in the locker room after the win, "We should have all our road games at home!"
They'll get two more chances at the very least.
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