What day is it?

If you are anything like me, and for your sake I hope you are not, you are trying to remember what day of the week and month it is. We don’t need to be reminded that it is 2020. But this year has changed everyone.

For instance; Monday had to be Memorial Day since the Indianapolis 500 was finally run on Sunday. I’m sure that you are groaning right now because you certainly don’t want to go back in time and relive the last three months. Well, you would if things were actually back to a normal routine.

What we have to look forward to now are the rescheduling of events for 2021 because they were cancelled this year. To me, that is quite intriguing. So we can’t do it this year, so let’s reschedule that concert at the Gorge or the Little League World Series or the Pac 12 and Big 10 football season.

I did see that the SEC is planning for the football season to play in September with limited fans and no tailgating, which for some will mean that they will stay home, and party because the tailgate was much more fun than the game itself. I’m sure folks will do their best to do a social distancing get-together behind one of the dorms.

Have you been traveling on I-90 or 395 lately? It is getting scary out there, because it seems like most of these drivers have just gotten out of quarantine and haven’t driven for 5 months and want to catch up on life by speeding. And why are so many people from Idaho, Oregon, Montana and California coming to Washington State? In the last couple of months I’ve also seen license plates from Alaska, Texas, Illinois, Minnesota, Colorado, Arizona and Utah. I didn’t know that we had a lot of things to legally do here this summer. And I also didn’t know that the 90 in I-90 was considered the speed limit.

As the NBA playoffs continue and teams are eliminated, I’ve gone back to the old standard ‘just watch the highlights’ and you will have saved yourself over two hours of essential living. Oh, I know there are some die-hard NBA fans out there, and good for you. The athletes are great, but the game isn’t that much fun to watch until the last two minutes of regulation. And then it is a series of free throws and timeouts, with a few three-point shots both made and missed. So I guess the highlights are still the best part of the NBA game.

Now that Major League baseball has hit its midway point in the season, we are seeing a few teams like the Dodgers and A’s starting to move away from their rivals. And Tampa Bay is neck and neck with the Yankees. Injuries are starting to play a role, as well as C-19 on a few teams, which of course means postponements and rescheduled doubleheaders. Only time will tell how C-19 will affect teams in the next month. When they say sports are a business it is definitely true this year, since the players don’t get to go out on the town and have dinner or whatever when they travel to another destination for a game. Well at least they are traveling to another city to play their games.

When the Mariners and Toronto Blue Jays became Major League expansion teams in 1977, the organizations set their sights on how they wanted to build a franchise. The Mariners looked to build with players with some experience, while the Blue Jays decided to build with youth and develop a farm system in the minor leagues to develop this talent.

In less than ten years the Jays would make the playoffs and would win the World Series in back-to-back seasons 1992-93. It took the Mariners nearly that long to have their first above .500 season. The Mariners first made the playoffs in 1995, and if you watch a Mariner broadcast you will see most every highlight worth watching from those few seasons that Seattle played into October.

It seems that the Mariners have figured out that having a good farm system with talent that can be brought along might be the recipe for success. Many of the present day M’s have been in the Seattle farm system for a few years now. These 23 and 24-year-olds are getting a taste of the big time, and several are very impressive and will have great careers.

It’s too bad the Mariners didn’t follow the blueprint for success that teams like the Dodgers did very effectively. That was Toronto’s plan, and they succeeded. There is always hope for the M’s, and hopefully we’ll be able to see highlights of these youngsters winning soon.