Shipwrecked

I’ve been a Mariners fan for more than 20 years, though I’ll admit I was largely “lapsed” for a decade or so. Reading this book by Jon Wells, I relived the adrenaline-charged seasons in the mid- to late-nineties with Griffey, the Big Unit, Edgar, Buhner, and A-Rod. And as I read how most of those players slipped away (or were run out of town), I came to see why I’d already become somewhat disillusioned by the time the Mariners won a record-tying 116 games in 2001 with a whole new slate of players. Since then, the franchise has been “shipwrecked” several times over, as this book painstakingly reveals. I’d been a Mariners fan in name only during a chunk of that time, so much of this book served to fill in the gaps of my memory – managerial hirings and firings, free agent busts, perplexing priorities on the part of ownership, and a whole lot more.