Thank you Lookout Landing

I’ve always thought that, for the most part this blog represents one extreme aspect of baseball, stats.  I’ve always included stats into my interpretation in baseball but for the most part I’ve been a believer that there was more to this game than BaBip, and xFIP. I’ve also always assumed that this blog disagreed with that theory, I realize now that that assumption was wrong. In the past I’ve been discouraged to post on this blog simply based on the fact that I whole heartedly supported bringing Ken Griffey Jr. back to Seattle, both in 2009 and 2010. I’ve been a supporter of intangibles. I’ve been a fan of the things that bring baseball above statistics: Junior’s smile, the sometimes blind optimism of a fan, or my support of mediocre players simply because they’re a Mariner. A man named Dave Niehaus was the personification of these intangibles. He was not a man of statistics but a man that understood the most important part of baseball, the joy. He watched a team struggle for the better part of 33 years and each day delivered as optimistic of a broadcast as the one before it. He often ignored awful stats to focus on the purity of the game that we’ve been blessed with. He reminded us that this game is just that, a blessing. He once devoted half an inning of a 7-2 loss, to describing the clouds in the sky. He once referred to the free agent signing of a .249/.353/.424 hitter, the happiest day of his career. He is the reason why my radio is dialed to 710 on a September night when the mariners are 30+ games back. I once thought that he was the polar opposite of lookout landing’s baseball philosophy. However, In the past 5 days I’ve learned otherwise. For what little it’s worth, this blog has earned an huge amount of credibility in my eyes by recognizing an aspect of baseball that is often shoved aside by statistical analysis. I sincerely thank you for devoting 3 days worth of wonderful content to the voice, and personification of mariners baseball. And thank you Dave Niehaus, for showing a city that’s never seen a championship, just what baseball is about.