8/7: Open game thread

WHOOOOOOLE lotta baseball news out there, folks. First was the news that the Mariners' greatest-ever shortstop by fWAR, the source of one of the top-ten televised baseball events in the history of the game, perennial hero, villain, and all-around mirror-kisser Alex Rodriguez, was told in no uncertain terms by his superiors to clean out his desk by friday and clock out in the process. Well, not quite, they are still going to be paying him ninety-bazillion dollars next season (probably), so in a way it's even worse than that. But when all is said and done, you have to kind of let bygones be bygones. Baseball at its best is a narrative machine. And if the man gave us nothing else in his twenty-ish-season career, he gave us that.

Watching this today produces an odd kind of affect. It looks pretty shitty in retrospect, and although you might be able to argue that our behavior was kind of justified, nobody, and I mean nobody, knew he was going to turn into the figure that he did. Cracks in the facade don't always lead to smoldering heaps of rubble. And afterwards, even that, can be a work of heartbreaking genius.

IN other news:

ICYMI: Ichiro Suzuki is now just 1 hit away from 3,000 career hits after a pinch-hit single Saturday. pic.twitter.com/MvT4F6CsoK

— Baseball Tonight (@BBTN) August 7, 2016

Each at-bat will undoubtedly get pushed to your phone from the AtBat app, and if you're anywhere near another screen this afternoon, I'm sure it will be hard to avoid. It's going to be a hell of a day for Mariner greats, capping off Griffey weekend on top of it all. And now some words about the baseball game I was supposed to preview here for you:

Game info

• Mariners vs Angels, 1:10 PM PDT
• TV: ROOT
• Radio: 710 ESPN
• Online: mlb.tv
• Roster news! We have a....um.....Mike...Freeman?

Mariners Nick Vincent activated from DL, Mike Freeman up from AAA and in lineup. Cody Martin and Luis Sardinas to AAA

— Shannon Drayer (@shannondrayer) August 7, 2016