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For years the M's were moribund. Now they're a model for turnarounds.
By MARC TOPKIN
© St. Petersburg Times, published October 9, 2001
SEATTLE -- You'd never know it this afternoon. Not when you see sparkling and vibrant Safeco Field filled with passionate fans dressed head to toe in Mariners gear wildly cheering a Seattle team that won a record-tying 116 games and today opens the playoffs with an excellent opportunity to advance for the first time to the World Series.
Because it wasn't so long ago that the situation in Seattle looked very much like the scene in Tampa Bay does now.
Domed stadium. Less-than-ideal location. Minimal attendance. Diminished interest. Mounting losses on the field and the balance sheet. Incessant rumors. Concerns about the viability of the market. Legitimate questions about the future of the team.
"This shows you can turn it around," veteran reliever Norm Charlton said. "When I first came here in 1993 I stayed in a hotel in downtown and I picked up one of those hardback books on Seattle that tells you all about the place and I opened it up to the sports section and it had the (NBA) Seattle Supersonics and the (NFL) Seattle Seahawks. The baseball team wasn't even included.
"In 1993, nobody knew what baseball was. By the end of 1995, everybody had a Mariners hat. Everybody. In 1993, you couldn't give away your season tickets. Nobody wanted to come to the games. You couldn't get a discount at Taco Bell because you played for the Mariners. At the end of 1995, the Metropolitan Grill, the best steakhouse here, would give you a seat when it was crowded and was comping your meals. It turned around in a matter of years. And now it's the hottest ticket in town."
How hot? The Mariners led the majors in attendance this season with 3,507,507 fans, the third time in five years they surpassed 3-million. They had, according to club president Chuck Armstrong, the highest cable TV and radio ratings. They play in what some consider the best ballpark in the majors. And -- perhaps as the catalyst to it all -- they're winning, making their fourth postseason appearance since 1995.
"It's a baseball town," said manager Lou Piniella, whose 1993 arrival more than coincided with the stunning rise. "They didn't say that before. But it's turned into one, and turned into a good one."
Twice in the past 11 years, it almost was a town without a team.
In 1991, then-owner Jeff Smulyan tried to orchestrate a deal to move the team to St. Petersburg. As a provision of the lease, he had to offer the team for sale to local buyers, and on Christmas Eve a group led by Nintendo executives stepped forward to buy the team for $100-million.
"If that hadn't happened," Armstrong said, "I think Jeff's idea was that they were going to be the Tampa Bay Mariners."
The Nintendo group, led by Japanese executive Hiroshi Yamauchi, saved the team when MLB agreed to allow what it considered foreign ownership. But Yamauchi's group wasn't going to keep it forever at the rate it was losing money.
A King County task force in 1995 recommended using public money to build a stadium, and a campaign was launched to build support for a referendum.
Team officials remained optimistic, but the players -- asked to actively campaign for approval -- also were preparing for the likely alternative. "During the 1995 season I remember on a couple flights we had those home and apartment locator books from Tampa and St. Pete and we were going through them, dog-earring some things," outfielder Jay Buhner said.
Support built through the season, but the referendum lost by 1,082 votes among nearly 500,000 cast. The Mariners, though, had captivated the public with a stirring run to their first postseason appearance, eliminating the Yankees in a memorable division series, and the politicians jumped aboard.
With the owners threatening to sell, and rumors of a move to Tampa Bay again bubbling, government officials worked out a deal in a special session of the state legislature to fund the stadium with a combination of lottery proceeds, taxes and tax credits.
"You get the right leadership in the right place and you can turn things around," Charlton said. "Without that new stadium vote in 1995, this team was out of here. Unlucky for y'all in Tampa Bay."
In tandem, the victory total and the attendance increased. The Mariners went from being one of baseball's concerns -- "a moribund franchise,' Armstrong admitted -- to one of its brightest successes.
"It's amazing," Armstrong said. "The best line I've come up with is this: Who would have thought 10 years ago when Smulyan said the club was for sale that in 10 years time the Seattle Mariners would be safer in Seattle than the Boeing Co. (which recently moved its headquarters to Chicago)?"
The effort was not easy nor inexpensive, required the work of many plus some fortuitous timing.
"An incredible turnaround," Buhner said. "I don't think anyone could have predicted what is going on here now."
Safeco Field, a big part of the solution, cost $515-million, more than any other ballpark. The new owners, according to Armstrong, lost money each of their first seven seasons, a total of $77-million, plus the $143-million they contributed to the stadium. (In the past three seasons, conversely, they made close to $27-million.)
Despite losing three of the game's biggest stars -- Randy Johnson, Ken Griffey Jr. and Alex Rodriguez -- teams officials made smart baseball and financial decisions and continued to prosper.
The fans, who suffered through three 100-plus loss seasons in the team's first seven, were finally rewarded.
Like the Indians before them and the Braves before them, the Mariners are prime examples of what can go right in baseball. And they can be an inspiration for franchises where things always seem to be going wrong.
"It can be done," Piniella said. "That's the bottom line. It can be done."