No. 5: Seattle Mariners
Can we put Leroy Stanton in the Seattle Mariners Hall of Fame already?
I have talked a lot—A LOT—about Duane Kuiper being my favorite-ever baseball player. I love doing that because Duane is the absolute best, but there’s something about him being my favorite player that I think people sometimes miss: I didn’t really have much of a choice. In 1977, when I was 10 years old, my hometown Cleveland team went 71-90 and did not offer many glorious hero candidates. Basically, my choices were:
Andre Thornton, an honorable slugger who went by the nickname of “Thunder” and had just come over in a trade with Montreal.
Rick Manning, a speedy centerfielder who we were led to believe was sort of a poor man’s Freddie Lynn.
Buddy Bell, son of a ballplayer from down in Cincinnati, great third base defender.
Rico Carty, a Dominican legend, a former batting champion and a ballplayer who never slid because he carried his wallet in his back pocket.
Wayne Garland, a 20-game winner in Baltimore who signed for the then-astonishing price of $2.3 million… to be paid over 10 years.*
Duane.
*”My father-in-law said I wasn’t worth that much, and he was right,” Garland said.
I chose Duane because he was the one I could relate to—I played second base, I never hit home runs, I wasn’t particularly fast, I dove for every ground ball, I could have no other hero.
The point being: If we are true to our hometown teams, and many of us are, we don’t always get the heroes we want… we get the heroes we deserve.
There are 10 people in the Seattle Mariners Hall of Fame. One of them is the legendary sportscaster Dave Niehaus, and one is manager Lou Piniella. The eight players are as follows (with the years they played for Seattle):
Jay Buhner (1988-2001)
Alvin Davis (1984-1991)
Ken Griffey Jr. (1989-1999; 2009-2010)
King Felix Hernandez (2005-2019)
Randy Johnson (1989-1998)
Edgar Martinez (1987-2004)
Jamie Moyer (1996-2006)
Ichiro Suzuki (2001-2012; 2018-2019)
Dan Wilson (1994-2005)
I put the years in there so you could see—there is nobody in the Mariners’ Hall of Fame who played for the team between its founding in 1977 and 1984, when Hall of Famer Alvin Davis was named Rookie of the Year. I get it. There is not really anybody who played in those first seven seasons who was as good as any of the players listed above. But to ignore the first seven seasons of your history, the molding years, the developing years, the fun years, well, as The Dude says, this aggression will not stand, man.
The most obvious player from those early years to induct is probably Floyd Bannister. He was the Mariners’ first star, I would say. In 1982, he not only led the American League in strikeouts—the first time that any Seattle player had led the league in any major category*—but he also pitched in the All-Star Game, making him the first Mariner to do that. Floyd Bannister had star power, he had been the first pick in the 1976 MLB draft and he threw as hard as anybody, and for an expansion franchise desperately searching for anything and anyone to rally around, well, he was that.
*Well, I suppose it depends on what you mean by “major category.” Here were the Seattle category leaders pre-1982:
1978: Stolen base percentage — Julio Cruz!
1979: Double plays grounded into — Bruce Bochte!
1979: Games played (tied with four others) — Willie Horton, Ruppert Jones.
But I actually don’t think that Floyd Bannister is the guy they should induct next.
I think the guy they should induct next is Leroy Stanton.