It was a crazy situation, especially being thrown onto the telecast and then that crazy play, but I had a great time, I love the Mariners, and although I was a little rusty and my voice is my voice, I think I conveyed the joy I felt being there and covering the M’s. And I think you could follow what was going on.

In any event, this is a terrific blog. And I learn more about the team from you guys than from anywhere else.

If anyone is interested, I have a blog as well. It’s more humor oriented. But for those who do enjoy my act, I invite you to check it out. Today I have posted my travelogue on my Seattle trip.

http://kenlevine.blogspot.com/

Thanks again.

Ken Levine

There’s been MANY posts lately about how Felix has been using poor pitch selection, for instance. He also got a fair amount of criticism for his poor work habits/self-maintenance, back when he was in that phase.

But what Grizz says is spot-on; this place isn’t intended to be a touchy-feely, everything is sunshine and lollipops sort of forum for discussion.

If someone sucks, we’ll say he sucks, and won’t sugarcoat it. If he doesn’t suck, we’ll say the same. And regardless of which side of someone’s suckitude you’re on, you should be prepared to back up your position with solid factual information using useful statistics (so if you’re saying that Jeff Weaver rocks because of his ERA, we will laugh at you).

And if you had to put up with the personal attacks and other garbage the authors do (on this site, other sites, and in emails), you would have occasion to be cranky too.

I guess I’m a little of both. I used to read USS Mariner regularly several years ago, and always found it to be an incredibly valuable resource. I recently started checking in here more often in the past couple months, and some of the changes are interesting. For one thing Peter, Jeff and Jason seem to have disappeared, and there’s more of a reliance on game-threads than on content, but life is busy and the content posts are still great.

Some of the changes in tone are a bit striking. Overall it seems a bit more belligerent than it used to me. Derek was always a bit caustic and I figured that he was a nice guy in real life and probably just didn’t represent his true personality via his web writing. Writing for the web seems to make people sound a lot more snarky than they really are, for some reason. But now Dave seems to have adopted that tone-of-voice as well, and it’s a bit hard to read, to be honest.

I can understand the need to be authoritarian about the comments, though the result is that commenters err on the side of sucking up out of a fear of getting banned. But at least the information density is high.

Just thought I’d mention how the site seems to have involved from my perspective over the last few years. You guys know your stuff inside and out, but the tone doesn’t always do your writing justice.

That seems like pretty typical human behavior to me, and I find it hard to believe you’d find it to be different on any other board, blog or forum where people post casual comments.

This year, of course, things aren’t going quite so well in that regard.

I could participate and change it to the best of my ability, but if the tone is such where no mistake on the field is forgivable, every slip lampoonable, and certain players garner wrath “just because”… I’d say that’s a little beyond the scope of what I can do. You, as a moderator, though, might have a little more authority in that regard.

And, 56. No doubt, USSM has its favorites. They can do no wrong here. But I think the others, the ones who might be deemed “bad signings” are doomed and placed under a greater microscope almost before they put the uniform on. If they help the Mariners, either no reaction or downplayed reaction. If they fail, someone’s to blame.. if not the player, the manager for using him or using him incorrectly, or Bavasi for signing him, and all hell breaks loose.

I hope this doesn’t come off as a passive-aggressive needle – the moderating here is one of the reasons I read the site. I’m just curious, and ignorant.