Dog bites man, Armstrong feels team is great and you’re stupid
Club president Chuck Armstrong said before Wednesday’s game that there is more to the Mariners’ attendance troubles – seven of Seattle’s top poorest Safeco Field attendances have come this year – than the club’s 14-20 record.
”You expect some ebb and flow,” Armstrong said. ”The weather hasn’t been good. We haven’t played as well as we wanted. And this is the worst schedule ever.
…needless to say, I was on the internet within minutes, registering my disgust.
Really. Worst schedule ever. Worse than the time the team couldn’t play in the Kingdome and was on the road all year? Worse than last year, when they were trying to make up those missed games in absurd fashion? Substantially worse the Mariner schedules before unbalanced divisional play?
”I’m optimistic, but when you see 15,000 against a division rival, yes, you are disappointed.”
I’m optimistic, but when you see your team squander year after year of great revenues by having the wrong people spend that money on the wrong things, yes, I’m disappointed.
Jeez.
The most vocal portion of the Mariners’ fan base has long advocated changes at the top, specifically targeting general manager Bill Bavasi and, somewhat less often, manager John McLaren.
That’s only because McLaren hasn’t been around that long.
”There’s a fine line with patience,” he said. ”We already made moves (Clement and Balentien) to address the problems. Maybe those moves will come back to bite us. We don’t know.
“the problems” being.. two of them? I’m not sure how to read that. Does he really think that’s a complete solution to all the problems? I’m probably being too critical.
”But we made the moves in a considered manner with everybody involved. And I remember that last year at this time people were talking about making a move with Raul Ibanez. We stuck with him, and it paid off.
Who was advocating “a move” with Ibanez at this time last season? Seriously, I’m drawing a blank here. Was it me? I don’t think that was me.
If there was, though — shame on you, stupid people, talking about making a move with Ibanez, who was injured and concealing it and absolutely sucked. How dare you talk about making a move for such a selfless leader who gets injured and conceals it so that the team can’t figure out what’s wrong and stupidly keeps running him out there so his injured self looks terrible. How dare you! Don’t you know he’s injured?
Now, if you remember, at this time last year, there were people advocating that all kittens and puppies should suffer horrible, gruesome fates too terrifying to even detail here. But we persevered, and today those puppies and kittens are all living happy, fulfilling lives, letting doubles skip on past them in left field, and giving great post-game interviews.
People may ask “what do you expect Armstrong to say? He’s the president, after all.”
And I would respond here’s what I’d like Armstrong to say: “They’re right to be dissatisfied. We’ve tried to put together a contender this year, and we’ve gotten off to a bad start. I understand that it’s a mid-week night game, and it was cold, too. I appreciate the fans that did come out to see the team, and I’m sorry we put on such a poor showing.
“I still think the team is a lot stronger than we’ve shown so far, particularly with Bedard and Putz returning from injuries. I expect we’ll play much better from here on out and hopefully we’ll be able to make up the ground we’ve lost.”
And that’s probably not far off what Armstrong would like to say, but here — and you see this in Lincoln’s statements, too — what he actually says is steeped in the organization’s long-standing contempt for their customers, who here are irrationally concerned about the chances of a team with the worst record in the AL, a team they were assured was going to make a run at it.
I hate that. It does as much to turn me off as the losing, as irrational as that is at times, knowing that my ticket dollars support an organization that can’t even pretend to understand and sympathize with entirely reasonable fan sentiment.
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I think DMZ just got Armstrong and Lincoln’s PR guy fired.
So, does this mean BB is on the hot seat again?
Wow… I just… What is this I don’t even.
Baker has his take on the remarks up on his blog
I’ve been to one game this year. And I got the tickets for free.
That’s only one data point, of course, but I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one that agrees with the above rant.
Baker quoting Armstrong:
Yup, Mariner fans, the problems with this team were Wilkerson and Norton. Now that they are gone, come on out and buy lots of tickets!
Sounds like Bavasi’s job is riding on the success of these two callups? That seems a little bizarre…
I just feel like we’re ever so slowly inching further and further into Bob Whitsitt territory. What will it actually take to get Armstrong and Lincoln fired? I can’t even say what I would give for this team to get a fresh start with entirely new upper management (and subsequently new lower management, i.e. get rid of Bavasi and McLaren as well).
Right on DMZ!!!!
I only wish the Mariners’ organization had your fire….
I am no fan of Bill Bavasi, but Chuck Armstrong….
All I can say is, read the Dick Williams book if you want to learn about Chuck freaking Armstrong. The absolute nerve of the guy to criticize fans for not showing up to watch this drab mediocrity called the Seattle Mariners….
Incidentally, me and my friend were among the record low gathering at the 10-1 embarassment, and you should have seen the dirty looks we received from our section merely for booing Kenji’s lousy at-bats….
It’s really nice to be on a website like this where the average reader and poster knows more than me….
It’s the exact opposite of Safeco Field, where it seems most of the fans who do show up know virtually nothing….
Those empty seats speak loudly, though, and I’m here to tell Chucky Baby they ain’t empty because of no “worse schedule ever.”
This is precisely why I haven’t been to a game in 3 years. I live in Idaho, and used to attend 2-3 games a year, but started boycotting it after Bavasi was installed the team went to hell. When they at least showed some effort by signing Sexson and Beltre, I went to several games in 2005 to do my part in “supporting” their attempt.
But with statements like this, I think they have pushed my ETA for attending another game back a few years. It’s like there’s this underlying attitude that they think we’re stupid, and when their attempts at manipulating popular sentiment about the team fail, they start throwing around these passive aggressive insults. Screw this organization. Seriously.
Fuck Armstrong. Someone had to say it.
But, but, they intentionally bumped up the player ratings on Wii Baseball. Thats not enough for you fickle fans?
It’s not that the people who go to the games don’t know…it’s that if you’ve bothered to spend the money to go to the game, you WANT your team do do well…in the delightfully irrational way that sports fans do–to participate in that fantasy.
Who wants to pay money to validate what you already know are the failings of the local team?
There are those of us who know…who go…we simply put aside what we know to cheer for the guys wearing our shirts in hopes that they do well (even if that means proving us wrong.)
And then, we come home and log on…to commiserate in with others sharing our misery.
(Except for the idiots who cheer the dancing grounds crew. They still think that wrestling is real.)
I agree, and I’d pile on but I just don’t have the energy. The top of the organization is an echo chamber where the same half-truths and misapprehensions and completely bogus conventional wisdoms get amplified and repeated like some idiot game of Telephone.
But, I have to stop at this:
seven of Seattle’s top poorest Safeco Field attendances have come this year
He actually wrote that? “top poorest attendances”? Is English actually Hickey’s native language?
No. This is when he gets an extension to his contract. That’s how the Mariners roll!
“Who was advocating “a move†with Ibanez at this time last season? Seriously, I’m drawing a blank here. Was it me? I don’t think that was me.”
Could the “move” he’s talking about be moving him from the outfield to DH? Because if so, than… sure, Chuck.
Those two clowns infuriate me. As does their seeming corporate invulnerability. They must be world-class brown-nosers.
Patience? Are you kidding me? BB’s been in charge for how many years now?
We can only hope for change at this point, but the change won’t go high enough, and they’ll probably hire another idiot like BB and give him five years to try and make something work. At this rate all those season ticket holder won’t even be going to games. It is unnaceptable the the team with the 9th highest payroll is the joke of baseball
Thanks for the love Chuck. By the way I intend on letting my MLB.tv account expire at months end. And as for the new M’s gear I was going to order after I move to a new address in a few weeks…go on and feel anything but optimistic about that happening.
Hmmm… this seems a little obstinate to me. Unless I’m reading something wrong here, the dude basically said: “Attendance is bad because our schedule sucks, the weather sucks, and the team sucks. We expect attendance to increase when we play more exciting teams [he mentions the Yankees in the full article], the weather gets better, and we start winning.”
That seems to make sense to me. Of course, he’s assuming the team will start winning; fine if you disagree but, as you say Derek, he’s the president.
As for the rest, he’s just paying the typical business managerial lip service to the tune of: “I support what our staff is doing.” Regardless, I certainly don’t read any contempt for his customers in his statements, everything seems pretty vanilla.
These sorts of critiques of Armstrong have always baffled me. He’s not the GM, nor has he ever had designs to be the GM (even when he certainly could have taken that role in the Argyros years if he’d wanted). The dude’s job is to run a profitable business and that is something he has done very, very well.
Well, there were people in the first half of the season who were advocating a “move” of Ibanez to the bench because he wasn’t hitting. Which wouldn’t have been a bad decision; as it turns out, a move to the DL would’ve been more appropriate, but since he was hiding his injury and the M’s coaching staff was too clueless and/or deferential to veteraness to notice, that didn’t happen.