Texas Rangers manager Ron Washington put his feet on his desk after the 162nd game of the season Sunday and shook his head.

“I’m never glad for the baseball season to end,” he said.

A great many fans can relate. What starts in February when pitchers and catchers report, winds up running through the lives of millions throughout the spring, into the summer and early fall.

The Seattle Mariners had a good year.

There should be no argument to those seven words. They finished with the American League’s fifth-best record, went from 78 wins in 2006 to 88 in 2007.

They survived the resignation of a manager in mid-season.

They overcame the worst year in Richie Sexson’s career, a poor signing in pitcher Jeff Weaver, a bad trade acquisition in Horacio Ramirez and injuries that floored veteran relievers Arthur Rhodes and Chris Reitsma.

They got marvelous years from Ichiro Suzuki and Raul Ibanez, J.J. Putz and Yunieskey Betancourt, Adrian Beltre and Jose Guillen.

Miguel Batista (16) and Felix Hernandez (14) set career highs for wins.

A parade of relievers – George Sherrill, Brandon Morrow, Sean Green, Eric O’Flaherty and Ryan Rowland-Smith – kept the Mariners in the AL West race until late August, when the burden of too many innings caught up to them.

There are holes to fill, issues to face, decisions to make. All teams face them, every off-season.

For the first time since 2003, however, the Mariners and their fans can say they had a good year.

They won more games than the Chicago Cubs and as many as the New York Mets. They won more games than the Blue Jays and Braves, the Cardinals or Twins.

You’d be hard-pressed to find a national publication or a fan last spring who believed the Mariners wouldn’t finish fourth again.

Instead, they had a good season. That’s a start.

Ichiro Suzuki's pursuit of a third American League batting title is going to come up short this season, in part because the man he's chasing won't be playing.

Detroit manager Jim Leyland said Magglio Ordonez, who's batting .360, won't play on Saturday.

That's going to make it impossible for Ichiro, who's at .350, to catch Ordonez no matter what Ichiro does in the final two games.

Ah, rookies.
Jeff Clement hit a game-winning home run against the Texas Rangers on Friday, helping Seattle win it’s 86th game of the season, and then got to enjoy what comes with doing such things in the major leagues.

“It’s a tradition, I guess, after things like that to get a beer shower,” Clement said.

What, exactly, is a beer shower?

“You sit on the floor in the showers and everybody pours beer on you,” he said.

With two games left to their season, the Mariners are having fun as a team, with veterans and rookies alike playing hard and enjoying themselves afterward.

If Clement got the beer shower, shortstop Yuniesky Betancourt got the biggest post-game laughs – and earned them.

When any Mariners ends a game with a walk-off hit this year, teammates have raced on the field and all but pummeled him with joy. Betancourt has been at the bottom of such piles more often than most.

So when Clement hit his home run to center field, Betancourt shot out of the dugout and sprinted toward second base – he thought Clement’s ball was a double, not a home run.

When Clement got to second base and turned toward third, Yuni stayed right on pace a few steps behind him, while all the other Mariners waited for Clement at the plate.

Betancourt was still in pursuit when the two men got to third base, where coach Carlos Garcia stopped Betancourt.

It was the most unusual home run trot in Safeco Field history – one man trotted, the other sprinting around the bases trying to catch him.

Given the 2007 season, the announcement Thursday that both general manager Bill Bavasi and manager John McLaren will return next season is bound to be met with wildly mixed responses.

How could it not?

Before spring training began, there were those who wanted Bavasi fired – and, ironically, most of those same voices wanted Mike Hargrove fired and replaced with then-bench coach McLaren.

Well, Hargrove departed on his own June 2, and those who’d wanted him canned call him a quitter on his way out of town.

It was that kind of season.

With a team few thought would be .500 – the prediction here was an 84-win season – Bavasi kept his core players and added hitters like Jose Guillen and Jose Vidro. In a market where there were few pitchers available who could make a difference, he landed Miguel Batista, who was a solid contributor.

And he added free agent Jeff Weaver and traded for Horacio Ramirez, who were not.

McLaren inherited a rotation where no one seemed to want to pitch as many as seven innings a start and a young bullpen that by mid-August simply ran out of quality innings.

In Jose Lopez, he had a young player who started coasting. McLaren dealt with by benching the second baseman until he was certain he’d gotten his attention.

In Richie Sexson, he had a veteran having the worst season of his career. McLaren sat him occasionally, worked with him and tried to get from Sexson what the man’s career indicated he could deliver.

That didn’t work.

Another way to look at the season is to ask what if Howard Lincoln had fired Bavasi and Hargrove last September, after the Mariners won 78 games.

If a new GM and new manager had then put together this season, with 84 wins and four games to play – and that once was on the brink of the post-season – would reaction have been the same.

No.

Victory No. 84 in the books, and the Seattle Mariners are looking toward the future – and what it might take to land Johan Santana.

Minnesota’s ace and annual Cy Young Award candidate is under contract for one more season with the Twins, who don’t believe they can re-sign him. That being the case, they’re looking for the best package of great young talent they can find.

They’ve had scouts study minor league systems and looking over September rosters, and the Twins know what they want from Seattle – a package that starts with Adam Jones.

Jones is the type of player who could help off-set the possible loss of free agent center fielder Torri Hunter.

The Mariners, before going too far down the trade front, would have to get permission to sign Santana to a contract extension.

Could such a deal happen? It could, although losing Jones and two other prime young prospects would hurt. But a rotation with Santana and Felix Hernandez at the top would be the most formidable one-two punch in franchise history.

Given the bleak free agent market for pitching this winter, a deal is the only way the Mariners are likely to improve a rotation that’s cost them October. Dangling Jones and other youngsters at Minnesota could turn Seattle into an instant contender for 2008.

One of the reasons my perspective on baseball differs from some is that my background was in news, where the real world is an unkind place. In a major league clubhouse, the issues are wins, losses and chemistry.

On the field, there is no real do or die – players survive.

Occasionally, however, real life visits a big league club, as it did before Wednesday’s double-header. Rob Reagle, a clubhouse assistant for more than 20 years with the Seattle Mariners, died Tuesday night.

The cause doesn’t matter. Does it ever, really?
He was a good man, with family and friends, joys and sorrows.

The Mariners clubhouse was a quiet scene before the first game of the two to be played. Reagle was a young man with a quick smile who’d been part of this team, part of this clubhouse, before any current player signed here.

It was a reminder of the difference between loss on a baseball field and loss off. It is a perspective we should all remember, from time to time.

Reagle will be missed. And remembered long after any game or series or season ends.

A reminder, as the Seattle Mariners were eliminated from the American League West, why most of us love major league baseball and those who play it.

On Saturday in Anaheim, left-handed rookie Ryan Rowland-Smith – Seattle’s resident Australian player – met before the game with a pair of his father’s friends, who were seeing their first big-league game.

Rowland-Smith was called in to relieve with two outs and a runner on first base, but didn’t need to throw a pitch. He picked Chone Figgins off first base and jogged to the dugout.

“I was hoping like crazy they’d send me out again to pitch the next inning,” Rowland-Smith said, “because otherwise those folks would have thought that’s all I did – get called into games to pick someone off first base.”

Finishing second isn’t what the Mariners nor their fans wanted this season, but it doesn’t hurt to remember the pleasure the game and those who inhabit it bring.

It’s not just about wins and losses.

A glance back at the free agent market

that was last winter probably isn’t going to make many major league general managers smile.

San Francisco, for instance, laid out $120 million for pitcher Barry Zito – the Mariners finished second in that bidding – and he’s been a first-year bust as a Giant. Los Angeles spent $49 million on Jason Schmidt – the Mariners finished second in that bidding, too.
Schmidt has spent almost the entire season on the disabled list.

There are lots of other examples. Boston bid more than $50 million just to talk to Japan’s Daisuke Matsuzaka, and $45-million-plus to sign him.

He’s won 14 games.

And then there’s Seattle, which landed Miguel Batista for three years at a total of $24 million.

Batista’s 15 victories this season tie him with the Cubs Ted Lilly for most by a free agent acquision. Batista has worked 185 innings in 31 starts and talked pitching with most of the young Mariners pitchers.

He’s been a nice part of a disastrous rotation.

Similarly, Jose Guillen (.288, 21 HR, 94 RBI) and Jose Vidro (.318, 6, 58) have been solid pieces in a team that’s going to finish above .500 for the first time since 2003.

Have there been moves that didn’t work? Of course.
Relievers Chris Reitsma and Arthur Rhodes

were brought in to anchor the setup role and help get to J.J. Putz. Health kept both from contributing.

Horacio Ramirez won eight games but produced a 7.17 ERA and lost his job this month. A bust? This year, yes. He’s likely to come to spring training with a second chance to get the fifth spot in the rotation right.

Jeff Weaver? He’s won more games than Schmidt, a few less than Zito and won’t be back.

Trying to contend this season, the Mariners spent more than $100 million for the first time in franchise history – and our 12 games over .500 with eight to play.

They were in contention until a disastrous 2-15 stretch, and still haven’t been eliminated.

They’re a better team this year than in any since 2003. That’s not propaganda, just observation. The Mariners have been more fun to watch in 2007 than in years, and they’ve got a marvelous core to build around.

Adding Schmidt or Zito might have looked good on paper, but would have been disastrous. That’s simple luck – the Mariners tried to sign both, and most of their fans were clamoring to get those arms.

Instead, they got Batisa. And like this season, he’s been a pleasant surprise.

For the Angels, the magic number remains one.

For the Mariners, the magic number hit 82 Friday.

No, Seattle’s 82nd win didn’t bring out the champagne the Angels will be spraying one another with soon, but it did guarantee that Seattle – with nine games left in the season – will have a winning record for the first time since 2003.

“We’re not that far away,” Jarrod Washburn said. “This team should be proud of our season – no one picked us to be where we are. It’s unfortunate we had the two or three week stretch late that we had, but that’s not the whole season.

“On the whole, we should be proud. We’re close.”

At 82-71, this team has overcome itself and its issues again and again.

Richie Sexson didn’t produce, became a hole in the Seattle lineup and a sulking presence in the clubhouse. Washburn has won two games since the All-Star break Horacio Ramirez and Jeff Weaver have combined for 15 wins.

Chris Reitsma, Arthur Rhodes and Mark Lowe lost seasons to injury when the healthy presence of any one of them would have improved the club.

Mike Hargrove resigned, leaving John McLaren to manage on the fly.

A four-game series lost to snow in Cleveland in April haunted the Mariners for months, making their travel schedule even more difficult.

There were too many streaks – many of them bad – to count.

And still, after 153 games, the Mariners are nine games above .500. They haven’t even been eliminated yet in the American League West.

That’s nothing short of amazing.

Washburn and his teammates have the right to be proud.

Jorge Campillo was suspended for four games Friday by major league baseball, which said he'd intentionally thrown a baseball at Vladimir Guerrero - and the decision automatically carried a one-day suspension for manager John McLaren.

As for Guerrero, who walked toward the mound pointing at Campillo?

No penalty. He was just venting.
The irony, of course, is that Campillo didn't hit Guerrero, just put one near him.

You can find just about anything on the internet, including wonderful stories that lack one thing – validity.

The Seattle Mariners are puzzled by a couple of those, and obviously so are a few of their fans.

One report on Thursday had the team ‘picking up’ general manager Bill Bavasi’s option for 2008, a move sure to divide Seattle fans. The problem: Bavasi doesn’t have an option.

Bavasi serves at the behest of the team, can be removed at any time but, as he continues to stay, he builds severance pay. The Mariners haven’t told him whether he’s returning in ’08, nor have they said he isn’t.

The other report that incensed some fans involved Richie Sexson, the under-achieving first baseman with one year and a $14 million guaranteed salary left on his contract.

Somehow, stories floated around the ‘net that Sexson had been placed on waivers, claimed by a another team and snatched back by Seattle.

Not true.

Sexson was on waivers – most players are in August after the trading deadline, to judge interest by other teams. But not one of the other 29 teams in baseball put in a claim for Sexson.

The Mariners didn’t find an ounce of interest in him, which probably doesn’t enhance the changes of moving Sexson this off-season, unless they’re able to swap him for someone else’s big-salaried problem.

One thing to keep in mind when you’re browsing through Mariners stories online. Not all of them are true. They just pretend to be.

In the ninth inning of Seattle’s victory over Oakland on Wednesday, Ichiro Suzuki singled for the 223rd hit of the season – and one that was particularly meaningful to him.

It pushed him a full .001 ahead of Magglio Ordonez for the American League batting title.

Like Ichiro’s chances of winning his third batting title? He does.

“I like my chances,” Ichiro said.

“That’s as it should be,” manager John McLaren said when told Ichiro had taken the lead after trailing for most of the last month. “Ichiro’s my favorite, he’s an amazing guy, an amazing hitter.”

True enough. In his major league career, Ichiro has averaged 225 hits a year and forged a career batting average of better than .333.

Though teammates suggest Ichiro keeps track of the race, he shrugged when asked about that. In the clubhouse, he said, ESPN is always on, and newspapers are scattered around.

Ichiro doesn’t pay much attention, he insists.

“I’m too busy watching my DVD,” he said.

And what’s on the DVD?

“Without A Trace,’” Ichiro said. “It’s more important.”

It got personal this year with some fans and Raul Ibanez.

A man who’s worked hard to make himself a productive hitter, a serviceable outfielder and a favorite teammate, Ibanez somehow became the player many fans decided should be replaced.

Fans wanted Adam Jones, and if it cost Ibanez his job, they weren’t too bothered. They let Ibanez know it.

“We all get booed,” left-hander George Sherrill said, “but when Raul got booed, every guy in this clubhouse was upset.”

On Tuesday, in Seattle’s 80th victory of the year, Ibanez doubled home one run and made his 19th home run of the year a grand slam. That pushed him to the 100 RBI mark for the third time in his career.

“If I could finish with 99 RBI and get this team into the playoffs, I’d do it in a heart beat,” Ibanez said. “Not making the post-season, that would hurt. There’s only so many chances.”

Ibanez played through pain and injuries that forced him to adjust his swing much of the season. Since Aug. 5, he’s batting .363 with 13 home runs and 38 RBI in 41 games.

He’s 34 now, but clearly one of the leaders on a team that lacks much leadership. Ibanez is signed through next season. Whatever the team asks of him, he’s willing to do – if that means learning to play first base or being the designated hitter, fine.

What he’s never done is leave the field of play without giving his best. For many fans – and all his teammates – that’s enough.

For some fans, it isn’t. That’s a shame.

It’s doubtful any team with thoughts of contention was any happier to win it’s 79th game of the season than the Seattle Mariners – who hadn’t won that many games in a year since 2003.

It’s been a long, ugly dry spell for a team that won 116 times in 2001 and spoiled its fans.

Progress can’t always be measured in wins and losses, but a winning record helps when you haven’t had one in four years. What the Mariners have found this year should help them as they build toward 2008.

J.J. Putz is a legitimate closer, and the team has found enough arms to build a solid bullpen around him. Too many young arms ran out of gas this month – the first time many of them had ever pitched into September.

Next year, they’ll be more prepared.

The Mariners have also learned they can win games without dominating starting pitching. In fact, they’ve won with what many would consider sub-standard starting pitching.

Next year, they’ll start the season with Felix Hernandez, Jarrod Washburn, Miguel Batista and candidates like Ryan Feierabend, Brandon Morrow and Ryan Rowland-Smith for the end-of-the-rotation spots.

Offensively, Seattle carried a huge dead weight at first base and must determine whether to keep Richie Sexson or let him go and play almost anyone else at the position. Yuniesky Betancourt is a jewel, Adrian Beltre once again a productive hitter, Raul Ibanez once again a 20-home run, 100-RBI hitter.

The issues that dogged this streaky team all season are obvious, but one shouldn’t overlook the positives, the strengths to build around.

And one shouldn’t forget that winning remains the objective. Winning more games in each of the last three seasons hasn’t won any rings, but it has pushed the Seattle Mariners back to the plateau of respectable teams.

We’ve talked here about the jobs that could be lost once the season ends – GM Bill Bavasi, manager John McLaren and his entire coaching staff have no assurance they’ll be back.

What we haven’t dealt with much is guys losing their jobs before the season ends.

On Sunday, the first official ax of 2007 fell on Horacio Ramirez, who won’t make another start for Seattle and may not throw another pitch for the Mariners. Can Jeff Weaver be much further away than his next start from the same decision?

No.

Jose Lopez has regressed so completely – physically and emotionally – that he’s been benched for games at a time over the past two weeks. Another poor decision in the field or two, he might sit the rest of the season out.

Most fans are going to find it hard to get worked up by any of this. Ramirez had few fans this season and Weaver about as many. Lopez has so obviously looked confused in the field and overmatched at the plate that his presence wasn’t missed when he sat.

Over the next 14 games, you’ll get to see a few pitchers audition for next year – guys who will start for Ramirez and in one of the two games in the Sept. 26 double-header.

The GM, manager and coaches? They’re going to have to wait another two weeks for word on their futures.

There are any number of reasons the Seattle Mariners should be disappointed with their 2007 season, and most have become apparent over the last three weeks.

Spotty starting pitching. A young bullpen. An offense that hits but never walks.

On the other hand, this team has now won 78 games – matching it’s total of 2006 with 16 games to play. And it’s played a more exciting style of baseball than in its last three seasons, when Seattle finished last in the American League West.

No, the Mariners aren’t going to catch the Angels, a team still 7 ½ games in front of them. And their chances of jumping past both Detroit and New York in the wild card race aren’t good.

But after finishing fourth three years in a row, there’s much to be said for the fact that on Sept. 15 this team is still playing meaningful games.

Every win the rest of the way pushes Seattle closer to respectability, which is something this franchise last had in 2003.

Yes, it’s going to take a lot of work over the off-season to correct problems that became apparent this year. But the steady climb of the last three seasons – from 63 wins to 69 wins to 78 wins last year – is continuing.

If the worst that can be said of these Mariners is they came close and fell short, that’s a reminder of how long it’s been since they came close.

Despite Seattle’s 41st come-from-behind victory of the year Thursday, it’s time for the front office to send one late-season message to this Mariners team and its fans.

Release Jeff Weaver.

Call it a gamble that failed, a risk-taken that cost too much – but don’t let him start another game.

There are too many players trying too hard to salvage respectability to give up another three games to Weaver starts. Over his last three, he has last a combined 9 1/3 innings.

There may not be a great answer on the Seattle bench – Ryan Feierabend, Jorge Campillo, Sean White, Ryan Rowland-Smith are options. It’s hard to imagine them doing worse than Weaver.

And Weaver won’t be back next year.

Let him go now, give him his money and a hearty handshake. Thanks for trying, good luck next year, let’s all move on.

As the Mariners try to overcome a 4-15 run, the last thing they need is a guy who’s heart and mind aren’t in it. Weaver looks like a man who’d rather be elsewhere.

Send him there.

The criticism that abounds in professional sports has tended to get more personal over the last decade or so – teams no longer lose games, they ‘choke.’

In the past 2 ½ weeks, the Seattle Mariners lost 15 of 18 games, and lots of readers wrote with the same complaint. This team had quit, mailed it in, given up on the season.

Not hardly.

No one takes the pain of losing any more personally than major league players. They don’t carry the weight of a loss with them for days, they don’t call talk radio stations and whine about bad calls or unhittable pitches or bloops that fall in for the other team.

But no player makes it this far without a hard edge of competitiveness. They don’t like to lose – at anything – ever. And in a game at which they excel?

The Mariners wanted to win as badly in the 18th game of this stretch as in the first 17. They played hard. They made mistakes, but wouldn’t let the game turn on those.

In the end, they got a pinch-hit home run in the eighth inning by Adam Jones, then a two-out RBI single from shortstop Yuniesky Betancourt in the bottom of the ninth inning.

It wasn’t a pennant-winning shot, but the Mariners burst from their dugout and chased Betancourt down, pounding on him with the joy of men who had lost too many games this month.

This team isn’t going to make the post-season. It’s not going to win 90 games.

What it will do is play for pride, its own and that of its fans, the rest of the way. These Mariners hate to lose. And anyone who saw them run down Betancourt after their 76th win of the season now understands how much they love to win.

One of the more devastating collapses in major league history has put the Seattle Mariners 9 ½ games out in the American League West and 6 ½ games back in the wild card derby – where they trail New York and Detroit.

What that means, in layman’s terms, is wait until next year.

The Mariners, of course, won’t acknowledge that. Manager John McLaren insists he’s not going to change his starting rotation, nor inject his daily lineup with any of the 10 young players brought up this month from the minors.

There is some honor in that approach, although it doesn’t seem to make much sense if the team wants a good look at its future.

Why have four catchers on the roster if you’re going to play one, Kenji Johjima, six games out of seven? Why not look at Ryan Feierabend again in the rotation?

Managers regularly show loyalty to players closing in on milestones, so it’s not surprising that McLaren would allow three Mariners with chances for a 100 RBI season – Raul Ibanez, Adrian Beltre and Jose Guillen – to keep playing.

But Jose Lopez isn’t playing well and hasn’t been for a month.

Johjima took a baseball off his left wrist Tuesday and should be allowed to sit and recuperate no matter how badly he wants to play in what looks like a meaningless 19 games remaining.

Richie Sexson won’t play again because of a hamstring problem.

That gives the Mariners three spots in the regular lineup to toy with, although there’s no indication they will do so.

The adage that you go with the players who got you here has merit only when you’re standing where you’d hoped to be. In this case, the Mariners in the rotation and the lineup got the Mariners to 20 games over .500 – and have now gotten them to 75-68 in just 16 games.

There’s plenty of time to perform the autopsy on a season later. With 19 games left, however, the Mariners and their manager ought to drop the pretense and clear the bench. Let kids hungry to play loose on Oakland and Tampa Bay.

Give your fans at home something to think about for 2008.

The perception of those who have never been in a major league clubhouse is that those who work there for a living – the players – react to what goes on in baseball the same way fans do.

Nope.

It’s bit like the old Seinfeld joke.

What do men think about? Nothing.

Well, all major league players are men.

If the Seattle Mariners, for instance, struggle against one particular team all year, many fans assume that weighs heavily on them. It doesn’t.

Oh, they may spend a moment or two wondering about it, but the answer to most such pondering in a clubhouse is the same – ‘That’s baseball.’

And while many called for firings, trades and releases during the 1-13 stretch of games, the Mariners for the most part weren’t pleased but weren’t nearly as reactive.

In fact, when they beat the Detroit Tigers on Sunday, the clubhouse wasn’t relieved, it was just silly and giddy – the way it is much of the time. Kenji Johjima, hit on the helmet by a pitch, greeted Japanese writers afterward with his entire head wrapped in heavy bandages.

He laughed. They laughed. It was the kind of thing The Boone would have done in 2001.

Players take the game seriously when they play it. They prepare for games physically and mentally every day, but the truth is over a 162-game schedule they simply do no see things the way fans do.

To players, slumps and hot streaks are part of the game. Because they play so many games, it’s hard for players to feel a sense of urgency for any one series – they have learned through experience that treating each game the same works best.

So when the Mariners won to push their record on this trip to 2-8, none were happy about the numbers. But to a man, they chalk most of what’s happened up to the vagaries of baseball and their own failings.

Players never expect slumps or winning streaks to last forever. And they’re usually right not to.

Lose 13 of 14 games, any time, ownership groups tend to notice.

Do it late in a season after making believers of fans – and owners – and the possibility arises that heads will fly.

The Seattle Mariners are pushing that theory, and an ownership group that started the season with a manger and general manager on the hot seat is likely to set fire to another chair or two.

Mike Hargrove resigned, and John McLaren took over near mid-season with no opportunity to put a system in place, to pick a roster or build a team. He got what he got, and two weeks ago had that team 20 games above .500.

Now, thanks to a 1-13 stretch, McLaren’s record as manger is 29-33 and lots of fans want him fired. Many of them wanted him as manager in spring training – but back then, they wanted Hargrove fired.

There will be changes, certainly, in the Seattle roster before ’08.

Jeff Weaver will be waved goodbye.

If someone is stupid enough to ask for Richie Sexson and his salary … no, never mind. No one will.

Will heads roll?

GM Bill Bavasi built a team that overachieved until two weeks ago, and can hardly be faulted if people now are angry because they believed in that team. These Mariners may not have been that good – but they certainly aren’t this bad, either.

McLaren has made mistakes, but as Tigers manager Jim Leyland said Saturday, ‘who the hell hasn’t?’

He has a point.

All Seattle really has to do over the next 22 games is what they’d done all year until their last 14 games – win more than they lose. If they go 11-11, they’d finish the season 85-76 and in second place in the American League West.

Given the previous three seasons, it’s hard to imagine the team making progress like that and cleaning house.

They played well so often throughout the season it is hard to have imagined the Seattle Mariners could play a stretch of 13 games and win only once.

They’ve done that, and gone from contention to a distant second in the American League West. Worse, they’ve gone from a lead in the wild card derby to trailing both New York and Detroit.

If they don’t win the next two games against the Tigers, the Mariners figure to start a homestand on Monday that fans won’t much care about – because it likely won’t much matter in terms of October baseball.

One sign of how desperate the Mariners situation is? Manager John McLaren will start Richie Sexson today, probably as the designated hitter, against left-handed pitcher Nate Robertson.

And that’s the good news from the clubhouse – that Sexson, batting .207 and out for a week with a strained hamstring, is back.

One win in the last 13 games has left the Mariners on the brink of ruining their season. Two weeks ago, with 37 games to play, they had 73 wins.

Today, they have 74.

If they don’t win No. 75 today and No. 76 on Sunday, the Mariners are going to finish 2007 just trying to finish above .500. And not even they will care much about that.

Hard to imagine, in the wake of the Yankee series, the Seattle Mariners regrouping in the final weeks of the season.

Yes, this has been a resilent team, but they’ve put themselves in the position now where resiliency isn’t enough – they need a complete identity makeover. In two huge series that tested their post-season potential, they were swept by the Angels and drubbed twice by the Yankees.

The rotation hasn’t provided enough innings, the young bullpen hasn’t been able to get a game to J.J. Putz when it mattered in September, and the offense has been stopped by good – not even great – pitching.
So now, only the dreamers are playing for October.

Most everyone else is playing, coaching and managing for a job.

It has been a remarkable season in Seattle, one marked by the emergence of young arms in the bullpen, two managers, personalities like Jose Guillen and Miguel Batista.

There have been highlights and disappointments. If nothing else, the Mariners took a large step forward in 2007, played exciting baseball for the most part and are still in position to have their best year since 2003.

Somehow, that seems anti-climatic.

Fans so caught up in the team and it’s chances just 10 days ago wanted more – they were on the brink of the playoffs, certainly in the heart of the race. It doesn’t feel that way today.

Major league games are almost always determined on the field – between the foul lines – although third base coach Carlos Garcia’s doomed decision on Tuesday totally changed the momentum of what became Seattle’s 12-3 loss.

The Mariners might have lost big, anyway, but when Garcia sent Adrian Beltre around third and toward an out at the plate in the fifth inning, there was no one out in the fifth inning and Seattle trailed just 1-0.

The situation?

Chien-Ming Wang had just walked two consecutive hitters, and Kenji Johjima singled through the infield into left.

If Garcia holds Beltre at third, the bases are loaded with no one out. Instead, Beltre was out easily at the plate and there were only two Mariners left on base. Jose Lopez grounded into a double play – one of three the Mariners grounded into – and the inning was gone.

What followed was a three-run Yankee sixth, a seven-run Yankee seventh and a two-game gap in the wild card race.

“I thought I could score him, but I was too aggressive,” Garcia said. “Under no circumstances can I have the first out thrown out at home plate. It hurts. It’s going to stay with me awhile.”

Give the kid credit – Felix Hernandez did precisely what he had to do Monday and helped snap a nine-game losing streak for the Seattle Mariners.

Against all rationale, the win left the Mariners one-game out of the American League wild card race, which is more than anyone can remember predicting the team would be playing for back in spring training.

“If you’d told us in spring training we’d be in this situation, we’d have been ecstatic,” manager John McLaren said.

With good reason.

A year ago after 136 games, Seattle was 64-72 enroute to a 78-win season.
Today, they’re 74-62 with 26 games to play.

Despite all the losing streaks, despite the occasional collapses by the starting rotation and the slumps by key hitters, this team has a legitimate shot at the post-season.

The Mariners schedule is grueling, but they’ve spent an entire season surprising all who doubt them – and virtually everyone has.

“We believe in ourselves,” Felix said after the game. “Maybe nobody else does, but we do.”

No one in the Seattle clubhouse was minimizing the three-game series with the New York Yankees – or the fact that today was the biggest start of Felix Hernadez’s major league career.

“You could say that of everyone here, including me,” general manager Bill Bavasi said.

Two back in the wild card race, this series is Seattle’s last shot at the front-running Yankees, who have somehow allowed the Mariners to stay close despite losing nine consecutive games.

Today, it’s Felix vs. Roger Clemens – or Felix vs. Mike Mussina, if Clemens can’t go because of blisters on both feet.
Either way, it’s off the chart for must-win games.

Hernandez has never started a game in Yankee Stadium, and in his only two starts against the Yankees in Seattle has gone 0-2 with a 6.94 ERA. Not the most encouraging numbers, but the last time the Mariners won a game – Aug. 24 – Hernandez won it.

Yes, he remains the baby of the rotation at age 21. And yes, leaning heavily on a kid with 67 big-league starts may be unfair, but Hernandez is the best the Mariners have. It’s why he was named opening day starter back in April.

He doesn’t lead the team in wins or innings pitched.

A victory today, however, might help turn around Seattle’s season. It’s the most meaningful game he’s pitched in the majors, and his team needs him to rise to the challenge.