TODAY
Colorado scored six runs in three innings against Erik Bedard and coasted home for an 8-3 victory over Seattle, using eight walks to ignite the Rockies offense.
SATURDAY
Seattle visits the Los Angeles Angels in Tempe for a 1:05 p.m. that will be broadcast on KIRO and televised on FSN. Probable starting pitchers: Carlos Silva vs Mike Palmer.
NOTABLE
Bedard and Brandon Morrow said they felt wonderful – and between them, walked seven men in four-plus innings. “Eight walks doesn’t work,” manager Don Wakamatsu said. Seattle out-hit Colorado, 11-7, but the Rockies were hitting early with men on base. Morrow, for instance, hit a batter, walked another and then gave up a home run. …
When the Mariners want their best defensive team on the field late in the game, the outfield set is easy – Endy Chavez, Franklin Guttierrez and Ichiro. But what about at first base? One option the team has considered is sliding Jose Lopez from second base to first and putting Ronny Cedeno at second. That may happen, occasionally, but the Mariners will start the season hoping Russell Branyan can be their first baseman late. He doesn’t have great range, but he’s a big target and, guarding the line late, the Mariners think he can do the job. Mike Sweeney will be the ‘other’ first baseman on the roster. …
Catcher Jamie Burke returned from Oregon as a proud third-time father, rejoining Kenji Johjima, Rob Johnson and Jeff Clement in camp. Expect those numbers to shrink soon – there aren’ enough at-bats or innings to give four catchers. …
Cedeno and Johjima had two hits apiece and, though he was just 1-for-4, Ken Griffery Jr. hit two shots that were caught and had two RBI. …
Ryan Rowland-Smith, the likely No. 5 starter in the Mariners rotation, threw an early bullpen so he could get to the dentist for a root canal. “They asked me the other day what kind of pitcher I was, and I said, ‘I’m Ryan Rowland-Smith – I get outs any way I can,’” he said. “I learned a lot last year. Maybe by the end of this year, I’ll know what kind of pitcher I am.” Wakamatsu’s evaluation of Rowland-Smith? “He’s a tough kid, but sometimes is approach has no rhyme or reason,” the manager said. “He’s aggressive, I like his stuff, he needs to mature a little bit on the mound. I like him.” …
Think the Mariners are serious about bunting this spring? During batting practice, they have coach Lee Tinsley working with a pitching machine on a half field, and players rotate through. Everyone bunts, with at least one round dedicated to forcing the third baseman to field a bunt. “You try bunting, once a week, for a hit and even if you’re out, the opposing teams have to start playing you differently,” Tinsley said. “They have to play in at third base, and holes open up for you. Just the threat of a bunt makes a team play differently.” …
Lefty Tyler Johnson was scheduled go throw a 30-pitch simulated game but apparently threw too much on Thursday and was shut down, instead. He’ll start the season on the disabled list, along with closer-in-waiting Chad Cordero. … Sweeney’s two-out RBI single won the Mariners game in the ninth inning on Thursday – and it was the fifth time this spring Seattle has won a game in its final at-bat. Not a bad habit. …
Morrow on his inning-plus of work: “I felt real good but my mechanics were off. I'd throw three good pitches in a row, then four bad ones. This is the time to work on things, and I was working on my curve. I threw one that got me a double play - and one that got hit out.” …
Rookie Shawn Kelley’s long-shot surge toward a spot in the bullpen continues to shorten the odds. Against the Rockies, he threw two shutout innings, facing only seven batters.
QUOTABLE
From Morrow, on a curve that Christian Colonel hit for a home run: "That pitch felt great out of my hand. Off the bat, I knew it was going over the fence.”

Note: I went through and tried to clean up a few of the copy editing mistakes, this what happens when you write at 2 a.m.

Just googling the words “leadership quotes” is process that will yield a number of websites and blogs that are overwhelmed with quotes from a range of politicians, poets, writers, athletes, coaches, business leaders and honestly people I’ve never heard of before.

And in this sea of thoughts, I’ve come to realize that there is no right way or wrong way to lead. Not in politics, not in business and certainly not in sports. And anymore, I’m not even certain about the importance of leaders in sports, or at least our perceived notion of what leaders are.

Just look at a few random ones I found …

Individual commitment to a group effort - that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work. -- Vince Lombardi

Example is not the main thing in influencing others, it is the only thing. -- Albert Schweitzer

The strength of the group is the strength of the leaders. -- Vince Lombardi

Effective leadership is not about making speeches or being liked; leadership is defined by results not attributes. -- Peter Drucker

Leadership is practiced not so much in words as in attitude and in actions. -- Harold S. Geneen

"The leader who exercises power with honor will work from the inside out, starting with himself." - Blaine Lee.

I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure: which is: Try to please everybody. – Herbert B. Swope

Leadership involves finding a parade and getting in front of it. – John Naisbitt

These are just random pickings from what were thousands of quotes that were meant to be either. So why was I spending my enjoyable, post Duke-loss Thursday evening googling quotes about leadership? I got sucked into perusing the quotes from Ichiro’s first meeting with the local writers in Arizona today.

If you haven’t heard by now, he was asked about and addressed the idea of being a leader and some of the comments that were made about him former teammate J.J. Putz and manager Jim Riggleman to the Seattle Times.

Here’s Lash's story on it, and Tim Booth’s story from the Associated Press.

To be fair, I wasn’t there on Thursday, but I could have told you a month ago what some of the questions that were going been asked. And I don’t disagree with Times writer Geoff Baker for asking those questions. He had to follow up on what they wrote earlier. Really, the questions probably needed to be asked after what happened last season.

"Trying to get a team together and point to one guy and say follow this leader sounds very easy and simple thing to do. In fact, if you go in this style there are manholes in this style of doing it," Ichiro said. "I think people who believe this fundamental thought process of choosing a leader and getting a team to follow them should change their thought process. What's important is ... individuals who want to improve themselves."

This is Ichiro’s way, and really it’s the way of a lot of players. Raul Ibanez was consumed with his day-to-day preparation. He didn’t have time to babysit Jose Lopez to make sure he was taking extra groundballs instead of eating cheetos on the couch. He didn’t have time to force to Yuni stop watching soccer and go out and take early batting practice when he was hitting in the low .200s, or teach him why it's bad to swing at a pitch a foot outside. Raul was consumed with doing an exacting day-to-day routine because it was needed for him to play at his highest level. If he didn’t put in all that work, he would never have had half the success he had.

Along those lines, answer these questions: Has anyone ever complained that Ichiro was out of shape? Has anyone complained that Ichiro doesn’t work on his defense? Has anyone accused of Ichiro for not putting enough work on his hitting?

The answer is "no" to all of those. He prepares with an obsessive compulsive attitude. And the results speak for themselves.

As someone who was there daily, I noticed this: once Ichiro shows up to a clubhouse during spring training or in the season, he doesn’t spend much time goofing off, sitting in front of his locker or chatting with teammates. He has a specific purpose, a schedule and he keeps to it. He believes that it’s necessary for him to have success. And I would say that it’s tough argue with his results.

This is how he views his personal responsibility to the team.

“I was not a leader for the Japan WBC team,” Ichiro said. “To have a leader, that’s not the important thing. What is important is to group together individuals who want to improve themselves as baseball players and improve themselves as human beings. That’s what’s important.”

From all that I observed and read, that’s how Japanese players view the inner-workings of a baseball team. They don’t romanticize the idea of the team leader. Basically, on a Japanese team, the players all worry about being the best player possible so they don’t need a leader to tell them to do so. And if everyone does that, then they will be the best team possible.

Unfortunately that attitude didn’t necessarily permeate in all the players on the 2008 Mariners squad. And to some, it meant that Ichiro or Raul automatically had to be the guys to extoll that "right" attitude on their teammates? Because they are the best players on the field, that means they have to be the team's leaders? I don’t think so.

Jay Buhner was never the best player on most of his Mariners' teams. But yet he was still an unquestioned leader. I don’t think anybody appointed him to that post. Manny Ramirez is the best player on any team he's played on and no one would ever construe him as a leader.

Is it right for others to appoint Ichiro as a leader, when he clearly doesn’t have the personality or the desire to do so? I don’t think so. And neither does he.

“Saying, ‘Everybody follow this leader,’ sounds like a very simple thing to do,” he said. “People who believe this fundamental thought process of choosing a leader and getting the team to follow them should change the thought process. A team leader appearing is a good thing. But to choose one or appoint one is not the right way of doing things.”

But here’s possibly the most salient quote from the whole interview to me.

“If there’s a group of people who don’t know what their goals are or the correct thing to do, yeah, you need a team leader,” he said. “But this is major league baseball. We’re not at that level anymore.”

And this is something I’ve railed about in the past concerning professional baseball players, including the other day with Ian Furness. If it’s your job to be the best baseball player possible, then should you really need to have a teammate push you to do so? If the well-above-the-common-man salary you are receiving isn't enough of an incentive to work at it, how about working harder simply out of respect to your teammates, your team and the game?

I know this idea baffles Ichiro, and to some extent Raul. They simply don’t fathom how a player – specifically one that isn’t producing – not put in maximum effort to change the results. They don’t grasp contentment with mediocrity. And for Ichiro having the mediocre question his approach has to seem ludicrous.

Obviously Ichiro’s preparation and style of play differs from his teammates. But that doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

“This is major league baseball. We’re all professionals here. Is it really at a level where I have to explain to other people what are the reasons I do some things?” he asked. “We’re all professionals. It makes me feel like a mom telling a child, ‘this is why I do things.’"

I’m not exonerating him from all criticism. His refusal to dive for balls and his stubbornness as to when he wants to steal and when he doesn't irks me a little, and it does irk his teammates. And on some level it could be construed as being selfish. An athlete being selfish? Shocking. Yet the NBA still survives and Terrell Owens is still employed.

“Isn’t what a professional does is look at other things and try to steal things from other people by watching and learning from others? Isn’t that what it means to be a professional?”

One would think.

Ichiro is not a perfect baseball player by any means, and for all that he isn't, there's still so much more that he is. Fortunately, for him and for the Mariners, there are a few more professionals on the 2009 team. And a month and a half into spring training, leaders have already emerged, they didn’t need to be appointed. Perhaps we can finally put 2008 away for a while.