Helter Skelter is exactly it. My world is upside down....

Now that Ichiro is no longer on the Mariners, I can sit back, relax, and devote all my Mariner energy toward watching guys like Justin Smoak and Brendan Ryan pretend they are major league ballplayers.

Well it looks like this trade was initiated by Ichiro and his agent. I also found it incedible a few weeks ago, that the Boregonian's pompous d*uche Steve Duin wrote a very disparaging article about his latest visit to a Mariners game. Did he forget that Portland doesn't even have a baseball team anymore? Not even a bad AAA team? And that the local kickball team is solidly in LAST PLACE in what passes for a pro soccer league in the US?

Yes, but remember, Merritt Paulson is the third most important man in John's world. Handwriting on the wall at your day job is a tough thing to read.

Nearing the end of his phenomenal career this is Ichiro's opportunity to be on a championship team and maybe play in the WS.
Randy Johnson comes to mind as does Raul Ibanez.

The joy for this Mariners fan comes not so much in the quantity of wins - but watching the development and success of the players - usually on other teams. The teal thread is woven throughout the MLB tapestry.

All the best to The Great Ichiro.

I hate the Yankees, but I'm happy for Ichiro. He's a classy player, and I don't begrudge him one bit for wanting to end his career with a winning franchise. This might be the first year that I'm not upset when the Yankees get another World Series title.

The joy for this Mariners fan comes not so much in the quantity of wins - but watching the development and success of the players - usually on other teams.

Coffee spit-take!

As a long time adversary to anything Seattle, it couldn't happen to a nicer city.

Baseball, the fastest fading sport in America. Without slave camps in Latin America and the Caribbean islands, MLB couldn't field enough good players for a slow pitch league in Omaha.

Speaking of Merritt Paulson and the Timbers, I love it when someone on the team issues a dire warning that, "Merritt won't stand for this."

Oooo, scary. Apparently when daddy buys you a team with money earned in part from destroying the American economy, that makes you a big shot. What's Merritt going to do? He can buy the right to make the soccer decisions, but that doesn't mean he's going to be good at it. He's just a rich kid playing with a toy.

Remember when the city council boldly proclaimed that by helping the weak and downtrodden Paulson family we would be "speaking the international language of soccer"?

Sure, we're yelling to the world at the top of our lungs, "We're Portland and we suck!"

Meanwhile Ichiro. This is when I first started seeing Dwight Jaynes as a miserable old bastard just trying to bring everyone down. When Ichiro got here Dwight boldly proclaimed that, "Ichiro is not the top rookie" in a column back in July of 2001.

Meanwhile, Ichiro not only won Rookie of the Year that season, but he was the MVP of the American League.