We finished out the 2001 season with a win. A big win, as it denied the Mariners the all time record for number of wins in a season. As impressive as 116 wins is, I quite honestly don’t believe they deserved the all time record. The reason is that the 1906 Cubs who also have 116 wins did it much better, doing it in less games than the Mariners took to get 116. If the ’06 Cubs had played 162 wins, I’d say it’s a fair bet that they would have gotten to 120 wins, or given their percentage, possibly 125. Even if the Mariners had gotten 117, I don’t know if it would have meant as much. For me, it would have been one of those asterisk awards.
Raffy got a home run, his 47th, and combined with Arod’s 53, they had a total of 100 HR’s, which was really nice to see from the #3 & #5 hitters! Overall, there’s not a whole lot else to talk about for this game.
The only other story was the announced firing of Doug Melvin before the game. This came as a big surprise to me, and somewhat of a disappointment. I really liked Melvin, and I’m concerned that he’ll go elsewhere, and finish the job he started here with someone else’s team. :(

Didn’t watch this game, even though there’s only two left. I’m probably not watching Saturday’s game either, but I will be watching the last one of the season on Sunday.

The less said about this one, the better.

Boy, what a time to lose a game like this. This is the kind of game that’s made for the playoffs, and yet it’s the 88th loss of our season. Doug Davis was marvelous, giving up only a solo home run, and going all the way.
Not much else to say about this one, except we were finally shut out for the first time this season – I was really hoping we could have pulled that one off. :(

Another game – another mediocre pitching performance by us, and another loss.
Sounds familiar, eh?
Oh yeah, we’re forty one games out first now.

Well, normally you’d want to play baseball in October. However, when your team is this far out, and this far behind, it’s not the kind of baseball you want to play.
Darren Oliver against Barry Zito. Gee, I wonder who will win this one? Zito was his usual great pitcher. Oliver was his usual not so great pitcher – giving up 7 runs and 9 hits in 5.1 innings.
It’s getting pretty hard to write about these guys given what kind of season they’ve had. Yeah, I know they’re playing hard and all, but as a fan, I’m a bit burnt out writing about them losing. :(

Didn’t get to see any of this game, but it was nice to get a win. There’s still an outside shot we could escape the basement this season, but we’d have to win just about all of our final six games, all against Oakland & Seattle. Most likely not happening.

Yuck!

Home runs all over the place on this one. Arod hit his 50th in the first, Carlos Pena got his third, Raffy had his 46th – hell, even Scott Sheldon got in the act!
I’m writing this 5 days later, I don’t remember much about this one than all the home runs. :)

Didn’t get to go to the final home game of the season, due to the fact that I have a bowling league that starts at 6PM, and there would have been no way to get from Arlington to Garland within an hour, especially at rush hour traffic. Turns out the game wasn’t over until 5:35PM anyway, and unless Mr. Hicks was going to fly me by helicopter back to Garland, I couldn’t go.
We ended up the home season 41-41. Not all that bad I guess considering our overall record. Hope we do better next year.