1/29/2007

Mariner Fan Fest Report

Deanna of Seattle Marinerds has a report on last Saturday's Fan Fest at Safeco Field. There are quite a few pictures of ex-Rattlers Rene Rivera, Felix Hernandez, and JJ Putz. Also to be found, some of the Q's and A's from the Q&A sessions:

Felix answers weight loss Q's:
"How much weight did you lose, anyway?"
"I lost 25 pounds!"
"How'd you do that?"
"I stopped eating fried food."

That's what it is! Need to stop frying my soup.

Rene, the backup catcher who doesn't play much, had a funny response to a question:

Is he looking for[w]ard to catching for Jeff Weaver?

"I look forward to catching for EVERYONE."


JJ on his appearance against a certain San Francisco Giant:

Fan: "Were you afraid when you were facing Barry Bonds?"

Putz: "Nah, not really. I mean, he plays left field, we could see him from the bullpen all along. Though then I got out there on the mound and suddenly there's this giant guy at home plate practically holding a toothpick."


Deanna is a big Chris Snelling fan. Seattle GM Bill Bavasi took some questions. See where this is headed?

So I asked the girl with the microphone, "Can I ask him why the hell he traded Chris Snelling?"

She said "Sure, but phrase it a little more positively. What's your name?"

So I told her, and a bit later, the whole stadium could hear "Deanna from Seattle has a question. 'So um... what were you thinking with the Snelling trade?'

"I think Bavasi might have recognized me from the USSM feed, because he even said something like "Hey, I love the guy, and I know you do too. But we wanted to give him a chance to play, and we wanted some veteran experience, which is why we got Vidro." He went into comparing the '95 Mariners to the '95 Angels and saying how they had a great young team in Anaheim but not enough veteran experience, so they choked down the stretch, whereas the Mariners had these great experienced players, or something. I dunno. But he did spend a few minutes basically apologizing for the trade and just reaffirming that he thought it was a shame since he thought Snelling was such a great player and prospect. (Later after the actual Q&A he mentioned that Snelling had some problems swinging a bat with and without his knee brace, and that would also play into his ability to produce at the plate in the future. But he also admitted that there was a pretty good chance Snelling would succeed and we'd end up looking pretty dumb down the line.)


Good post.

1 comment:

Deanna said...

"forard"!

Oops! I still haven't really had a chance to edit/correct that post.

There are some more Q&A quotes in the Everett Herald which might be more accurate than mine, I'm guessing he actually had a tape recorder, whereas I just took quick notes on stuff. Also, I mostly only took down the answers I thought were funny :)

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