Since a run of four 90+ win seasons from 2000-2003, the Seattle Mariners have had just 2 winning seasons. While their fans certainly aren’t as maligned as those of the Cleveland Indians or Chicago Cubs, it’s still not very easy being a loyal moose in the Emerald City, especially with the team shipping out the beloved Ichiro Suzuki for greener pastures earlier this season. In fact, it’s safe to say that Mariners fans only have Felix Hernandez left to be proud of, and as long as he’s mowing them down at Safeco, they’re going to love him for it.

Enter: Felixing. As we watched King Felix pitch a perfect game last Wednesday, fans around the world are now celebrating the 26-year old by taking Tebowing behind the barn in favor of Felixing, which honors his celebratory “Where the Wild Things Are” victory pose. The pose has even caught on with Pearl Jam lead singer Eddie Vedder, who would qualify for the upcoming updates to my Interactive Celebrity Fan Tracker, if he’d simply decide which team he’s actually a fan of.

But aside from that, it’s nice to see those crazy kids in the Pacific Northwest celebrating something these days. Hopefully we’ll soon see Ufford introduce Tavarising, which is a bag-packing pose.

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Felix Hernandez started for the Seattle Mariners yesterday against the Tampa Bay Rays, and he put up the following stats: 9 innings pitched, 113 pitches, 77 strikes, 12 strikeouts, 0 runs allowed, 0 hits allowed, 0 walks allowed. Yup, that’s a perfect game.

The stats don’t even do it justice, either. I know the phrase “perfect game” has the word perfect right there up front, but that just refers to the spotless score sheet. He was completely dominant. It looked like one of those Little League games where a 6-foot-tall kid with a mustache mows down a bunch of terrified 11-year-olds wearing the helmets with the cages on the front while all the parents in the stands grumble about wanting to see his birth certificate (or, if they’re funnier, his driver’s license). Within the relatively small subset of perfect games thrown throughout baseball history, I’ve got to believe this one falls somewhere on the Even Perfecter side of the spectrum, if that’s even a thing. I know he earned the nickname King a long time ago, but if he hadn’t, this was the type of performance that would have done it. I suppose the point I’m trying to make here is that Felix Hernandez was pretty good at baseball yesterday.

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On July 5, in the 10th inning of a 2-2 game against the Oakland Athletics, Franklin Gutierrez and Brendan Ryan scored to give the Seattle Mariners a 4-2 victory and a .500 record. Normally that kind of story wouldn’t be worth telling, but it was also the last time that Seattle has won a game. Since that night in Oakland, the Mariners have lost 17 games in a row. The American League record is 21 (1988 Baltimore Orioles) and the Major League Baseball record is 23 (1961 Philadelphia Phillies). After last night’s 4-1 one-hit loss to C.C. Sabathia and the New York Yankees, it’s looking like a record could be on the cold, rainy Emerald City horizon.

As a St. Louis Cardinals fan, I’m generally regarded as one of the most intelligent, classy and, in this case, sympathetic fans in sports. Seattle fans are a good, knowledgeable and loyal bunch, but they’re never really regarded in the same conversations as the other heartbroken fan bases in sports, like those of the Pittsburgh Pirates or the Cleveland Anythings. After losing the Supersonics to Oklahoma City and Super Bowl XL to the Pittsburgh Steelers, the fans of Seattle sports really only have the Mariners to hang their hopes on (with all due respect to Charlie Whitehurst and your 2011 Seahawks).

That’s why this losing streak is just so sad. Sad enough that I thought we could take a look back at the games, with the help of some really sad pooches. Oh, and for full appreciation of a Mariners fan’s sorrow, play this song in another window.

Special Breaking Score Update: There’s been a new dog added to reflect today’s Yankees-Mariners outcome.

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who care enough to fly East to visit their blogger son every summer, you know.  But to be fair, international jewel thieves have busy schedules.

Even though the Mariners are the worst team in the majors, and their best moments this summer were firing GM Bill Bavasi and manager John McLaren, I was still excited to see Felix Hernandez pitch for the first time — and against his countryman and fellow ace Johan Santana!  This was gonna be great! 

Little did I know, of course, that I would be treated to both the awesomest of awesome and suckiest of suck.

We get off the 7 train at about 7:02 p.m., and our gate is conveniently the farthest one away from the subway stop.  The game starts at 7:10, and apparently I'm walking too fast.

Her: Why are you walking so fast?
Me:  The game's about to start!
Her: Do you realize how long baseball games are? 

A fair point, but in my defense, Ichiro bats lead-off, and he's pretty much the only good position player on the team.  If we miss his at-bat, we may as well miss a full quarter of the game.  But we get there just in time for the first pitch, so all is right in the world. 

All is right-er in the world when the top of the second rolls around.  With two out and two on, David Wright boots Willie Bloomquist's lazy grounder, loading the bases.  Few things feel as good as clapping and saying "All right!" when everyone around you is booing.  Alas, King Felix, batting ninth, is up.  Blasted National League and your antiquated rules!  If only the Mariners had their designated hitter, Jose Vidro!  He's batting .216!  And slugging .321!  That would save the day!

Of course, as noted in this morning's recap, Hernandez connected on the first pitch he saw, a high fastball, and sent it sailing through the humid air, over the fence in right-center.  And if it feels good to clap and say, "All right!" while everyone around you boos, it's sheer ecstasy to stand up and scream while everyone sits stunned, mouth agape, because your favorite pitcher on the planet has hit a grand slam off one of the best pitchers in the game, in only his ninth career at-bat.  WOOOOO!  CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS, PEOPLE?!?!?  Holy shit!

I look to my girlfriend, who's smiling politely. WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM, WOMAN?  Get excited!  Grand slam!  A pitcher!  WOOOO!!!  More polite smiles.

Anywho, even though the M's won, it was kind of downhill from there.  When Beltran's slide at home forced Hernandez to leave the game, it was a crushing blow emotionally.  The goateed asshole to my left, along with others, cheered when Hernandez went down.  I was making mental notes to write all sorts of mean things on my blog when the guy in front of me — also sporting a goatee, coincidentally — chastised him, saying, "What are we, Philly fans?" and giving him the double thumbs-down with a dismissive shake of the head.  That earned you a classy point, fella.

A few more $8 beers later, we got on the crowded 7 train back to Times Square and transferred to the Q.  We were amazed by the amount of free seats in the car until we entered and saw the large puddle of vomit that people had edged away from and were eyeing warily, like something dangerous and asleep.  We got seats on the outskirts of the smell, and it really wasn't all that bad.  I found myself thinking: "That's not a vomit smell at all.  More like honey.  Really like honey.  Say, that's not honey, is it?  Nope: honey doesn't have chunks.  You know, vomiting wouldn't be so bad if it tasted like honey.  Sure, you're getting sick and all, but there's at least kind of a sweet result."

A fitting end, I thought, to watching King Felix's performance that night. 

Sorry, kids — no Japanese model pictures this morning.  Daisuke Matsuzaka made his Fenway debut last night against fellow Japanese stars Ichiro and Kenji Johjima, but Dice-K's not the story today. Blame the Mariners' Felix Hernandez, who threw seven innings of no-hit ball and finished with a one-hit shutout in an absolute fucking domination of one of the most potent lineups in Major League Baseball. 

Seriously: Daisuke Matsuzaka is a very good pitcher, but King Felix has a better fastball, better breaking pitches (devastating curve AND slider), greater differentiation in pitch velocity, and he's five years younger and costs the Mariners 1/40th what the Red Sox pay Dice-K.  Stand up and take notice, because one out of every five Mariners games will be worth watching this year.  Which, to be fair, is up from an aggregate of zero over the last two years.

Other baseball news: there IS no other baseball news today. 

Too much went on yesterday in the world of sports.  Right now there are about 13 stories that deserve to lead off my late start to the day.  But damned if this hangover isn't wrecking my concentration, so I'm just going to make this my one homer-ish post of the season and move on to other things.  Like Gatorade and aspirin.

In case you missed it, Felix Hernandez, the Mariners' gifted young pitcher who failed to live up to expectations last year on account of fatness and bad pitch selection (thanks Mike Hargrove!), threw eight shutout innings of three-hit ball and struck out 12 as the Emerald City's woebegone baseball franchise beat the A's 4-0 — after dropping 17 of 19 to them last season.  It's nice to feel optimism for a day before the rest of the crappy rotation makes me want to suck-start a Beretta 9mm.

So, welcome back, baseball.  I guess I'll be writing about this sort of thing (baseball, not the M's) every day for the next five months or so.  Makes it sound a lot less exciting that way. 

SITE NEWSALICIOUS: The final Dispatch(es) from Atlanta will be posted tomorrow.  Today's a travel day for me, so I won't get the time to dedicate to long-ish posts until tonight.  But, with any luck, there will actually be pictures, and maybe even video.  Oh yeah: Florida won.  Just like I said they would.  Because I know everything about college basketball.