Mariners pick a fall guy

I’m not going to say the firing of Scott Servais was unfair.

When a team has lost eight of nine the way the Mariners have, I don’t think changing managers could possibly hurt.

I don’t tend to think it will help all that much, though. And I am slightly worried that should the Mariners post a winning record over these final 34 games that this team is going to try sell us on the idea that everything will be better next season with a new manager. We just need to stay the course.

I do not believe that this is wise. In nearly a quarter of a century of covering Seattle sports, I have seen exactly two teams collapse in this manner: the 2008 Washington Huskies, the 2009 Seattle Seahawks.

In both cases, it required a complete clearing of the deck.

Put more bluntly: I’m not going to lay down in front of a bus to protest the firing of Servais, but I do believe that Jerry Dipoto should get his ticket punched in the next six weeks.

We’ve got time to get into that, though. Right now, I’m going to explain why Servais got fired using a dizzying array of metaphors and various levels of complexity:

Explain this to me … like I’m 5 years old:

Well, you remember that grouchy old Mr. Scrooge who made Tiny Tim’s Pa work on Christmas Eve? Well, I want you to imagine if Mr. Scrooge wasn’t quite so grouchy and instead of a money-lending business, he owned a baseball team. And very year, when his general manager came to him to talk about what they would do for the upcoming season, ol’ Mr. Scrooge would listen thoughtfully, nod his head and then he would scribble down a number on a piece of paper and say that was all the money there was to spend on players that season.

Now this number was never big enough for what the team needed, but the men who were responsible for signing the players and coaching them would try their darndest for the next six months to make the most of what they had. One year they even made the playoffs and everyone in town was so excited because that hadn’t happened in 21 years.

Unfortunately, the next two seasons, Mr. Scrooge kept scribbling the number that was too small on that piece of paper. He’d mumble something about R-S-N, but he refused to let anyone inside his vault even though every one in town kept seeing reports that Scrooge’s business was doing just fine.

And finally, when the fans started getting really fed up, hooting and hollering, ol’ Scrooge decided he needed to do something, but instead of unlocking his vault, he picked up his phone and talked to the guy who was in charge of signing the players who then picked up the phone to call the guy who was in charge of coaching the players, but by that time, the guy who was coaching the players had already seen on the TV that he was going to be get fired.

It just goes to show you that the guy who wears the collared shirt to work is never the first one to get fired. It’s usually someone that wears a uniform.

Explain this to me … like it was a family film.

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