KIRO NEWSRADIO OPINION

Mayfield: A disappointing sports weekend, even for a non-sports fan

Dec 4, 2023, 10:05 AM | Updated: Mar 25, 2024, 1:46 pm

I know nothing about sports. I mean I know absolutely nothing about sports, but that’s not stopping me from having opinions about sports this morning.

I mean, even I am feeling slighted this morning.

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Let’s start in Major League Baseball. What the actual heck?

Lou Piniella was one vote short of earning a spot in the Professional Baseball Hall of Fame. Come on?! All he needed was 12 votes from the 16-person committee, and he got 11. And this was the second time he’s fallen one vote short.

This was supposed to be his year. I mean, he’s 80, and he has had some health scares, including a mini-stroke and cancer.

Lou, sweet Lou, spent 23 years as an MLB manager leading the Reds to a World Series Championship in 1990 and then ten seasons here in Seattle, where he got the Mariners to four postseason appearances.

He is the all-time winningest manager in club history. I could go on and on, but you know. We all know he belongs in the Hall of Fame, but apparently, just one person on one committee still hasn’t gotten the memo, or maybe the fax from 1995?!

The second sports story that hurts my non-sports-loving heart is the Huskies not playing in the Rose Bowl.

I mean, I understand all the rules and the rankings, and then blah blah blah. And yet they did it and this is the end of the Pac-12 couldn’t someone somewhere just see that for a second?

I could get all riled up about East Coast media bias and all that, but instead, I’ll try to wind myself down.

I’ll just say I am thrilled about that amazing victory over the Ducks and still genuinely sad that UW won’t get to do the Rose Bowl as a Pac-12 team one last time.

Yes, sure, the demise of the Pac was sown on Montlake Boulevard, so should Dawg fans really complain? Well, I’m not even a Huskey; I am a Zag, and I still feel the pang of regret of what’s lost.

I don’t know a thing about sports, but this morning I don’t care, this morning I’m just wistful that Lou Piniella isn’t going into the Hall of Fame yet and the Huskies’s road the the championship won’t go through Pasadena.

Listen to Seattle’s Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien weekday mornings from 5 – 9 a.m. on KIRO Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

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