24 Hours, 24 Beers

Growing up as a Mariners fan in the 1980s was a pretty tough time overall. There some decent times with guys like Alvin Davis and Harold Reynolds, but most of our days were filled with Dave Niehaus trying to colorfully fill the airwaves during the dark times and attempting to find something positive to say about Mario Mendoza, Rey Quinones, or Jim Fucking Presley. As much as I was, and still am a fan of Mr. Mariner, my favorite player when I was a little kid was, without a doubt, Mark Langston.

Mark Langston is probably best known to most younger Mariners fans as the losing pitcher of game 145 (remember: strike shortened season) in 1995. Mark Langston faced off in the tie breaking game against Randy Johnson, a man for whom he was traded in 1989. Here he is near the end of that game, shown with Luis Soto.

Not shown: Luis Soto's chin.

Once Mark Langston put on that abhorrent uniform, all hope was lost, but when I was six or seven years old, Mark Langston was my guy. I loved watching him pitch because it meant that the miserable Mariners at least had a chance that day. When Mark Langston was traded in 1989, my dad had to explain to me that good professional ballplayers could be traded, not just the bums that you wanted off of your team. I was so used to the Sonics trading trash for treasure (Tom Chambers!) that losing a guy whom I considered a star just wasn't something I was willing to accept, and still something for which I wasn't prepared when Xavier McDaniel was shipped out of town a year and a half later.

Steve, don't cum yet.

I love baseball-refernce.com and that's where the inspiration for this post started. Near the bottom of each player page is the "transactions" section that lets you know if and when a player was granted free agency, signed as a free agent, or was traded and if so for whom. I was thinking about the Mark Langston trade the other day and I decided to follow the players that the Mariners received in exchange for Langston and how they benefited the club in one way or another until Bill Bavasi finally swung the executioner's sword by thoughtlessly pissing away the last asset after a decade and a half. So here we go:

June 8, 1981: Drafted by the Seattle Mariners in the 2nd round of the 1981 amateur draft. Player signed June 17, 1981.

That's 1981. We have an awesome Mark Langston who comes in second in rookie of the year voting, goes to the all-star game in 1987 and wins two gold gloves, all while pitching his ass off for a terrible team. Then:

May 25, 1989: Traded by the Seattle Mariners with a player to be named later to the Montreal Expos for Gene Harris, Brian Holman and Randy Johnson. The Seattle Mariners sent Mike Campbell (July 31, 1989) to the Montreal Expos to complete the trade.

So for the purposes of this exercise, we're going to ignore any schmos that were sent away with talent and pretend that they have no real value. Mike Campbell is one such schmo. He pitched terribly for another few years for a couple of different teams, then retired, but not before being sold to Japan by the Red Sox in 1996. Yes, he was that bad. So in essence, Mark Langston netted the Mariners Gene Harris, Brian Holman and Randy Johnson. We'll get to Johnson last, so let's start with Harris, then go over Holman. Gene Harris was a slightly below replacement level pitcher who started six games for the M's before being demoted to the bullpen and eventually traded to the Padres for trash. Brian Holman was a pretty rad pitcher worth 3.5 wins in 1991 before he hurt his arm and retired. He was effective for the M's as they were starting to emerge as a much more interesting baseball team in the early 1990's. Randy Johnson, of course, was the real prize. I don't need to hash out the details of what the Big Unit did for the M's between 1989 and 1998, but lets just say that he's largely responsible for there still being baseball in Seattle. As the last remaining piece of the Langston haul, we pick up the story with Randy being sent to Houston.

July 31, 1998: Traded by the Seattle Mariners to the Houston Astros for a player to be named later, Freddy Garcia and Carlos Guillen. The Houston Astros sent John Halama (October 1, 1998) to the Seattle Mariners to complete the trade.

Randy, of course, didn't help the Astros do shit in the later half of 1998, but he did hate A-Rod so much (I like to blame A-Rod, anyway) that he went to Arizona and earned four consecutive Cy Youngs. Randy's going into the hall, and he's going in with a D-Backs hat on. Let's get into what we got in return for Randy (remembering that it was just Randy that went to Houston; no Campbells this time) and we see that we received two all-stars and an unfairly reviled major league level starting pitcher.
Full disclosure: I hated John Halama. John Halama lost baseball games in the playoffs, an unforgivable Tim Belcher-esque move in my eyes and I hated his stupid stubbly face.

Don't fucking point at me, John Halama!

John Halama managed to actually be worth -1.1 WAR while on the best baseball team in history. Still, as a PTBNL, he was a hell of a throw in. John Halama was a #5 starter and we got him for goddamn free. Carlos Guillen is next up on the list. Guillen made us forget about Alex Rodriguez for the most part with some adequate shorstop play and from what I remember some especially clutch hitting. He also led the team in tuberculosis. Guillen kind of underachieved while playing in a Mariners uniform, but following A-Rod is a tough gig. He hung around for a couple of years being just a bit better than replacement value before Bill Bavasi shipped him to Detroit for garbage.

January 8, 2004: Traded by the Seattle Mariners to the Detroit Tigers for Juan Gonzalez (minors) and Ramon Santiago.

Juan Gonzalez never made it to the majors and Ramon Santiago played in 27 games for the Mariners. He had 47 at bats and 8 hits over two years. Fucking eight! Guillen, of course was an all-star the next year and an MVP candidate for a couple of years. One of many great moves, Bill.

And then there was The Chief. I loved watching Freddy Garcia pitch. He was the staff ace in 2001 and if Freddy was going, you could pretty much chalk up a win that day. He finished third in the Cy Young voting that year and I still think it was one of the most amazing performances during the course of a year I have ever seen. Pitcher wins are a stupid stat; even on the winningest team in baseball history, the M's best pitcher only had 18 wins. Want to know how dominant Freddy was? How about a 1.123 WHIP that year? Felix has spoiled us, and before him we watched Randy scare motherfuckers up to bat. Between them, our ace was Freddy, and Freddy was great. Freddy went on to Chicago and won a ring in 2005. We all knew he was getting delt in 2004; all I could hope for was a decent return.

Adios, Freddy.

Instead, Bill gave us this:

June 27, 2004: Traded by the Seattle Mariners with Ben Davis to the Chicago White Sox for Mike Morse, Miguel Olivo and Jeremy Reed.

Jesus Fucking Christ. Ok, so Ben Davis was just another Mike Campbell, but you just look at these names now and you think, "ok, fuck. Not good, but ok." Well, wrong. This is 2005 Mike Morse. The 6'5" shortstop Mike Morse. The "maybe he'll be ok in left field" Mike Morse. No, this Mike Morse was deemed to be terrible at everything, then he was suspended for PED use and then he was hurt. He was finally shipped to the Nats for Ryan Langerhans.

June 28, 2009: Traded by the Seattle Mariners to the Washington Nationals for Ryan Langerhans.

The M's thought so much of Langerhands that they DFA'd him twice before selling him to the Diamondbacks.

July 29, 2011: Purchased by the Arizona Diamondbacks from the Seattle Mariners.

Wait, what? Purchased? The thirteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States:

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

I assume that Ryan Langerhans committed some kind of crime and was being punished. Anyway, Morse is a stud in Washington and the M's probably spent their Langer-cash on bubble wrap or hot dogs. Migel Olivo version 1.0 was very similar to Miguel Olivo 2.0, just a lot younger. He still swung at goddamn everything, struck out a lot, showed pretty decent power and couldn't actually catch worth a damn. He was eventually sent to the WV, further fueling the intense rivalry.

July 31, 2005: Traded by the Seattle Mariners to the San Diego Padres for Nathanael Mateo (minors) and Miguel Ojeda.

Mateo never made it out of the minors. Miguel Ojeda was a 30 year old catcher who appeared in 16 games for the Mariners. He was fucking worthless. And now we're left with Jeremy Reed. Jesus, I never hoped I would have to write that exact sentence. Jeremy Reed was super shitty for the Mariners and he spent far too much time in center field on one of the shittiest teams I have ever seen. Ben thought Jeremy Reed was going to be good. I wish I had saved those old text messages, but he had a total boner for the guy. Like all of Ben's boners for dudes, it eventually faded. Jeremy reed was forced to take a reduced role due to extreme suckiness and I thought we wouldn't hear his name again until....

December 11, 2008: Traded as part of a 3-team trade by the Seattle Mariners with Sean Green and J.J. Putz to the New York Mets. The Seattle Mariners sent Luis Valbuena to the Cleveland Indians. The New York Mets sent Mike Carp, Ezequiel Carrera, Endy Chavez, Maikel Cleto, Aaron Heilman and Jason Vargas to the Seattle Mariners. The New York Mets sent Joe Smith to the Cleveland Indians. The Cleveland Indians sent Franklin Gutierrez to the Seattle Mariners.

Holy shit. There's a lot there to wrap your head around, and we've talked about this trade for years (and probably will for years to come). Jack Z fleeced the Mets and swapped good young players with the Indians. Putz was the centerpiece of this trade as far as the M's were concerned. Sean Green was a mildly talented reliever and then there was Jeremy Reed: the last link of our chain. If you think that Reed was a valuable piece of this trade, you're either kidding yourself or you're Jeremy Reed's mom and/or agent. Jeremy Reed was the Mike Campbell in this one. He was the worthless throw-in. Reed didn't really bring current M's like Vargas, Carp, Guti or even former Yuni victim, Endy Chavez. Fucking Yuni...

So that's how it ends, more or less. If you want to believe that Reed was really a key part of that trade, then the return value for Mark Langston, a player who was drafted in 1981 continues today in Vargas and Guti et al. If you believe, like I do, that the trade would have happened with or without Reed, then Langston's legacy died on July 29th, 2011, when the Diamondbacks gave the Mariners cash for Ryan Langerhans. How very, very Mariners....

This is South Jordan, Utah. It's a suburb of Salt Lake City, which is essentially a giant overgrown suburb itself. At a place called Pie Pizzeria back in 2010, a guy named Mike Massé and a guy named Jeff Hall played one of the most flawless and awesome covers of "Africa" ever to about a half dozen people who at most sounded mildly amused.

Yeah, "I guess they're sorta ok, but how about this four cheese and olive slice?"

The most infuriating thing to me about this is knowing that this isprobably the biggest gig that these guys play. There's plenty of other videos of them absolutely demolishing songs on the guitar player's youtube channel, almost all of them are in this pizza place. I know (or more accurately, knew) tons of musicians just like these guys who were never going to advance past a gig like this.

In the same year, this is selling millions of records:

THIS!

So yeah, here's a nice tip of the hat from 24 Hours, 24 Beers to these two fine gentlemen and I sincerely hope that they get their musical fulfillment from these gigs. Or at least, some free pizza and Utah beer.