Covering the bases for kids in need

Today I attended a Moyer Foundation event at Anthony’s Pier 66 restaurant.  On one of the M’s rare off days this season when they are not traveling (there are only 8 of those days over the whole season of 162 games) a few of the players got together to answer questions, eat lunch, and raise some money for a good cause.  Jamie Moyer, JJ Putz, & Randy Winn were there along with ex-Mariner and now roving coach Norm Charleton.
I sat a table that was mostly people at KOMO radio 1000, the home of the Mariners.  I guess the only two people that y’all might know are two morning show hosts; Manda Factor and Bill Yeend.
I was kind of surprised how hard it was to hear the players talk.  It seemed like many people at their tables were more into talking with other people at the table than to hear what the players had to say.  One of the interesting thing to me was when asked how many wins they thought they would get this year they kept bidding each other up from the mid 90s.  The players really think they have a chance to get back into things this year.  In the West they felt that the Angles are the main competition.  When talking about how crazy left handed pitchers are they talked about how much of a prankster Eddie Guardado is.  Putz related some of the pranks that had been pulled on him including itching powder in the shorts.  Putz dislikes tomatoes and he has found tomatoes in his shoes, pockets, wallet, just about anywhere you could place a tomato.  There were cherry tomatoes in our salads and our table gathered up a whole plateful which we presented to JJ.  One person asked a question about how a person that had graduated from high school and was not in college might make his way into the major leagues.  Almost all of them said you should get back into school.  That was the best way for a scout to see you.  Randy Winn went to far as to say that he thinks the only reason he was seen was that his team had a really good catcher.  Jamie talked about summer league teams that were made up of just college players like a league in Alaska and one in Cape Cod.  Norm talked about the independent leagues and how they have more and more players that are coming out of that as opposed to the minor league systems.  There was a question about Lou Pinella and one thing I had forgotten was the Randy Winn was what the M’s got back in compensation for Lou moving from coaching the M’s to coaching the Devil Rays.  I guess that was like only the third time something like that had happened.

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