Brendan Ryan Owns Mariner Fan Fest

My first encounter with Brendan Ryan was a distant one. From 2008 to 2010, I spent quite a bit of time at Busch Stadium doing my thing. You can hop over to my other blog and find all my Busch Stadium blog entries like this one. I watched him play baseball for the St. Louis Cardinals and when I left the St. Louis area to come back to Seattle, I thought I’d never see Brendan Ryan again except on television. When the Mariners announced last season that Ryan would be coming aboard, I thought it was one of the best moves the Mariners had made in a long, long time. It seemed like for every good move the Mariners made, they had to follow-up with a bad one. Enter the Pineda trade. But I’m not going to bore you with the details of how I felt and still feel about that trade. After seeing Jesus Montero at the Mariners Fan Fest this weekend, I can’t really say I’m comfortable with the guy. Anyway.

So I’m at Fan fest, right? And the group of young ladies I usually go to Safeco Field with present an idea that they should all draw funny little mustaches on their fingers and hold it up to their lip. Like this:

As Brendan Ryan walks up onto the stage to start the “dugout dialogue” he notices the tiny mustache brigade and has a good laugh about it. Then the plan to get a picture with Brendan Ryan is set into place. After the question and answer session ends, one of the ladies calls out to Ryan and gets his attention. She then asks if they can get a picture with all of them and him together. You could actually see the wheels turning in Brendan Ryan’s eyes. You could tell that he wanted to get it done. And some times that’s rare to find in a player. Especially at the big league level. And to back up that accusation I’ve had many players tell me that they will “get me inside” or “get an autograph to me tomorrow” and it never happened. It’s not that I’m upset over it, because lets face it: these guys are busy. But ultimately the fans need some love too.

Of course the Mariner staff are brutal when it comes to timelines for these guys. They cart Brendan Ryan off like he’s some circus side-show and we are all kind of left hanging our heads. The only difference? Brendan Ryan whistled at the group and yells he’d get the picture done tomorrow. There was still hope after all.

Day 2:

More “dugout dialogue” and before Iknew it, Ryan was on stage taking more of the same questions like yesterday. The group of ladies that were after a picture with him were out of their seats and off towards home plate before I even knew what was going on! And Brendan Ryan was leading the charge! He had remembered and now he was delivering what he’d set out to do the very next day: get a picture with these young ladies and now they have been dubbed the “StacheMob” on Twitter by the Seattle Mariners!

I present to you…

…the StacheMob!