By now you’ve almost certainly seen the news which broke on Thursday night:  The Mariners won’t be renewing the contracts of a number of employees within organization after the 2020 season. Among those cut loose are Tom McNamara; director of scouting Tom Allison; two long-time Tacoma Rainiers fixtures in manager Daren Brown and trainer Tom Newberg; and Dave Berg and Denny Hocking, the managers of AA Arkansas and High-A Modesto, respectively. The team planned these cutbacks as part of a broader three-year process, but the results have been accelerated by COVID-19’s impact on baseball:

“We intended on this being a two- to three-year transition into this model,” he said. “The results of a pandemic that we can’t control, it upped the timing when would we transition full time into that type of model. “

This excuse is pathetic. It’s fucking dogshit. The Seattle Mariners organization is worth an estimated $1.6 billion, with majority owner John Stanton commanding a $1.1 billion net worth alone. It should go without saying that “a billion” is a lot of money. It’s so much money, in fact, that the human mind literally cannot comprehend it. You have to bring it down to a more manageable scale.

A trick I’ve used is to picture the Earth and the Sun. The Sun can fit approximately one million Earths inside of it, meaning a billion Earths would fit inside a thousand Suns. That’s how much money John Stanton has. He’s worth a thousand Earth-stuffed-Sun dollars. The combined salary of every person whose contract wasn’t renewed, thrice over, is a fraction of a fraction of that amount. John Stanton and the Mariners could have easily afforded to keep everyone on board through 2021.

It would be easy to dismiss all this as your bog-standard capitalist fuckery, if not for the Mariners’ desperate desire to be seen as anything but that. We’ve been hearing how important “our people, our process” has been to the Dipoto regime from day one. Those same people that have helped to bring players like Kyle Lewis and Evan White to the majors, players the Mariners are all too eager to point towards as a proof of concept for their process, are the ones who’ll be let go following this season. It doesn’t stop there. The same man touting how effectively the Mariners players are following the coronavirus protocols this season went on to the team’s flagship radio station just a couple months ago and told the players “don’t whine, just go play” in the middle of the negotiations that led up to the start of the season. Latino leadership within the clubhouse was celebrated until nearly all of the players responsible left during free agency or were traded over the course of one offseason without any acknowledgement of their departures on social media. But don’t worry, the Mariners are quick to remind you of the strong black voices currently on the team. I’m sure these players won’t be swept under the rug or dragged through the mud as soon as they’re no longer deemed useful. This time is definitely different. Trust us, we’re the good guys.

That the Mariners are more than happy to loudly put forward a progressive image while continuously ratfucking those same people they’re supposedly lifting up behind the scenes makes these acts all the more despicable. It’s not hard to draw parallels between them and the broader willful ineptitude that’s sending America hurtling directly towards the Cool Zone. After a laughably nonexistent response to the pandemic on a federal level, rent protections and a meager $600 weekly federal lifeline have expired as eviction looms large for over 20 million people. At least 45 million Americans have recently filed for unemployment benefits for the first time, even as billionaires have expanded their dragon hoards. Essential workers are hailed as heroes as they’re unnecessarily sent out to die so the gears of our consumerist culture can continue to turn and funnel money up to those who are in the least of need. Democratic mayors in what are commonly thought of as liberal or progressive cities have sent their police forces out to violently suppress citizens’ First Amendment rights as they protest systematic racism. That the scale of these atrocities vastly overshadows the bullshit that the Mariners pull doesn’t mean that Seattle’s actions don’t parallel them. They are, through actions entirely their own, damnably America’s team.  

The Mariners’ fashionably woke facade should be considered more insidious than the naked evil governing the country. The over-romanticized vision of baseball as Peak Americana that permeates every aspect of the game’s culture and media coverage creates a false atmosphere of actualized American Exceptionalism that MLB exploits to its advantage. To go to the ballpark — to consume MLB — is one of the few surefire ways to be a Good American, because no matter how messed up the rest of the country might be at least there’s always baseball, and baseball can only ever be Good. That the cabal of grifters running the Mariners exploit this false sense to pitch themselves as a clean, forward-thinking organization is vile. They’re a rotted ship piloted by a sex pest who managed to keep failing upwards after complaints where levied against him. The closest thing they currently have to a face of the franchise is a class traitor whose greatest strength is being able to sell a stepback retool rebuild to the masses (after completely failing at his prior goal of getting the core of Félix, Canó, Cruz, and Seager to the playoffs) while still raking in the bucks for the team’s billionaire owner. Some of the few redeeming aspects of this franchise, the players and the employees within baseball ops, are the ones getting screwed over the hardest by the scum in charge. Fuck the Mariners. Fuck Jerry Dipoto, fuck Kevin Mather, and especially fuck billionaire John Stanton. May they all rot in the shit swamp of irrelevance they deserve. We deserve better than these ass clowns.