Drowning His Sorrows

Sometimes I'm tempted to start an Ichiro blog. He may play for a division rival of my favorite team, but he's the best quote in sports these days. Perhaps the best since Mike Tyson. Who can forget his excitement at facing Dice-K for the first time stateside?

"I hope he arouses the fire that's dormant in the innermost recesses of my soul. I plan to face him with the zeal of a challenger."

Now, he's applying his zeal to the atrocious season of his Mariners and a theoretical enjoyment of alcohol.

“Playing on this team and seeing what is happening around me, I feel that something is beginning to fall apart,” the center fielder said after Friday’s 13-2 loss to the Yankees.

“But, if I was not in this situation, and I was objectively watching what just happened this week, I would probably be drinking a lot of beers and booing.’’

Over at USS Mariner, the un-edited quote includes recommendations...

"Usually I enjoy Japanese beer, but given the situation, if I was objectively watching the game, I wouldn’t care if it was Japanese beer, American beer or beer from Papua New Guinea."

...which has set the faithful (and you'd have to be a "faithful" if you are spending a lot of time on an M's message boards as repellent as that team is--for the low, low price of $117 million!) on a quest to find beers from Papua New Guinea in the Seattle area.

They've failed as of this writing and because I take such great pity on M's fans (partly because of their team's horrid history, partly because an inordinate percentage of them are morons), I beg my readers in the Pacific Northwest to be on the lookout for South Pacific Export Lager, SP Lager Beer and Niugini Ice.

Perhaps, if you locate some, you can Fed Ex it to M's GM Bill Bavasi with a note suggesting he trade Ichiro to the A's for 5 replacement level players, which seem to be the kind he likes to sign to multi-year contracts (coughJerrodWashburnCarlosSilvacough).

Kanpai!