The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

My road to becoming a mature adult be­gan with Bill Caudill (a.k.a.,"The Inspector"). Cau­dill was the "closer" for the Seattle Mariners for a couple of years in the mid-eighties. (A closer is a pitcher who comes into the game in the ninth inning when his team has a slim lead.) Whenever Caudill came into the game, the theme from "The Pink Panther" would play in the stadium (a.k.a., "The Kingdome"). I loved the Mariners and Bill Caudill.

I was in college in Seattle when the Sea- hawks joined the NFL in the late seventies. The Mariners entered the American League about the same time. I spent many hours in the Kingdome during that decade watching a struggling football team and a pathetic base­ball team and dreaming of the day my team would win a World Series or a Super Bowl.

I had watched my two favorite NBA teams - the Portland Trailblazers and Seattle Super­sonics - win world championships in 1977 and '79, respectively. So, to someone young and naive, it seemed easy. And inevitable.

One summer evening, sometime around 1983, I was sitting alone in my living room watching the Mariners on TV. I don't remem­ber who they were playing, but they were up by two runs in bottom of the ninth. Caudill was in the game and I was feeling cocky. The Mariners were as hapless then as they are now, but Caudill had been one of the league's best closers that year and I knew this game was in the bag. When he gave up a three-run homer, I actually kicked a hole in the drywall. Not all the way through, but it took some repair.

That's when I took a big step toward adult­hood. As I was spreading spackle over the dent in my wall, I told myself how ridiculous it was to get so emotional over a professional sports team. The Mariners weren't the Supersonics, and they weren't going anywhere. There was nothing I could do about it.

I convinced myself that rooting for profes­sional sports teams is stupid. Just because they happen to play in a city where I grew up is irrelevant. I don't know any of the players. Almost all of them are not from around here. I have no control over what any of those play­ers do.

And besides, if I won a world champion­ship for newspaper publishing, is there any chance that Richard Sherman or Marshawn Lynch would give a rip? Not likely.

Sohellip;as I'm writing this on Monday morn­ing, I'm nursing a headache and a hoarse voice after drinking a few beers and yelling at the TV for three hours yesterday.

"Forty-three to eight!" I keep saying that score to myself over and over, like it's some­thing important that I accomplished. Some­thing that I can be personally proud of. The Se­ahawks - a team I suffered with all those years ago - are finally champions. And I deserve it!

It may be stupid, and I may have reverted to my youth. But boy was that fun!