I love baseball. Seattle Mariners baseball, to be specific. Sure, they haven’t exactly made it to the world series or anything, but heck, it’s baseball.
I love football, too, but one of the big differences between being a fan of the two is; while I can watch a Seahawks football game and get excited, I can’t follow it on the radio. I found that out when the game was on one night and our power went out! I had to listen to the game on the transister radio, and had a heck of a time following the action.
Not so with baseball. One can listen to a game and follow everything easily. And the Seattle Mariners have a couple of announcers who do a really good job, making it quite enjoyable to listen to a game in the car.
Except for one thing.
See, these announcers like to come up with little nicknames for players, and each other. I don’t know why, but they do. And for the most part, it’s not too annoying. For instance, they refer to the Mariners head coach as The Skipper (regardless of who it is) Willie Bloomquist as BoomBoom, Ken Griffey Jr. was always called Junior, while Yunkeski Betancourt is just Yuni. Other players get names like The Sherrif, or Every-Day Eddie.
No big deal. I can live with that.
Until two seasons ago, when the Mariners signed Richie Sexon, and the announcers declared his nick name to be:
Sexie.
Yeah. For a year, we had to listen to two grandfather-aged men refer to another grown man, as Sexie. It was bad.
It still is bad. But now, it’s worse. One of the color commentators who became a regular last season is a former player named Blowers. So what do the two old guys call him?
Blow.
So now, whenever I’m listening or watch a Mariners Baseball game, I’m treated to two old men talking about two other fully grown adult men, as Sexie and Blow.
I try to imagine these old guys have no clue what Blow refers to in our culture. And I try to believe they haven’t got a clue they’re calling a man Sexie. But I know I’m fooling myself.
Only in Seattle. (headdesk)
The Velvet Zebra 
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