Blaine Newnham / Times associate editor
Losing baseball isn't the ticket in Seattle

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Damin Schultz, a 32-year-old mortgage broker, hasn't been to a Mariners game this season.

"I started the season so disappointed," he said, "I was questioning my own loyalty."

And that was before the Mariners lost seven of their first eight games, before the sad prologue to a season that has, for many, already written itself as an even sadder epilogue.

Tonight, mainly because of the appeal of "Ichiro Choo-choo Engine" giveaway, the Mariners will draw more than 30,000 for their game against the Minnesota Twins.

Three games this weekend against the Yankees are sold out. Attendance, believe it or not, is running about 500 tickets per game ahead of last season's pace through April.

But don't kid yourself about how things are going. The Mariners aren't.

"If the wins don't start coming soon," said Bob Aylward, executive vice president in charge of business operations, "we could see some serious slippage this summer."

Aylward doesn't believe Safeco Field is insurance against a losing season.

"It is a necessary ingredient to our success," he said of the ballpark, "but it is not sufficient in and of itself to guarantee the kinds of crowds we have had."

More good tickets are available for games than ever before at Safeco Field.
 
A year ago, the Mariners sold out three games against the Atlanta Braves for a weekend interleague matchup. You wonder what they'll do June 11-13 against Montreal in a similar situation.

You wonder, over and over again, why they didn't spend money to make money.

"In every social group I'm in," said Schultz, the fan, "people want to know when we're going to pay the money to get a superstar.

"Our owners are all about the bottom line. They treat the Mariners like a business, like it's Microsoft."

The problem is that they haven't treated it like a business. They haven't invested in their future, and it's beginning to cost them.

Last season, they sold almost 250,000 fewer tickets than they did the year before.

Don't be surprised if they aren't another 250,000 off this season.

That is a lot of money.

How much?

The loss of half a million fans — the difference between what might happen this year and what happened in 2002 — translates into $12 million a year, or more than the Anaheim Angels are paying Vladimir Guerrero this season.

After signing Guerrero, the Angels are averaging 39,490 a game this season. That's a gain of 2,000 a game from the year before, which was a season that followed a win in the World Series.

The Mariners are still one of baseball's success stories. They sold 2.2 million tickets before the season opener.

Which is wonderful, but it means they must sell another million to reach the 3.2 they sold last year.

Season-ticket sales are at 20,000, down about 1,000 from the year before. Without a winning team, further erosion seems inevitable.

If you don't think so, look at Cleveland, which rode a new park and a winning team to a bazillion straight sellouts.

Cleveland is averaging 18,859 fans a game this year.

The wonders of Safeco Field?

Pittsburgh, with a new park, is averaging 15,947. Milwaukee, also with new digs, is only slightly better at 17,421.

In some ways, the Mariners are a victim of their own success. Tickets have been hard to get, which has turned away some prospective fans.

Also, during those wonderful years to begin the life of the new stadium, the club was able to raise its average ticket price to $24, fifth highest in baseball, trailing only the Boston Red Sox, Chicago Cubs, New York Yankees and Philadelphia Phillies.

A losing season and high ticket prices is a bad combination.

So is a disgruntled clientele. Two seasons in which the Mariners failed to make the playoffs have been followed by two seasons in which they did nothing to take your breath away in the winter.

Buying a superstar isn't the only answer. We had superstars in the early '90s.

The answer is to buy hope, a reason to be excited. The missing link. For this team, power in the outfield.

The Mariners are a singles-hitting team with no speed. They are aging before our eyes. They traded defense for offense, and are now mediocre in both areas.

They had a chance to get Miguel Tejada and Guerrero. They will have a chance at midseason to get Carlos Beltran.

A chance to spend money to make money. To spend, if nothing else, the money they saved when reliever Kazu Sasaki opted to return home to Japan.

The question now, of course, is will they even be in contention come midsummer?

The next game, the next series, the next month will be crucial to a franchise trying to avoid being another Cleveland.

Blaine Newnham: 206-464-2364 or bnewnham@seattletimes.com