THE CHEAP SEATS with STEVE CAMERON: Leftover pizza is more tasty than these Mariners

It’s just a tiny bit embarrassing to steal a well-known line. 

But this one fits too well to ignore. 

Ready? 

“The Mariners is dead.” 

If you don’t follow baseball history, go ahead and take the phrase literally (even if the grammar isn’t top notch). 

We’ll go back to 1951 in a minute or two, and you can fully appreciate that famous line. 

Why? 

Well, the Mariners lost again Monday night. 

In a one-run chunk of leftover pizza. 

Again. 

On a ninth-inning home run that left a bottom-of-the-table team celebrating as though they’d won the World Series. 

Again. 

On Saturday night in Anaheim, it was household name Mickey Moniak who golfed a fly ball into the right-field seats — setting the Angels loose to jump all over each other. 

This time it was A’s catcher Shane Langeliers, likewise golfing a soft curve just inside the left-field foul pole for his second homer of the night. 

THE GRIM mathematics following Langeliers’ second bomb are painfully obvious. 

Although the Astros amazingly lost on Monday — we’d almost forgotten that could happen — Seattle remains six games adrift of Houston in the AL West. 

Feel free to stop kidding yourself that there is a pennant race involving the Mariners. 

Most of them can’t hit, and as for the pitching staff, only the starters can get through an inning alive. 

They’re sitting exactly at .500, the season is whizzing toward the finish line, and Houston keeps winning and winning and winning. 

Bad combination, eh? 

Consider: The Mariners’ best hitter is Victor Robles, who was acquired as a discarded free agent in July. 

Not in a trade. 

Victor was on the scrap heap, tossed away by Washington. 

He’s now hitting a whisker under .300 for Seattle, he a terrific outfielder and he hasn’t been caught in 17 stolen base attempts. 

The Mariners have made some poor personnel moves — you can see several of them any night at T-Mobile Park — but tying down Robles to a two-year, $9.4 million deal after they’d seen his game isn’t one of them. 

The problem, obviously, is that when one of your best players was a midseason free-agent pickup, umm, that says plenty about roster depth. 

But, hey, now that we can start wondering whether this team can be reassembled to match the pitching staff in 2025, let’s go back to that line that I borrowed (stole?) to give this column some character. 

I’M NOT saying you’re old, or even that I might be old (we can debate that one while we sit around taking our vitamins). 

You can be a spry kid, and if you’re a baseball junkie, you’ve surely heard of 1951, Giants-Dodgers playoff, and Bobby Thomson hitting what was called “The Shot Heard ‘Round the World.” 

What led up to Thomson’s heroics was a frantic stretch run by the New York Giants, who made up a 13-game deficit that seemingly had them buried in August. 

The rival Brooklyn Dodgers were on cruise control, or so it seemed. 

(Of course, we can zip 73 years later and find a gang from Seattle sitting fat and happy with a 10-game lead, and whatever happened to that bunch?) 

Right, back to those Dodgers of Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Gil Hodges, Duke Snider and the pitching staff led by Don Newcombe. 

In mid-July, they swept a doubleheader that gave them a seven-game lead, and filled manager Chuck Dressen with so much joy (even though he was ejected from both games) that he couldn’t contain himself. 

When a reporter asked about the pennant race, Dressen replied: “The Giants is dead.” 

As it happened, we know now that they weren’t. 

It would be fun to imagine the Mariners repeating that act from 1951, and giving you all a chance to make fun of me. 

Heck, I’d like it myself. 

However, it’s very, VERY hard to look at these Mariners — not to mention the team they’d have to catch — and picturing a Seattle miracle.

Nah. 

Email: scameron@cdapress.com 

Steve Cameron’s “Cheap Seats” columns appear in The Press four times each week, normally Tuesday through Friday unless, you know, stuff happens. 

Steve suggests you take his opinions in the spirit of a Jimmy Buffett song: “Breathe In, Breathe Out, Move On.”