SEATTLE - The Mariners’ 50th anniversary weekend opened with a familiar kind of home-run show at T-Mobile Park, only this one belonged to the alumni.
After Seattle dropped a 2-1 decision to the Tampa Bay Rays on Friday night, a sizable portion of the crowd stuck around for the team’s alumni home run derby, and the ballpark atmosphere shifted fast. Julio Rodriguez, who provided the Mariners’ lone run with a ninth-inning solo shot, handled DJ duties for the event.
The field was loaded with names that fans in Seattle know well: Bucky Jacobsen, Stefen Romero, Ryan Rowland-Smith, Ryon Healy, Austin Nola, Mike Cameron and Ichiro Suzuki. The competition format was simple enough - one first round for everyone, then a championship round for the top two finishers. Each hitter got a traditional round worth one point per homer and a jackpot round worth two.
Romero and Nola emerged from the opening round. Romero finished with nine points, while Nola also posted nine. Suzuki was right there with eight, missing the final by a single point after one of his jackpot swings came a foot short of the wall in right field.
"I hit it, I thought I got, so I was a little bit relieved," Suzuki said via interpreter Allen Turner after the derby Friday at T-Mobile Park. "So I kind of let my guard down, and then it didn't go. Kind of curvy there."
Nola led off the final round and put up 11 points, including nine traditional homers and one jackpot. Romero answered with 12 traditional homers and claimed the title, along with a championship trident and belt.
Romero’s win came in front of his children, a fitting setting for a player whose Seattle time was brief but real. The Mariners took him in the 12th round of the 2010 MLB Draft out of Oregon State, and he reached the majors in 2014. He appeared in 94 games for Seattle from 2014-16.
After that, Romero spent the 2017-21 seasons in Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball with the Orix Buffaloes and Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles. His last stop in a major league organization came in 2022 with the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Triple-A affiliate, the Oklahoma City Dodgers.
Even in an exhibition setting, the work showed.
"You get out of breath," Romero said after the derby Friday. "So think about it like a (15 degree) incline on a ... steady jog for 10 minutes.
After you're done with that, that's exactly what it feels like. ... So I was trying to cash my breath and then, my body's not used to that, kind of intensity."
Romero also used the space between rounds to get a few swings in the batting cages inside the clubhouse. Once he and his pitcher, a coach for his sons’ travel ball team, found their rhythm, they kept rolling instead of taking the allowed timeout.
Saturday’s anniversary celebration continues at 5:30 p.m. PT, when the Mariners honor the 50 best players in franchise history before the second game of the series against Tampa Bay.
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