I ended up on the receiving end of some charter seats for last night's game. I live in Seattle so I wasn't there for the "invasion," but a few takeaways:
1) Why in the hell are there so many Blue Jays fans? I get that when I go to a game at Safeco against the Yankees, Red Sox, Cubs, Dodgers, etc. that there will be a huge number of opposing fans. Is it just because as a Canadian you don't have another team so you just adopt the Blue Jays as your own?
2) Part of my first point here - those at the game remember that they were announcing different minor league all star players that were at the game, and nobody cared (even for the Everett Aqua Sox, the single-A affiliate for the Mariners located about 30 miles north of Seattle). But they introduced the players for the Vancouver minor league team and the ovation was enormous. Again, is this just Canadians sticking up for Canadian teams? It's such a foreign concept to Americans like myself.
3) The reason that the Mariners will never be competitive is because their fans don't demand it of them. I would not be surprised if Mariners fans were outnumbered 3 to 1 last night. I was less irritated with Blue Jays fans (even if some were obnoxious) than I was with the lack of support from Mariners fans. It is an aww shucks attitude that Seattle fans seem to have about all of their teams except the Seahawks - and one can argue that they only feel passionately about the Seahawks because the Seahawks can contend.
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