What a silly, precisely Spring Training baseball game. In celebration of the Mariners’ six-run seventh inning, we’re going to play six degrees of Kevin Bacon but with a Mariners twist (duh). I bandied about six degrees of Jerry Dipoto (yawn), six degrees of Jack Zduriencik (grim and boring) and six degrees of Alex Mayer (compelling, but not enough publicly available information). Ultimately, I settled on six degrees of Diego Seguí, because that seemed challenging but also a nice tie-in to the Mariners 50th celebration this season (the only player to have played for both the Mariners and the Pilots). A few additional parameters for my own sanity:
Randy Dobnak: First MLB strikeout was Roberto Pérez in 2019; Pérez didn’t allow a passed ball in 118 games at catcher – only three catchers played more games without a passed ball: Bill Dickey, Johnny Bench and Al Todd; Johnny Bench helped lead the Cincinnati Reds to the 1975 World Series title thanks, in part, to securing a crucial Game 5 win, wherein Bench scored on a Dave Concepción sacrifice fly given up by Diego Seguí.
Randy Arozarena: Was traded from the St. Louis Cardinals to the Tampa Bay Rays alongside José Martínez; Martínez was the 2016 Serie del Caribe MVP; the Dominican League hosted the tournament that year and dedicated it to Hall of Famer Juan Marichal, who threw out the first pitch; Marichal was teammates on the 1974 Red Sox with Diego Seguí.
Mitch Garver: Played for the University of New Mexico alongside D.J. Peterson, where the two shared Mountain West Conference Player of the Year honors in 2012; when Peterson was hit in the face by a pitch while playing for the Clinton LumberKings in 2013, Alvin Davis, then a roving minor league instructor for the Mariners, accompanied him to the hospital; Davis, of course, was the 1984 Rookie of the Year, where he played alongside such luminaries as Larry Milbourne; Milbourne, whom the Mariners traded for twice, despite him being objectively quite bad at baseball, played on the 1977 Mariners with Diego Seguí.
Brock Rodden: Helped the 2023 Modesto Nuts, led by manager Zach Vincej, to the California League Championship; Vincej played just one game for the Seattle Mariners in 2018, when he went 2 for 4 at third base while Kyle Seager was on the paternity list for the birth of his third child; Seager made his big league debut for the Mariners in 2011, where he was coached by hitting coach Chris Chambliss; Chambliss, famously a Yankee, was scouted heavily – and drafted unsuccessfully twice over – by Cincinnati Reds scout Al Zarilla; Zarilla was in Tucson, Arizona in 1958 where he scouted and successfully convinced the Athletics to sign Diego Seguí.
The game was not televised (to my knowledge), but I understand some of you may be interested in the actual baseball game played tonight, not just my newest method of entertaining myself. Here are the key notes best I can discern: