Why do you always believe things aren’t your fault?

Longest sports grudge? Worst Cougar losses? Another Q&A post with an explanation on why I deleted yet another post yesterday.

Why hasn’t Harry Ford played yet? Seattle Times photo

BEND, Ore. - Subscribers who received Thursday’s post had to read it right away or they never will now.

About three minutes after I hit the “publish” button, I got a text from a friend who asked if I really wanted to post the column I had just written.

He didn’t think it was worth the blowback I was apt to get for quibbling with Wednesday night tweets from Mariners reporter Shannon Drayer.

My friend was looking out for my best interests. Sometimes I don’t always use the greatest judgment in the world so when my buddy had an issue with it, I figured i should have an issue with running it too.

So I killed the post, but I want to at least explain what it was about in a shorter, nicer way.

Jamey Vinnick, a reporter who covers the Cougs for CougFan.com, tweeted that he didn’t understand why catching prospect Harry Ford, who was called up on Monday, didn’t play in any of the three games at Tampa Bay.

As you know, the Mariners were swept by the Rays while backup catcher Mitch Garver went hitless in the series and had a passed ball and a dropped ball that resulted in another run for Tampa Bay in its 9-4 victory.

Shannon explained via Twitter that it’s important for Ford to get experience by being in pitchers’ meetings, to learn pre-game routines, catch some bullpens, get some at-bats and give manager Dan Wilson the ability to pinch-hit when Cal Raleigh is the designated hitter. She also said that Ford was not called up to catch.

But along with many fans, here’s what I don’t understand - Ford’s a catcher, and you’re not planning to use him as a backup catcher when your backup catcher is having a second consecutive subpar season?

While the team is in a tailspin? Would it somehow be a negative to see if Ford could provide some kind of spark? And even if he didn’t, Garver’s not much of a spark-maker anyway so there’d be no great loss there.

But I was too critical of Shannon’s explanation in the original post. She knows the inner workings of the team, behind the curtain stuff that plays into Ford’s absence thus far. Meanwhile, I’m just watching the Mariners from nearly 400 miles away in the middle of Oregon so there’s a good chance that I’m the one who doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

I’ll just leave it at that and get to your questions…

From Dave Pridemore in Shoreline:

“As a 68 year old, what would you tell your 17-year-old self, who is now entering the Edward R. Murrow College of Communications and wants to get into broadcasting - beyond don’t drink 151 proof rum before a home football game in Pullman.

“You’ve done print, radio and podcasting…all very well, including the podcast, Bark.

“What advice do you have for this young Coug in this field? (Not entering this profession is not an option although, perhaps, a wise one.)

“In full disclosure, I have worked with you and feel you were quite good at your craft.”

“I feel your view of last Saturday’s game was fair. Mike Leach would have agreed, even with you.

“Go Cougs.”

I’ll also go full disclosure, Dave hired me at 710 ESPN Seattle and was the one who put two newspaper reporters and a former football player together and threw us on an afternoon drive-time show called “Danny, Dave and Moore.”

Bark, a podcast about dogs, was also his idea. Quick story, sorry if you’ve heard it before. The day that Dave hired me, I sat in his office and he said to me: “Want to know why I’m hiring you?

I thought he was gonna go off on some tangent filled with compliments about what, I don’t know, but I was surprised by what happened next. Dave played three voice mails for me, and all of them came from The Kevin Calabro Show listeners.

I was Kevin’s temporary sidekick to that point. Each listener ripped me up one side and down the other, saying I sucked or get rid of me or I was a moron or maybe all three, I forget.

“That’s why I’m hiring you,” Dave said when the voice mails mercifully ended.

That’s when I found something out about sports radio - it’s OK, actually more than OK, if listeners think you’re terrible and/or worthless. Even negative feelings about a host are better than not caring one way or the other and changing the channel.

Back to Dave’s question. I probably would have told myself what I would tell kids now who are pursuing communications degrees - don’t focus on just one thing like I did. All I ever wanted to be was a sportswriter, well, after finding out it would take four more years of school to be a veterinarian.

So I focused solely on being a reporter and writer and wish I’d branched out and taken broadcasting courses too. I remember thinking about it but shying away from actually doing it, partly because I’ve always had a case of stage fright. I’m not sure how bad of a case it is, I just know that I got nervous before every show and was really nervous any time I made a TV appearance, which wasn’t often.

You’d think as a kid I would have taken that head on and tried to get over it by taking some broadcasting courses, but I wanted nothing to do with talking in front of people. I just wanted to write and if I had to ask questions in a press room or locker room, I figured I could pull that off.

If a kid job shadowed me now, I’d tell him or her to branch out and do as many things as you can do to set yourself apart from others in your field.

From Morgan Wiese, a two-parter. First question: “How do you always initially believe something isn’t your fault.”

Hi Morgan, that’s an awful question, why would you ask me something like that, it’s all your fault for bringing up my troubled past!

Just kidding, it’s a great question, and I’ll answer it, and while I’m doing that, you win a $10 Dairy Queen Gift Card for The Question of the Week.

I think you’re referring to me thinking the guy was a jerk who left a nasty note on my kid’s windshield for parking in a no parking zone in our neighborhood. Or maybe it was for thinking our concert job boss screwed up for firing my wife after she had a margarita before going to a company meeting. Or maybe it was for thinking my boss who fired me at Quail Run Golf Course was too uptight with the way he handled the mistakes I made that led to my dismissal as a starter on the first tee.

No, Morgan, I think you’re referring to all three. In hindsight, all three incidents could have been avoided if I had talked to Mikey about not parking on that side of the street, if we hadn’t had a Cinco de Mayo margarita before going to that company meeting and if I hadn’t screwed up as often as I did at Quail Run.

But Morgan, don’t you think the golfers who smuggled in illegal booze share some of the blame for me not checking their cooler. I mean, if they had just bought booze at the course and put it in their cooler, everything would have been fine, so it’s partly their fault, right? Just kidding again, Morgan.

To answer your question, I guess I just have a knee-jerk reaction and zero in on how my kid was wronged or my wife was wronged or I was wronged, oblivious to the other sides of the story.

I’m sure a therapist would have a better answer after some sessions with me, but that’s all I got for now.

From Morgan again, “If you could go back and repair one relationship throughout your career, what would it be?”

Damn, Morgan, I almost feel like I should send you two DQ gift cards. Please send me your email information so I can get one card to you at least, OK?

I’ve had run-ins or disagreements with Mike Salk, Richard Sherman, Seahawks vice president Dave Pearson and former Post-Intelligencer sports editor Tim Kelly among others.

But I honestly don’t care to repair relationships with any of them. You’ve probably never heard of Kelly, but he was the worst boss I ever had, so full of himself. One time I was sitting next to the legendary columnist John Owen at the Kingdome. We were covering a Mariners’ game when the phone rang.

“It’s for you,” John said as he handed me the phone. “It’s Tim.”

For the next two minutes, Kelly yelled at me for not leading my game story with whatever he thought was the key to the game. He yelled so loudly that I had to move the phone away from my ear.

He kept yelling to the point that it got so ridiculous I let out a nervous chuckle.

“You laugh and I’ll really have your ass!” Kelly bellowed.

Then one day a year or so later, we all got an email saying that “Tim Kelly had taken the editor’s job at a Hearst newspaper in Beaumont, Texas.

Beaumont Effing Texas, we all thought in the sports department, a perfect place for a dick like him.

I also came close to getting into a fight with Gary Payton, which I’ve written about before, and there was another former athlete who nearly threw a punch at me too.

The Seahawks lost a game in Cincinnati in 2015, and I wrote a column in which I focused on other things but mentioned that Michael Bennett took a cheap shot at Bengals QB Andy Dalton during an Earl Thomas interception return.

Dalton was nowhere close to Thomas and had no chance of tackling him, but Bennett went after him anyway and drew a personal foul penalty. In my mind, it was a bush league move.

The next morning at the VMAC, Dave Wyman and I were preparing to record an interview with Doug Baldwin when Bennett burst into the room. Wyman said later that he had never seen anyone that mad without a punch being thrown.

Bennett got in my face and was all Tim Kelly-like, yelling and screaming about what I had written about him. I didn’t have a chance to explain myself, he wouldn’t stop, and at one point, some of his saliva hit my face. It wasn’t Jalen Carter intentional on his part, his spit was just a byproduct of his anger.

Two things stood out about that confrontation.

1. I stood there thinking, damn, I only made $75 for writing that column and this is what I’m getting? And God love the Kitsap Sun, I used to live in Port Orchard, so I’m a big fan of the West Sound, but how the hell did Michael Bennett see something that was written about him in that small of a publication?

2. I also stood there thinking, I’m not backing away from this big ass mother-effer. I knew he could kick my old ass in 10 seconds flat, but I didn’t want Wyman to think I was a wuss by backing away. So I stood my ground, maybe subconsciously hoping that Bennett would break my jaw so I could retire at 58 to New Zealand or Fiji after my lawyer settled with his lawyer on some large-ass amount of money.

   But with Payton and Bennett, nope, don’t feel the need to repair relationships I never really had with them anyway.

   This will sound crazy after what I wrote yesterday and what I led this post with today. But I’ll say it anyway - the relationship I’d like to repair the most is the one with Shannon Drayer.

   I know what you’re thinking, if that’s the case, why would you continue to criticize her? I think it’s because I’ve reached the point of what’s the use, she’s never going to accept my apology anyway. I know, that still doesn’t make sense.

   Shannon’s got a cool story, going from working at Starbucks to winning a listeners’ contest at KJR and becoming a sports reporter and broadcaster. I met her in the late 1990’s when we crossed paths while covering the Huskies’ men’s basketball team. I also like the fun fact about her - she played the trumpet in the Huskies’ marching band when she went to school there.

   We became teammates years later at 710 ESPN Seattle, and I might be wrong about this, but I think she got as big of a kick out of me as I got out of her.

   If I could go back, as it pertains to Shannon, I wish I had left her out of a spoof of a column I wrote, making up comments the announcers who cover the Mariners would say if they were allowed to speak the truth.

   That’s what caused the fallout. My apologies have been unaccepted. So yeah, I have regrets about that.

   From Joe Laing: “Will you take the Puck Sports podcast back indoors to the Coug room when the temperatures drop?”

   Well, Joe, yeah, probably, but I’ve enjoyed doing the show from our shed. Might get a space heater and see how long I can last out there.

   From Kenbo: “What are your longest sports grudges? Mine are John Elway, Howard Schultz, Notre Dame, the New York Yankees and the Cleveland Browns.”

   Hey Kenbo, my longest sports grudge? I don’t have anything against the Huskies. I have EVERYTHING against the Huskies. Some would call this unhealthy. I call it a rivalry, and when you’re a Coug, you never root for your biggest rival, that’s all.

   I have Husky friends, I just don’t want their football and basketball teams to win. And yes, I’ve admitted here on Substack that I sometimes enjoy Husky losses more than Cougar wins.

   When Pat Chun left Washington State to be the athletic director at Washington, it made it easier than ever before to actively hope and pray for Dawg defeats. Add that to the role the Huskies had in blowing up the Pac-12 and you have even more of a reason why the Cougs dislike purple and hate gold.

   From Rob Elliott in Scottsdale: “Since 1981, what are your top five Cougar wins and five worst Cougar losses?”

   I think you picked 1981 because that’s when you were a freshman at WSU, right Rob? Mind if I just go with three best and three worst and extend it back to when I was a freshman in 1974?

   Best Cougar wins

   Beating the Dawgs in the 1997 Apple Cup to go to the Rose Bowl has to be No. 1.

   Beating Troy Aikman and UCLA in Pasadena in 1988 when the Bruins were ranked No. 1 in the country.

   Beating Texas when the Longhorns were No. 5 in the country in the 2003 Holiday Bowl.

   Worst Cougar losses

   1975 Apple Cup in Seattle in the rain. We led by 13 points in the final two minutes but somehow lost anyway.

   1981 Apple Cup in Seattle. If we had won, we would have gone to the Rose Bowl. Didn’t have tickets, snuck into the game posing as a concessionaire.

   2025 against Idaho. Oh wait, we won that game, didn’t we?

   TOMORROW: The sheepish Smokin’ Lock of the Week tries to make up for the pathetic pick of the Beavers last week.