As of this week, fans of cryptic local history don’t always have to head down to Pike Place Market, Bill Speidel’s Underground Tour or Amazon headquarters for a spooky haunted tour anymore.
“Welcome to the Haunted Mariners Dugout Tour, where our roguish tour guides will take you through a spine-chilling journey through 48 seasons of despair so frightening that you’ll think you were back in the repulsive pit of despair known as the Kingdome!” said tour guide Boo Pinella, creeping around the dugout in a Texas Rangers Alex Rodriguez jersey. “Local legend says the dugout was built on a graveyard of generational talents. Here lies Deadgar Martinez, Ken Ghouley Jr, Dan Chillson, and Jay…Boner! Okay, we’re working on that last one.”
Most Mariners fans are saying they’re too scared to ever go on the tour themselves, though.
“If you listen carefully at midnight, you can hear phantom chants of ‘Ichiro! Ichiro! Ichiro!’ ring through the midnight air,” said baseball historian Herb Sotomeyer. “And it’s not just the dugout that’s cursed: If you visit the pitcher’s mound each October 31st, an incredibly specific message appears hastily scrawled in the dirt reading ‘It’s me, Felix Hernandez, I pitched seven innings of fucking flawless baseball every six days for a decade, can I get a single goddamn run to help me out?’ It’s hard to decipher just what this tortured apparition might be trying to tell us, but it’s safe to say he’s not pleased.”
Following the success of the haunted dugout tour, Mariners management quickly traded their best ghastly attractions and the Red Hydroplane boat to the Yankees for cash considerations.