Shining Stars

STARING AT THE SUN: I had trouble sleeping Sunday night (well, early Monday, really), because I knew we wanted to be up early for an astrological event - the transit of Mercury (or, in other words, Mercury passing between Earth and the sun).

It is kind of a big deal because Mercury only passes between Earth and the sun about 13 times a century. The last time it happened was in 2006, when CJ and Annabelle were still just toddling around. 

The event was underway by the time the sun rose in Seattle, a little after 5:30 a.m. However, there was a problem: A thick carpet of clouds covering the entire sky, with no sun to be seen. We were hopeful for a glimpse, though, as the transit continued through 11:40, and the clouds were moving some. 

By about 8:30 or 9 a.m., we could see the glowing orb and we had our eclipse viewers ready. They gave us a nice, safe view of the sun, but we couldn't make out Mercury without magnification. 

We tried some binoculars with the filter, but that didn't work either. We also tried our telescope, but that burned a hole in the filter. Oops. Won't make that mistake again. 

This NASA photo shows you what we didn't see. Mercury is seen in silhouette, in the lower third of the image, as it transits across the face of the sun Monday, May 9, 2016, as viewed from Boyertown, Pennsylvania. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)

Judging by how tiny that speck is in the heavily magnified photo, it's no wonder we didn't actually see Mercury yesterday. But as I pointed out to the kids, we were staring at the sun while Mercury was transiting, so in a way we did experience the event.

WINNINGEST: The Mariners have finished up a road trip and were back home last night. We thought we'd join them in Safeco Field for the evening. 

We started out in center field pre-game, per usual. There, we watched Mariners' ace Felix Hernandez warm up.

Per not usual, we had tickets in the King's Court - a golden cheering section for beloved Mariners' pitcher Felix Hernandez. We'd never sat in the court on the main level before (we'd sat in "Upper Court," the cheap seats version of King's Court), and were curious about the experience.

We all agreed that the King's Court is a fun idea, but the reality of it is a little less than ideal. First of all, it was mainly populated by 20 somethings who apparently put a lot of effort into "pre-funking" it. (Translation: A number of them were borderline sloppy drunk even before the game started.)

Second, every time Felix gets two strikes on a batter, the King's Court crowd stands up and holds up their "K" cards and chants "K! K! K! K! ..." hoping to help him strike out the batter. (a strike out is recorded as a K in a baseball scorebook). When the cards go up, you can't see a darn thing - not Felix, not the batter, not anything but a sea of posterboards. So that's super frustrating.

I guess one of the 'perks' of sitting in the King's Court is that, if you're loud or outrageous enough, you have a pretty good shot of getting on the big screen and/or the television broadcast. And so, people put a *lot* of effort into being loud and outrageous, which is a distraction to the game, as well.  And I can report that the selfies-per-capita in the King's Court is undoubtedly higher than the rest of the stadium's selfie ratio.

So all in all, we're glad we have experienced the King's Court, but by the seventh inning, we made our way up to the more vacant back rows of it to escape some of the 'fun' outlined above.

Regarding the actual game, the King didn't have his best stuff last night, but it was good enough to keep the Mariners in it. And fortunately Mariners' Ketel Marte had the best game of his career. The switch-hitting shortstop had four hits, including a go-ahead three-run homer in the sixth inning.

Felix Hernandez picked up the win with seven innings of two-run ball as he moved past Jamie Moyer for the most victories by a pitcher in Mariners history with 146. Hernandez gave up just four hits with two walks and two hit batters as he improved to 3-2 with a 2.27 ERA.

So lucky for us, we saw history being made on Monday. Hernandez achieved the milestone of becoming the Mariners' winningest pitcher ever. That fact sparked conversation on the way home about whether or not winningest is a word. I am firmly in the "yes, it is" camp on that. Look, it's on the scoreboard. That makes it legit, right?

It was nice that there was a pre-recorded message from Jamie Moyer congratulating Felix on breaking his record.