Baseball is a funny sport: I guess that’s why it’s so popular with fans around the world.

Strange things often happen on the baseball diamond and that’s what keeps fans entertained. Things like the ball taking a funny hop past a player allowing the winning run to score or someone who’s supposed to be a major league pitcher and suddenly can’t seem to throw strikes any better than a 9-10-year-old Little Leaguer.

On those two basic themes, a couple of situations in both little and major league baseball have taken place in the past week that I think need to be addressed.

Here in Grant County, our Little League baseball and softball all-star teams are done for the season having been eliminated from competition at various district tournaments.

I had the opportunity to attend a couple of these games and as a whole, the young men and women from the Grant County area did a very good job against the other teams in their respective districts.

The majority of the teams our kids were up against were from much larger communities with many more players to make all-star selections from.

I think this is unfair to the kids from places such as Grant County; Triangle, which encompasses Helix, Adams and the Athena-Weston area; or Harney County having to go up against “big city” teams in the same district tournament. Unfair, anyway you want to look at it.

I was talking with one of the coaches of the 9-10-year-olds and he told me Pendleton had 188 kids tryout for 12 positions on its team.

That’s right, 188. That’s more kids than we had in the entire Grant County Little League program this year!

With those types of numbers, it’s no wonder teams from the Round-Up City dominate district competition every year.

The main point of Little League baseball is for kids to have fun, but there comes a time when our local players realize it isn’t fun anymore to go to the district tournaments knowing they don’t have a chance to win and advance to the next level of play.

What I propose is a two-tiered tournament similar to what they do in American Legion baseball with the Class A and Class AAA teams.

Communities with smaller numbers of players could compete in one bracket while the likes of Pendleton, Ontario, La Grande and Hermiston could slug it out in another.

I think a set-up like that would be fairer, the competition would be more evenly matched and the kids would have a whole lot more fun.

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On another baseball topic, the boys from Safeco Field have apparently raised the white flag on the 2004 season.

Rich Aurilia, John Olerud and Pat Borders have been “designated for assignment,” which is a fancy way of saying they’ve been pink-slipped, and rumor has it other members of the team will be soon departing.

The team isn’t winning and changes need to be made. But before the Mariners begin gutting the roster any further and bringing in a bunch of AAA players from Tacoma to fill the holes, maybe they should take a look at the coaching staff and the poor performance they’ve done this season – beginning with hitting, or the lack thereof.

When you have a bunch of professional baseball players who aren’t hitting the ball, the first thing you have to look at is the batting coach.

Mariners’ hitting coach Paul Molitor was a great player and a great hitter in his day, proven by the fact he is slated for induction into Baseball’s Hall of Fame, but not every great player can be a great coach – particularly in the area of hitting.

Certain players, like hitting guru Charlie Lau from a few years ago, were good big-league hitters and have a philosophy on the science of hitting a baseball and a particular way of doing things. But sometimes, their philosophies don’t work out for everybody.

Then there were other players, Cleon Jones for example when he was the Braves’ hitting coach, who weren’t particularly good major league hitters but were good coaches.

Jones, Chris Chambliss, Don Baylor and others can be classified as good hitting coaches because they had the ability to instruct, advise and make corrections on what players were doing wrong at the plate so improvements could be made. More importantly, the players responded to them as coaches and took their advice.

In truth, isn’t that what a coach is hired for?

Any coach at any level of competition must be able to make corrections when things are going wrong so the team can improve, and from the way the Mariners aren’t hitting the ball this season, it’s apparent Molitor isn’t getting the job done.

Then we have to discuss Mariners’ manager, Bob Melvin.

Why they keep him at the helm defies all logical reason, and I don’t care if they gave him a contract extension earlier in the season.

Better managers than him have been given the boot this year, most recently Jimy Williams. So pay the man off and send him down the road.

The fact of the matter is, and what many fans are beginning to realize, is Melvin pales in comparison to the way Lou Piniella used to run the club before he left for Florida. Just look at the job Lou has done with the Devil Rays this season!

Then we have Borders being let go.

Here’s a guy who is a better pitching coach than any person on the Mariners’ staff.

The 41-year-old former all-star catcher has been with AAA Tacoma for how many years catching all those young pitchers the Mariners have brought up through the organization, so why release him? Why not send him back down to Tacoma, I’m sure he would have gone, to continue working with the young arms they have on the staff to make them better and get them ready for the “Big Show”?

Borders will probably become a major league manager one of these years, he has that amount of baseball knowledge. As for Olerud – don’t be surprised if he turns up on the Tampa Bay roster playing for Lou. Fred McGriff isn’t doing the job and Olerud could step in as a part-time first baseman and/or designated hitter.

As for the Mariners, the fans are becoming disenchanted, and Bucky Jacobsen isn’t going to help. Attendance is down and the days of 100-win seasons are over!