Jerry Brewer"Dave Niehaus' death touches close to home for everyone"

Originally published Wednesday, November 10, 2010 at 10:00 PM

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Jerry Brewer
Dave Niehaus' death touches close to home for everyone

A columnist learns from his wife that the death of Mariners announcer Dave Niehaus strikes close to home.

By Jerry Brewer

Seattle Times staff columnist

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Pardon me, but I must write these words while wiping away my wife's tears. She just came home. She just found out that the voice of her youth, Mariners Hall of Fame broadcaster Dave Niehaus, died of a heart attack. She just hugged me and saturated the part of my shirt that covers my heart.


"Dave Niehaus is like Disneyland," she just said. "It's safe, and it's happy because it's always the same. Very few things are constant in life."

Niehaus was a constant. He has been the Mariners' voice for their entirety, from Diego Segui's first pitch in the franchise's inaugural game in 1977 to Ichiro's fly out to end the miserable 2010 season. He has been there — for you — longer than "we've lived so far," my wife just said.

Before I moved here four years ago, I explained to a friend the reasons I was excited about this new job. When I listed the Mariners, he joked that it should be hard to garner any enthusiasm about following a club whose most beloved employee is an announcer.

"Dave Niehaus is good," he said. "But he can't be the jewel of your team. That tells you the Mariners have very little history."

We argued about it for a while. Since I've been here, I've heard variations of that joke many more times. When Niehaus became the first Mariner honored by the Hall of Fame two years ago, the snide remarks resurfaced. He's the best thing the Mariners have? Hahaha! What a terrible franchise.

But those fools never fully understood that they were diminishing an icon for cheap humor.

If the Mariners were a storied ballclub with multiple championships, Dave Niehaus would still be the jewel of the franchise. In fact, if you put more team success with his voice and his storytelling and his enthusiastic style, Niehaus' legend would've grown larger than it already is.

Instead, he achieved something greater. He made the Mariners real the hard way. He made you care about them, even though it took the Mariners 15 seasons to post a winning record, even though they've been to the playoffs four times in 34 seasons. He was that special, that personable, that likable.

"He is Mariners baseball," a grieving Ken Griffey Jr. declared during a 710 ESPN Seattle radio interview Wednesday night. "Everybody talks about all the players. We can't hold a candle to that man."

Griffey went on to say of Niehaus, "He's one of the greatest men I've ever met and had the privilege of knowing."

I can't stifle my wife's tears.