Locked On Mariners - Daily Podcast On the Seattle Mariners - Mariners President and CEO Runs His Mouth

Episode Date: February 23, 2021

Seattle Mariners President and CEO Kevin Mather is now former Seattle Mariners President and CEO Kevin Mather, having resigned on Monday in regards to a video that surfaced online that featured him badmouthing Mariners players, some of which was incredibly insensitive. D.C. talks a little bit about what he said, and reads comments made by Major League Baseball and M's Chairman John Stanton. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to Locked-on Mariners, part of the Locked-on Podcast Network, your team every day. Here's your host, D.C. Lundberg. Oh, dear. Well, Ganny, the Mariners had not really made any headlines all off-season. Then their president and CEO decides to put the team back in the news cycle, and we all wish that he hadn't. Welcome to Lockdown Mariners, part of the Locked-on podcast network, or T-L-O-P-N, or of course, T-Lopin. Please remember to download rate and subscribe to this program using whichever podcasting app that you personally care to use. Ask your smart device to play locked on Mariners podcast or any program here on Tlopin.

This is going to be a really quick episode, but I do need to get something on the air about what took place with the team over the weekend. It was not a particularly auspicious weekend for the Mariners to say the least. I'm sure you've heard by now that Mariner's president and CEO Kevin Mather is now former Mariners' president. President and CEO Kevin Mather, he resigned yesterday. A video of Mather bad-mouthing many of the M's players in a video conference with a local Rotary club earlier in February, that surfaced online over the weekend. Mather expounded on such issues as a failed contract negotiation to some of the player's English language skills. Yeah. His comments were at best, wildly irresponsible and childish, and at worst, totally racist.

which is racist is such an overused word now. It's accurate in this case, however. Anyone with a modicum of common sense knows that you just don't say things like that ever, particularly the language stuff. He evidently missed that memo, I guess. A Mariners chairman and managing partner, John Stanton, issued the following statement yesterday in regards to this mess.

Quote, Like all of you, I was extremely disappointed when I had, learned of Kevin Mather's recent comments. His comments were inappropriate and do not represent our organization's feelings about players, staff, and fans. There is no excuse for what he said, and I won't try to make one.

I offer my sincere apology on behalf of the club and my partners to our players and fans. We must be and do better. We have a lot of work to do to make amends, and that work is already underway. Kevin Mather has resigned his position effective immediately.

I want to thank Kevin for his 25 years of service to our franchise. I will serve as acting president and CEO until a successor can be chosen. Everyone at the Seattle Mariners remains committed to our mission of winning on the field and serving our fans and communities off the field. We will demonstrate that commitment through our actions, end quote. 25 years with the team, huh? That's exactly 25 more years than I've been with the team. Major League Baseball chimed in as well, offering the following statement. Quote, we condemn Kevin Mathers' offensive and disrespectful comments about several players. We are proud of the international players who have made baseball better through their outstanding examples of courage and determination, and our global game is far better because of their contributions.

His misguided remarks do not represent the values of our game and have no place in our sport, end quote. I'm going to talk more about this subject in the second half of the show. Like I said, this is going to be a very short episode because I really don't have anything all that useful to add. I'm not even sure this is going to qualify as a full episode. No trivia corner today. I'll just tell you about Built Bar, the greatest protein bars in the history of things that are covered in chocolate. They're low in sugar, calories, and carbohydrates, and all 18 flavors taste terrific. I do not eat what doesn't taste good, gang, and I like these things a lot.

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goes out of style. Have you got a question or a comment? Send it on over to Locked-on Mariners at gmail.com and I will address it on the air in a future mailbag episode. Questions and comments on any subject are welcome and encouraged. Just please keep it appropriate since this is a family show. Locked-on mariners will continue following this word from Rock Auto. Rockado.com is a family business, serving auto parts customers online for 20 years. Go to rockado.com to shop for auto and body parts from hundreds of manufacturers.

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I'm pretty sure that they mentioned this Kevin Mather's stuff on their show this morning, which we're talking about today on Locked on Lock, on Mariners. A video of him running his mouth at a video conference surfaced online over the weekend. There were really two main points of contention from what I understand based on the information I gathered. Obviously, the bigger issue was comments on the way some of the international players speak English. I cannot wrap my head around just how stupid those remarks were. Not only is that just a huge no-no, but baseball is an international game. I guess he must have missed that, but since it isn't an international game, there are bound to be language barriers, and so what?

That is just the way it is. Baseball is popular in several parts of the world, which is obviously positive. I feel like an idiot for even having to point that out, quite honestly. It's ludicrous that I have to say that international baseball is good. That should go without saying, but I guess in this case it doesn't. He also spoke of a player turning down a contract negotiation. And while I'm not going to talk about the merits of what he was talking about, the fact that he was talking about it in the first place is a problem.

That should be an in-house behind closed doors type of negotiation. I don't care whether you think cameras or rolling are not. That sounds like it should have been confidential information, which should have been shared with no one. I've been in the early childhood education field for, gosh, I guess six years now. something like that. I'm not allowed to share certain confidential items with anyone, and I, like the vast majority of people, adhere to those confidentiality rules. Just about any line of work I can think of has confidentiality rules. I worked briefly for a restaurant that made us swear

never to share their recipes. And no, it was not Kentucky Fried Chicken. I'm going off in the weeds, but my point is that common sense dictates that there are certain pieces of information about the workings of any business that should never be shared. Personnel negotiations seem to be among them unless the player and or the general manager's office goes public with any information. Someone unrelated to those negotiations has no business commenting one way or the other, whether on the record or off. Mariners Chairman John Stanton will assume Mathers' duties as president and CEO until

a permanent replacement can be found. I'm wondering if they would consider replacing Kevin Mather with Jerry Mathers. The Beaver would never say such things, gang. Or maybe hire another Kevin. Kevin Cronin, he's good with words. Yeah, well, that's the note we're going to end on today, gang. Like I said, short show. The pre-spring training preview I was going to do kind of fell by the wayside, unfortunately.

The Cactus League season starts on Sunday. So on Monday, we will be recapping that particular first game. Also on Monday, we're supposed to be going back to five shows a week, considering how February went, which was honestly nothing short of a disaster for this program. I can't promise that I'll be able to do that, but I'm sure going to try my damnedest. Please do download, rate, and subscribe to this program. Look for us at any podcasting app that you can happen to think of. Thank you very much for listening, ladies and gentlemen, again, even though this was a really short one.

I'll talk to you next time. Have a great day. This is Joey Martin, speaking for Locked-on Mariners, part of the Locked-on Podcast Network. Thank you.