I was a little surprised that Ryan Garko took a $550,000, incentive-laden deal with the Seattle Mariners today, officially ending the chances the San Francisco Giants would bring him back. Granted, Garko struggled with the Giants last season, collecting only 12 RBI in 40 games after arriving in a trade with the Cleveland Indians. Still, he hardly fared worse than any first baseman San Francisco has used in recent memory, and his contract seems insanely cheap, even if he hits the additional half million in incentives. I’d also have loved if the Giants had taken full advantage of the marketing purposes with Garko’s name.
I’m referring, with this, to the film Garko’s name correlates with, Donnie Darko (to say nothing of Darko Milicic.) Every time I’ve read Garko’s name, from the time the Giants picked him up last summer to now, that odd, though well-done film has flashed in my mind. To anyone who hasn’t seen it, I won’t bother explaining besides to say it involves a six-foot bunny and a troubled, teen title character (played by Jake Gyllenhaal) who has premonitions of apocalypse. The soundtrack introduced me to Joy Division, which would have made for wonderfully depressing walk-up music for Garko’s at-bats. And any number of different clips from the film could have been played on the Jumbotron at AT&T Park, like when Donnie stumbles onto a golf course and meets the rabbit, who tells him the world will end in about 28 days.
I’ll admit this all probably would have been rather confusing to fans, though I personally might have had to purchase season tickets for the Giants. I’ll extend the same possibility now to the Mariners.
Wow man I usually try to read 5 or 6 blogs a night of the other guys I try to support on here. Sometimes you write some weird stuff though. Garko Darko lol and you like talking about walk-out music too haha. Garko won’t get a chance to get any of those incentives in his new deal cause he will not hardly see the field. The mariners won’t use him at all. Look for a newly rebuilt Griff jr. and cliff lee and felix make a real run for it this year. This will be Griffey’s best shot at a series. I have a all time favorite pitchers list and a position players list. The kid is my all time favorite player and he never used roids.
I’ll admit I was kind of hurting for a topic today and had long been thinking about the Garko-Darko connection. I know I’m not the only person to write about this online because I Googled it.
I think the Mariners might be good this year, too. I definitely root for them, as I have some family up in Seattle and a guy I went to college with, Garrett Olson, is on the Mariner pitching staff. Lee and Hernandez anchoring that rotation, at Safeco, have a chance to do something special.