Hard to Top Emerald City for Green

SEATTLE —  Alex Rodriguez and Ken Griffey Jr. might have found it greener financially in Texas and Cincinnati, but the grass? Seattle Mariner relief pitcher Jeff Nelson believes each win by his team, which has a 31-11 record, has to be a dagger in the heart of the former Mariner superstars.

“Griffey wanted to leave and got his wish,” Nelson said. “I don’t know how he likes it in Cincinnati, but his team hasn’t done very well. Alex? I mean, Texas has a great offense, but his team is getting clobbered because the pitching isn’t very good. You have to wonder how he feels now when he looks at his old team and realizes how much more important pitching is than hitting.

“It would be interesting to ask them both. They probably couldn’t be truthful, but they’ve got to have some second thoughts. The grass isn’t always greener, and there’s a couple perfect examples right there.”

Now even Ranger owner Tom Hicks is shoving the Mariners in A-Rod’s face. Well, sort of.

In this flop of a Ranger season, with Hicks having invested $252 million in Rodriguez, only to see his club’s touted offense unable to score enough to overcome its terrible pitching, the owner cited the Mariners as an example of how General Manager Doug Melvin should remodel the Rangers--even, perhaps, trading catcher Ivan Rodriguez.

“We’ve seen what Seattle did,” Hicks said. “They went from a very weak pitching team with a strong lineup to having one of the best pitching staffs and one of the best bullpens in the league. . . . We would like to have a team more balanced between pitching and offense. It’s a very complex puzzle Doug has to try and piece together.”

He has to try before possibly following former manager Johnny Oates out the door, but trading Ivan Rodriguez, a future Hall of Famer and winner of the league’s most-valuable-player award?

“He’s the greatest catcher to ever play the game,” Hicks said. “But at this point, we have to look at everything. We have to look at what re-signing him would do to our resources.”

Now, resources are an issue? Didn’t Hicks consider that his catcher would be eligible for free agency at the end of this season before bidding against himself in rewarding the other Rodriguez with a record contract? Where is Melvin now going to find a pitching package worthy enough to deal the game’s best catcher, and can he move fast enough? Rodriguez, on June 2, becomes eligible to veto any trade as a player with 10 years in the majors, five with one club.

Hicks and his catcher plan to meet soon. Meantime, Juan Gonzalez, another former MVP winner traded by the Rangers, passed through Texas with the Cleveland Indians in midweek and found this all amusing and confusing. The Rangers got six players in the trade that sent Gonzalez to Detroit after the 1999 season, but only utility man Frank Catalanotto and outfielder Gabe Kapler remain on the active roster.

Gonzalez said Melvin “ruined the team” with that trade, and added, “Sometimes, the decisions they make, I don’t know.”

The Baltimore Orioles’ recent admission they are looking for a third baseman and that Cal Ripken’s playing time would be reduced is perceived as an attempt to get Ripken to retire, which he won’t.

Nor has he even given up on the idea of playing beyond this year.

Amid speculation about Ripken’s future and the Orioles’ search for a successor, Manager Mike Hargrove had a midweek meeting with the third baseman “to see where his head is at, given all the headlines and to assure him . . . nobody is trying to run him out of here. I told him that it’s normal business practice to . . . look to the future. Cal is 40 and not going to be here forever.”

Ripken, who sat out all except the last week of spring training because of a broken rib and is batting .212, said he is not sure “what to make of it all.”

Of course, the disintegrating Orioles are searching at other positions as well. Longtime center fielder Brady Anderson, for example, has the lowest batting average, .180, and slugging percentage, .281, among league regulars.