Going on road won’t bother Goff

SEATTLE – The Seattle Mariners are in Cleveland, having flown the first 2,400 miles of the 49,800 they will travel the next six months. By baseball standards, traveling from Seattle is as difficult as any city in the major leagues.

By Mike Goff’s criteria, it’s nothing.

“I think I’ve been in every crap ballpark and every crap bus and every backstreet of every part of the country I could imagine,” said Goff, who spent 21 years playing and coaching in the minor leagues.

This year, he’s in the majors for the first time as the Mariners’ first-base coach. More than two decades of all-night bus rides and cheap hotels and hamburger dinners delivered in white paper sacks will make a guy appreciate the supposed “rigors” of big-league life.

“I can appreciate it a lot more than some guys, I can tell you that,” Goff said.

Forgive Goff, and others who endured the rugged roads of minor league ball, for taking extra satisfaction in the accommodations the Mariners will enjoy on the 12 road trips to 16 cities this season.

“There aren’t many back roads I haven’t seen in this country,” said Goff, whose coaching stops ranged from Jacksonville, Fla., to Bellingham, Wash. “But that’s what makes it so special, to see some of the guys you’ve had on those teams reach this level, and you know the price they paid to get here.

“There are a lot of great players who couldn’t handle the road and the mental fatigue of it. They thought they had the desire and the passion until they had to go through what they had to go through in the minor leagues.

“The fans see what happens at the ballpark. What they don’t see is what it takes getting to the ballpark, going from town to town. But that’s what makes it great. I have more memories about those kinds of things than the games we played.”

Goff’s best – or worst – memory was a 1993 trip to Boise when he managed the Class A Bellingham Mariners of the Northwest League.

“The bus was very old and it went about 20 mph up the hills and about 55 straight down,” he said. “It was a 13 1/2-hour trip. We finished the game at home one night, drove all night and got to Boise about 1:30 the following day, checked into the hotel and went to the ballpark.”