Happy belated Thanksgiving to all Seattle Offside readers. With luck, you have survived the holiday with your nearest and dearest like I have: without stabbing anybody. Or even better, without even wanting to stab anybody. Or at least without wanting to stab anybody until the visit was almost over and you knew that if you could hold out a couple of hours longer you could cheerfully wave goodbye and not have to worry about whether or not the women's prison gets Fox Soccer Channel.
But enough about you and your holidays. Let's talk about the Sounders.
Specifically, let's talk about the fact that three of our reserve guys have been waived: Michael Fucito, Lamar Neagle and Evan Brown.
Waiver time is always a painful time for those of us with maternal areas, because it means that lifelong dreams are now having to be shifted and refocused. On the plus side, however, the waiver doesn't mean that all ties are cut between player and team. What it means, according to Don Ruiz at the TNT, is this:
Player contracts are technically signed with the league. And the league wants to pick up the options only on players who have a reasonable chance of actually making the team -- and to reinforce that, the league penalizes teams that cut players whose options have been picked up. Therefore, it's in the club/league's interest to release these players and then invite them to camp later than it is to pick up their option and possibly cut them later.
So there is a chance, albeit a small one, that we could be seeing any of these guys in Rave Green next year.
Regardless, however, this can't be a happy time. And so I thought I'd offer up a little pick-me-up poem for our guys, who are, of course, still our guys. (Once a Sounder, etc.)
And so, without further ado:
For our newly-waived Sounders:
A little poem
to cheer you up
It's always darkest before the dawn...
If at first you don't succeed...
Doors close but windows open, boys...
And true friends are friends indeed...
If these platitudes don't do it, gents
This might be a better fix:
the line "I used to play pro ball"
will always get the chicks
Chins up, guys! Best of luck wherever life takes you, and a heartfelt thanks from the fans for the roles you played in Seattle's inaugural season.