SEATTLE -- The old timers brought out the bats in a big way in the Mariners Alumni Home Run Derby on Friday night.
And the first-of-its-kind event in franchise history lived up to the billing.
Stefen Romero -- who played in just 94 games with Seattle over his brief MLB career -- edged out Austin Nola in the final round to capture the inaugural title and the bragging rights that come with it.
He also received all the good-will backing from the tournament favorite, Ichiro Suzuki, who came oh-so-close to advancing but saw his last swing nick off the top of the right-field wall in the first round to finish one point shy.
“I practiced with him, so I saw firsthand what he can do,” Ichiro said of Romero through longtime interpreter Allen Turner. “And he's young. He was just different from all the guys that were practicing. He was just a little bit different, at a different level. And so I knew he was going to be tough to beat.”
Romero clubbed 12 homers in the championship round, and did so before reaching the jackpot stage that includes 30 seconds of bonus time where homers are worth two points instead of the standard one. That came after Nola hit nine homers in regulation then one more in the extra period to finish with 11 points.
Basically, Romero -- maybe the most unexpected contestant of the field -- took home a replica of the Mariners’ home run trident and championship belt as trophy keepsakes in the most convincing fashion.
“You get out of breath,” Romero said. “Think about like a 15-degree incline on a steady jog for 10 minutes. After you’re done with that, that's exactly what it feels like. So it's kind of hard doing an interview right after that.”
Romero finished with just four career homers in the big leagues, having spent his entire, and brief, career with the Mariners from 2014-16.
Between Romero and Nola (who combined for 28 MLB home runs in their careers) it was as underdog of a final round as could be -- at least against the likes of Mike Cameron and Ichiro (who combined for 395).
Ichiro actually finished in a tie with Romero for the most homers in the first round, with six. But he tallied eight points -- shy of Nola and Romero’s nine -- due to the only one homer he hit in the jackpot round.
“When I hit it, I thought I got it, and so I was a little bit relieved,” Ichiro said. “And so I kind of let my guard down, and then it didn't go, so it kind of hurt me there.”
Ichiro trained quite a bit for the event -- as did Romero and the rest of the field. It’s a stamina event, after all.
“I’m doing this all year,” Ichiro said. “There’s never a time where there’s an offseason. It’s pretty much an everyday thing where I’m doing baseball, so it’s kind of an all-year thing for me.”
Romero’s story to this moment is as unheralded as it might seem.
He lives in the Portland area and coaches his sons -- Jackson and Ryder -- in youth baseball. The Mariners reached out to him about a month and a half ago to participate.
Romero was a 12th-round Draft pick by Seattle in 2010 out of Oregon State, was its Minor League player of the year in 2012 then broke camp on the Opening Day roster in 2014. He played in 72 games that year, 13 the next year and nine in ‘16.
He then enjoyed a successful career in Nippon Professional Baseball in Japan from 2017-21, where he hit 96 homers with 264 RBIs and an .828 OPS before returning to the States with the Dodgers’ Triple-A affiliate in 2022.
“Just to have the opportunity, I’m thankful that the Mariners gave me the call,” Romero said. “And luckily, today I kind of showed up and ran into some balls and won it.”
Against the backdrop of it all was “DJ Pleno” -- the blossoming alter ego of Julio Rodríguez, who was spinning tunes under neon lights in the T-Mobile Pen beyond left-center field. It was also a night of firsts for the Mariners’ current center fielder, as this was the first time that he’d performed publicly in front of a crowd.
DJ’ing has become one of many evolving off-the-field interests for Rodríguez, who picked up the hobby more aggressively this past offseason.
“I didn't know what was going to happen,” Ichiro said. “We lost the game, but Julio got a hit and then a homer at the end. But he has that special charisma. He's just got this talent about him that he can make people around him happy. And so I was glad to see him out there, and I think he would be the only one that could do something like that after a game that didn't go so well.”