The Washington Post published an article involving the Mariners last week. This was unusual. Between the club’s lackluster start and the tendency of many East Coast pundits to see the Pacific Northwest as an isolated region 3,000 miles removed from relevance, Seattle’s big-league baseball team is not an obvious subject for a national story .
Then again, the Post story was not about baseball or the team. The story was about the introduction of toasted grasshoppers as a Safeco Field concession item. It seems the bugs are all the rage — 18,000 were sold during the Mariners’ first three home games — despite (or, perhaps, because of) the perception that digesting an insect is totally gross.