Bruce Bochte won't be back in Seattle for this one
But Bochte, the only Mariner on the American League All-Star team in 1979, the only time the game was played here before, always had his own way of looking at life, including baseball.
"I'm a little uncomfortable around baseball people," said the former outfielder/first baseman. "They used to call me an anomaly, there was the perception I was very different from most players. Joe Simpson once called me, 'aloof.' "
There is a hint of hurt in those last words. Aloof conveys a negative slant toward Bochte, which is not accurate.
He was more reserved than many of his teammates, some of them no less than outrageous on a Seattle team that was loaded with characters and in an era when there was as much fun in the clubhouse as on the diamond.
"He was kind of like a nerd," said Tom Paciorek, the former outfielder who has been a friend of Bochte's since their days together in winter ball and later in Seattle. "He was more intellectual than the rest of us grunts, but he was still one of the guys. He had a great sense of humor, but it's like he was closet crazy, less obvious than the rest of us."
Wimpy, as Paciorek is known, revealed that Bookus, as Bochte was known, is the one who invented the term, "Mendoza Line," for a .200 batting average.
"Most people credit me," said Paciorek, openly known as one of the game's zanies. "But it was Bruce. It was funny then, still is. But it was no knock on Mario (Mendoza), who's a great guy."
Paciorek recalled that like everyone in uniform, Bochte "loved the game, but a the same time he was just as happy working on environmental issues."
Bochte would seemingly fit better now, when players seem more insightful or thoughtful. In his time, he was more rounded when those around him seemed more gregarious. "When I look back on it, I know I thoroughly enjoyed my time in baseball," he said. "I'm proud of having played and having had a good career.
"They ask me if I miss it. Not the playing, but the camaraderie. It was special thing in life to come to work with a group of players, and coaches and people around the team all wanting to be there and focused on a single goal."
Among the times he most enjoyed was the 1979 All-Star game, in which he pinch-hit for Kansas City's Frank White and faced San Francisco's Gaylord Perry, who was to become his Seattle teammate three years later.
"Being appointed didn't take anything away from being an All-Star," Bochte recalled. He was referring to the rule in which each club must be represented, which sometimes results in a lesser player being an All-Star.
"I didn't have the track record of an all-star to draw enough votes to be on the club. But by in mid-July I was fourth in the league in hitting, third in RBI. I considered myself a bona fide All-Star that year, named to the team or not. It was my career year."
When he finally got to hit in the All-Star Game, Perry got two quick strikes on him.
"I said to myself I am not going to strike out, no matter what I do I'm not going to do that."
Of course, Perry then threw him a spitter. "That thing must have dropped four inches and I hit it as hard as I could hit a ball. But I hit it straight down and the ball took a huge bounce over shortstop and into left field."
For him that base hit was a strange experience in itself.
"I had never hit a ball like that before," Bochte said, "and I never hit one like that afterward. That was the only time in my career."
Bochte wound up hitting .316 in 1979, with lifetimes highs of 16 home runs and 100 runs batted in. It was the type of season Seattle GM Lou Gorman had envisioned when he signed him to a five-year contract after 1977, the first significant signing for the franchise.
"I had played there as a visitor," he said, referring to his four years with California and Cleveland, "and thought I could hit there. I was from California and I wanted to play on the West Coast. I liked the area and liked Lou. And so I became a Mariner."
Bochte liked the Northwest so much he and former wife Linda built a home on Whidbey Island and raised daughters Sara and Dana there.
As for his career, he was hampered by injuries, the most significant in his first Seattle season of 1978, plantar fascitis, the same problem currently keeping Jay Buhner from playing.
Bochte is, "a little grayer," and still near his playing weight of 200 pounds on a strapping 6-foot-3 frame.
He stayed four years on Whidbey after he left baseball for good in 1986.
"Whidbey wound up not being satisfying for me," he explained. "I was doing a lot of things on my own. I worked on projects for salmon restoration and with the adopt-a-stream program in Snohomish county and Western Washington. But nothing was substantial enough for me."
Divorced and seeking more personal fulfillment, the native Californian returned to settle in the Bay Area, working with Brian Swimme, a Tacoma native who founded the Center for the Story of the Universe.
"Brian is a mathematical cosmologist," Bochte said. "It sounds heavy, huh? It's the study of the universe, Einstein's field. But he distanced himself from science and the university system to public education with a non-profit organization."
Bochte still goes to some ballgames, has become a Giants and National League fan, and probably will watch the All-Star game.
"That will be enough," he said. "I don't need to be there, but you know, I don't think I was aloof. After I took that year off, 1983, there was this sense I had snubbed the game, and maybe that's valid."
He needed the time off to regain a feel for baseball as the game he loved and not a business, a perception heightened by being the Mariners' player rep and having to deal with the forceful former owner George Argyros.
"The labor trouble and strike in 1981 was disillusioning, so many successful businessmen and players who want to play wouldn't reach a reasonable settlement without a strike, especially when the final agreement was on the table even before the strike began.
"It bother me a great deal. I didn't like dealing with Argyros. Ultimately, I just didn't want to work for him any more."
Thus, the good and the bad, Seattle is part of Bochte's past, and he prefers to leave it there.
Bob Finnigan can be reached at 206-464-8276 or bfinnigan@seattletimes.com.