SEATTLE — Smack.
The sound of a baseball clapping into a leather glove — the sound of a million American childhoods — echoed through the concrete tunnel in the bowels of T-Mobile Park. Ducking in from the field, where a minute earlier Travis Thompson posed for pics and hammed it up with Mariner Moose while his coolly glistening "Parked Cars" blared over the stadium speakers, the Burien rapper sneaked in a few warmup tosses to his father before throwing out the first pitch as part of the Mariners' Native American Heritage Night last month.
Wearing a custom Mariners jersey stitched with his Navajo name, which translates to "little black bear," Thompson grinned wider than the hole on the left side of the infield when opposing teams put the shift on M's fielder Jesse Winker, strolling to the mound under the field lights. A former ballplayer who made varsity his freshman year, Thompson gave an emphatic fist pump after putting the ceremonial pitch over the plate. "Didn't even move his mitt," his proud mother gushed later over a slo-mo replay.
