Spotted: Eye Patch-Wearing Mariner Fan

While neither grainy nor sepia-toned, the image you see skillfully embedded here (from the fourth inning of Sunday’s game between Philadelphia and Seattle) possesses one quality which merits publication in these electronic pages — namely, the number of people in it who’re wearing eye patches.

Granted, that number of people is only one, but per NotGraphs Editorial Policy, one is actually a totally sufficient number of eye patch-wearing Mariner fans for image-embedding and musing upon.

Lest the sensitive reader propose that the intent of the author is to mock the fan in question, allow me to state sans pause, “Woah, woah, woah” and also “Hold on a minute there, buddy.”

Allow me also to add promptly that, far from mocking the fan in question, it’s actually my intention to celebrate the eye patch and what it symbolizes. For, if we agree that the key to Pleasant Living is the capacity for turning one’s weaknesses into strengths (and I hope we’re all agreed on this point), then the eye patch is the signo under which we’ll have our collective vinces — for it turns a pretty significant weakness (that is, eyelessness) into an equally significant strength (that is, a perpetual reminder to the world that ye, wearer of said patch, have lived — and, on occasion, lived dangerously).