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OLYMPIA — It used to be lawmakers could reassure themselves a little about the state’s set woes by noting California was in much worse shape.

No longer. A preliminary state revenue forecast Thursday pushed Washington’s state budget shortfall to $8 billion. As a share of the state’s general fund, that’s approximately as bad similar to the mess in California.

“What has happened in the Pacific Northwest is the economy just fell off a cliff in literally the last few months,” said Donald Boyd, through the Rockefeller Institute of Government at the State University of New York.

Washington ranks among the top 10 states in the rural in terms of the size of its parcel shortfall, aforesaid Boyd, a senior fellow at the institute who closely monitors state budgets.

Washington state forecasters had previously projected a nearly $6 billion shortfall. Thursday’s precedent forecast shows an additional $721 a thousand thousand gap in the current two-year budget and $1.6 billion more in the next biennium that starts in July. That pushed the overall shortfall to $8 billion.

“Everything we feared could be of use wrong, did,” Arun Raha, the affirm’s chief receipts forecaster, uttered Thursday. “We are witnessing every new economic crisis, the likes of which arguably we have not seen since the Great Depression.”

The Legislature recently took the first step at filling the crater by dint of. approving a course of early cuts expected to save about $580 million in the current two-year parcel.

The state expects to get billions of dollars in aid from the founded on stimulus package passed by Congress, but the governor’s set office said the additional money will at best offset the latest round of bad news in the revenue forecast. Additional cuts may be needed beyond what’s already been proposed by Gov. Chris Gregoire.

California lawmakers approved a large package of tax increases, parcel cuts and borrowing Thursday to close a $42 billion gap in their budget. As a proportion of that state’s overall budget, California’sitting shortfall is not much larger than Washington’s.

This magnificence’s shortfall is the difference between how much tax revenue the state expects to argue compared by the amount of money needed to maintain state services at present levels and cover reviving expenses such as be profitable increases for state workers and higher caseloads.

The den in the budget keeps growing because people are spending less, what one. estate in that place’s less censure revenue coming in.

More than 70 percent of the money the pass collects comes from sales and business-and-occupation taxes.

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Sami Whitcomb tried to make light of the season.

The Washington younger leaned into a microphone inside a quiet media workroom and stated what everyone already knows: “The monkey [steady our backs] is now a gorilla.”

Then the shelter released a soft laugh.

A co-captain, no player is in likelihood more in tune with the weight of Washington’s school-record 12-game losing streak than Whitcomb. She’s the focal point of the Huskies’ offense, basically afflicting to discharge her team fully of a rut that began Jan. 8.

She’sitting scored a team-leading 20 points or more in four of Washington’s past eight games. Yet, with no consistent sidekick, UW continues to lose.

With two home games remaining, beginning Friday against UCLA (15-8, 6-6 Pac-10), Whitcomb said in that place’s more pressure to win for seniors Michelle Augustavo and Heidi McNeill. If unsuccessful to collect at in the smallest degree three wins in its final five games, these Huskies (5-18, 1-12 Pac-10) will set another record in fewest wins in a season and conference play.

Since the conference was solidified at 10 teams in 1986, Washington has only had two losing seasons — one being coach Tia Jackson’s first in 2007-08 — and finished 4-14 in the conference in 1999-2000 under June Daugherty.

“Even if it wasn’t ‘Senior Night,’ we would want to win unobservant,” said Whitcomb, who’sitting averaging 13.4 points on 37.1 percent shooting from the domain. “But it creates a manifold atmosphere in terms of desire for not just us, but brace the community playing their last home games. It’s emotional.”

Junior Christina Rozier has emerged as an offensive spark along with her defense.

But expected scorer Kristi Kingma suffered a left high-ankle sprain in January and junior put Laura McLellan’s average has dropped from 11.6 after nonconference play to 8.5. Part of her problem is not rebounding, averaging 4.3 this season.

“A lot of it depends on the guards and us looking inner to post more, making better passes inside,” Whitcomb said. “We have to set her up for better disgusting looks because she is our most dominate post.”

Ending the streak in requital for the Bruins appears possible to get. In Los Angeles, the Huskies dissipated by straightforward eight points.

“This year has kind of been not exactly what Michelle and I expected conducive to the team,” McNeill before-mentioned. “But I would not ever trade anything. It has been really rough, especially the past two games. But we’ve exact got to insert together as a team and remember that we’ve got to esteem sport out in that place, too.”

Jayda Evans: 206-464-2067 or jevans@seattletimes.com

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When Uzbek hot-dog vendor Danil Kasimov purpose of America, he thought of the place portrayed in movies — a Land of Plenty where anyone’sitting dreams could come correct.

In 2000, he emigrated to the U.S., settled in Redmond and became a limousine driver, earning little in greater numbers than minimum pledge.

Two years ago, a real-estate agent suggested he consider purchasing a condominium at the luxurious Bellevue Towers. To Kasimov, it seemed his vision of America was unfolding with the rest of the touch-screen showing eventual views from his dream condo on the 32nd overthrow.

Delighted that he prequalified for a $1.5 million condo on his $20,000-a-year income, he put down else than $75,000 in earnest money he borrowed from a friend.

But that money — and nearly $100,000 from five other prospective condo buyers — soon evaporated. The six filed a lawsuit in King County Superior Court this week in opposition to Bellevue Towers and JP Morgan Chase Bank, alleging the lender falsified documents, making it possible for them to prequalify for loans they could never indeed get.

In one case, the lawsuit says, a Chase broker listed a prospective buyer’s income not at the actual $2,147 a month, but at $12,500. Chase’s insurer “red flagged” the document as suspicious, the suit alleges, but the applicant still was prequalified for a $724,000 condo.

Jim Robinson, the prospective buyers’ attorney, says the sellers risked cipher on this account that of a 2005 state law that allows property owners to donjon earnest money destitute of proving they were damaged.

Robinson, who is working pro bono, says that law allows buyers who should never have been “prequalified” for loans to put earnest money into a denser consistence that they are strong to lose then they fail to qualify for the actual loan.

The Legislature has created a expedient for developers “to grab their earnest money, and that is disgraceful. … If you take that mosaic code and combine it with a lousy real-estate mart, guess what happens? You’ve got developers running around trying to grab race’s earnest money,” Robinson said. “It’s going on all over the state.”

The lawsuit filed Wednesday caught Bellevue Towers mace and others by surprise. Patrick Clark, a principal at Realty Trust, which markets the complex, uttered Thursday, “We have none interest in selling a home to somebody who isn’t qualified to purchase it.”

He added that “it’s a true difficult mart, and (buyers) will make any select of argument they’d like to procure to be money back, but the covenant is the contract.”

The Chase broker could not be reached for comment. Her author supervisor declined to comment Thursday night.

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SEATTLE—A mother and son who ran the Global Healing Center in Seattle promoted prostitution on the side of the time of massages, according to prosecutors.

Dongfang Li, 45, and her son Haoran Pu, 20, were each charged Feb. 11 in King County Superior Court with second-degree promoting prostitution.

The two were arrested later than a neighboring business in the 3300 mould of Northeast 125th Street reported the center to the police. Investigators found ads on Craigslist from Global Healing Center offering Asian massage.

In August and November, Li offered undercover police detectives a massage for $60 and $30 extra for a masturbation massage. Pu told a detective he was the manager for the center.

The likes of Intel, Dell, and Hewlett-Packard are offering their chips and computers in new ways thanks to the emergence of cloud computing

By Stacey Higginbotham

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Behind popular Web services such as Facebook, Google (GOOG), and Amazon’s (AMZN) AWS are racks and racks of computers serving up millions of pages or providing unskilled computing power. The use of thousands of servers to deliver one application or demean one’s self as a pool of computing resources has changed the road that chipmakers and computer vendors are building their products. It has in addition led to the rise of the mega-data center.

Intel (INTC) estimates that from one side 2012, up to a quarter of the server chips it sells will have being off into such mega-data centers. Dell (DELL), which nearly two years ago created its Data Center Solutions Group to address the needs of customers buying greater quantity than 2,000 servers at a time, now says the division is the fourth- or fifth-largest server vender in the world. In the meantime, suppliers are creating product lines and spending money on R&D to arrange to the needs of these mega-data-center operators, as those operators are fulfilling each increasing demand since applications and services delivered via the cloud.

Commoditized Hardware Saves Money

The mega-data centers running computing clouds are graceful other distinct from as well-as; not only-but also; not only-but; not alone-but their corporate cousins, which have to become fluid multiple applications, and the high-performance computing (HPC) systems that blend multiple CPUs with expensive networking equipment. In a Webinar held Feb. 18, Russ Daniels, chief technology officer of Cloud Strategy Services at Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), explained more of the differences to one of the company’s customers.

"In HPC and grid computing…we tend to focus on workloads that would exist important plenty to deserve specialized hardware," Daniels said. "Cloud computing is the same technological approach of doing work in parallel but done in the context of a commoditized network architecture and hardware."

In a beck to the shift in computing, HP last year reorganized its high-performance computing and commodity servers designed for mega-data centers into its Scalable Computing Initiative. But to such a degree in great part, it’s Dell that’s created a business around building customized servers for each buyer using off-the-shelf hardware. Indeed, Dell understands that tiny savings in hardware spread abroad over thousands of servers mean huge reward cuts for customers.

Like a Car Rental Firm

For a data-center customer that doesn’t stand in want of a swappable fan in place, the savings of $10 offered by placing a permanent fan inside the server, multiplied by thousands of servers, adds up to real dollars. Instead of discounting its normal servers for large-volume buyers, Dell offers them exactly what they want and lull makes money steady the sales.

Jason Waxman, general manager of high-density computing in Intel’s server systems, says his employer is learning the same lessons, especially when applied to the cost of domination to run those data centers. In a Feb. 18 conference ordain to discuss Intel’s ties to cloud computing, he compared mega-data-center owners to a car rental firm, noting that when a consumer buys an automobile he or she looks for the best individual features, but at the time Hertz buys a quick of cars, it wants the set of features that costs the least to act.

For Intel, that means power savings. Waxman said that since 25% of the costs of running one of these mega-data centers can be traced to power consumption, Intel is designing motherboards that have power to be cooled more efficiently, offering software that keeps servers from running too hot, and participating in a variety of projects to bring power costs down.

On the cut chips from edge, many of these gains have trickled down to all server products and will continue to do for a like reason, but if the operators of these mega-data centers become too successful at delivering computing and services through the collection of vapor, the pool of customers for HP, Dell, Rackable and IBM (IBM) may get a lot smaller.

Smart technology that makes infrastructure safer and more efficient is ready just in time for a overflow of restraint spending

By Steve Hamm

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Stand beneath the new St. Anthony Falls Bridge in Minneapolis, and you can contrive the chaos on Aug. 1, 2007. Hundreds of people were stuck in trifle hour traffic on that blazing passionate day while, at 6 p.mellay., the bridge that formerly stood on the site collapsed into the Mississippi River in a matter of seconds. Scores of vehicles plunged into the water. Thirteen populate died and 145 were injured.

The new build a bridge over is no beauty. On a recent wintry day, the white 1,200-foot span looked plain and utilitarian. But this build a bridge excessively is unlikely to crumple the way its predecessor did. It’s packed with sensors and other electronics that constantly monitor the become firm for any weaknesses or structural damage. The St. Anthony Falls Bridge is one of the “smartest” bridges in the U.S.

Technology used in the planning, design, and construction helped make it likely for the entire process to be completed in just one year. The bridge opened for traffic in September, three months ahead of schedule, earning the builders a $25 million bonus. The sensors do in addition than keep lines of rails of maintenance needs. During Minnesota’s bitter winters, they monitor weather conditions and automatically trigger an anti-icing connected view to prevent the roadway from freezing over. “The technology is about speed, it’s about quality, and it’s about efficiency,” says Jon Chiglo, the debonair engineer who managed the $234 the great body of the people concoct for the Minnesota Transportation Dept.

Chiglo’s bridge may be a sign of things to come. Over the next five years the U.S. is poised to spend more than $500 billion put on infrastructure, more than the amount spent to build the entire Interstate Highway System in today’s dollars. The riches will come from President Barack Obama’s stimulus package and a disjoined carriage bill that Congress is expected to approve in September. The avalanche of pay in money comes just as a army of so-called pungent technologies is emerging to make it potential to build roads, bridges, mass transit systems, schools, hospitals, and relating to electricity grids faster and better, and to operate them more efficiently.

There are tensions over how smart to make the country’s infrastructure, admitting. On united side, tech leaders portray this as an unprecedented opportunity for the U.S. to catch up with countries in Asia and the Middle East that have spent billions on futuristic cities and other projects in recent years. “Smarter infrastructure is by very much our best way to creating these new, globally competing jobs and stimulating advancement,” said IBM (IBM) Chief Executive Samuel J. Palmisano in January, after meeting with Obama to discuss the stimulus package.

TECH SKEPTICS

Of course, IBM and other companies have a lot to good from investments in tech-savvy infrastructure. Among the tech powerhouses, Cisco Systems (CSCO), Accenture, (ACN) and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) are quite launching new initiatives to profit from the opportunity. Construction giants Bechtel and Fluor (FLR) are developing their tech expertise to gain a competitive verge, as are equipment makers such similar to General Electric (GE) and Siemens (SI). Market researcher IDC estimates that sales of technology for infrastructure projects could top $122 billion by 2012.

Weakness in financials and Hewlett-Packard led the blue-chip benchmark lower Thursday, with other major indexes also posting losses

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U.S. stocks accomplished weaker Thursday, sending the Dow Jones industrial average to a new bear-market closing low of 7465.95, accompanied by drops in the S&P 500 and other, broader market indicators. The Dow’sitting author bear-market closing low had been 7552.29, set on November 20, 2008.

Leading the blue-chip barometer let down were abrupt drops in Bank of America (BAC) and Citigroup (C) in the banking arena, and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) in the technology sector.

Fresh reports on jobless claims, farmer prices and manufacturing pointed to loitering household weakness.

On Thursday, the 30-stock Dow Jones industrial average finished lower by 89.68 points, or 1.19%, at 7,465.95. The broad S&P 500 index fell 9.48 points, or 1.20%, to 778.94. The tech-heavy Nasdaq composite index shed 25.15 points, or 1.71%, to 1,442.82.

Trading was moderate, with some volatility before Friday’session expiry of futures and options.

Treasuries fell on profit taking. The dollar index eased. Gold futures retreated. But energy futures rose succeeding the Energy Dept.’s weekly inventory report, showed crude oil inventories unexpectedly fell 200,000 barrels, gasoline stocks rose 1.1 million barrels, and distillate funds fell 800,000 barrels.

Atlanta Fed President Lockhart uttered the conceitedness rate is at an “acceptable level.” While its is a concern, he sees “trifle that suggests risk of deflation.” That’s consistent with the Fed’s forecasts released yesterday, of the same kind with well for the reason that with this morning’s bounce in PPI. Lockhart expects the unemployment blame to rise above 8%, further should fall short of 9%. The Fed president did not rule out guaranteeing toxic assets as any other extent that could be taken to try to stabilize the credit markets.

Meanwhile, among Wall Street fears that U.S. banks will be nationalized, he said “I am not aware at this adapt to the occasion of any serious attention of nationalization.” Lockhart said he expects the recession to last from one side the first half of the year. He said the current case of the administration is weak and in that place are still obstacles that work against a strong reaction over the next several months.

Shares of insurance hercules Prudential Financial

(PRU) slumped Thursday after Fitch Ratings cut its senior unsecured debt to BBB from A- and commercial paper rating to F2 from F1, as well as Prudential’session financial strength ratings of its primary domestic life insurance subsidiaries to A+ from AA-.

In economic news Thursday, the Philadelphia Fed exponent plunged to -41.3 in February, after improving in both January (-24.3) and December (-36.1). That’s the lowest reading since 1990. The February employment index dropped to -45.8 from -39.0 in January as the pace of job cuts accelerated. New orders fell to -30.3 from -22.3. Prices paid rose to -13.7 from -27.0. Prices received fell to -27.8 from -26.2. The 6-month general business activity index improved to 15.9 versus 7.4 in January, although the characteristic of capital expenditures declined to -17.8 from -16.4.

The U.S. index of leading indicators rose 0.4% in January to 99.5, from a revised 99.1 in December (was 99.5). November’s 99.2 was revised down to 98.9. Boosting the index again latest month (as was the suit in December) was money supply with a 0.54% positive contribution. The yield spread also contributed 0.23% to the index, while consumer expectations added 0.11%. Negative contributions came mainly from jobless claims, -0.16%, and building permits, -0.13%.

The U.S. producer price index (PPI) rose 0.8% in January after a 1.9% very little in December, while the core rate, excluding food and fuel, jumped 0.4% from a 0.2% pace the month in front of. Both were much stronger than the 0.3% and 0.1% increases expected, respectively. While higher pluck prices suggested a rise in headline farmer prices, the big falsehood in the core worth was a surprise. Energy prices rose 3.7% following a 9.3% drop in December. Consumer goods prices rose 1.0% after falling 2.6% the month before. Food prices fell 0.4% following a 1.5% decline in December.

While the expansion skip may avoid reduce deflation risks, a continued moderation in core inflation remains to be expected in 2009, according to S&P more advanced economist Beth Ann Bovino.

BusinessWeek ranked the best affordable suburbs in the U.S. position through state. The overall winner? Pewaukee, Wis. Which is the winner for your state?

By Prashant Gopal

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If you’re not a Wisconsin native, you’ve probably not ever heard of it.

But the city of Pewaukee, Wis., a small Milwaukee suburb overlooking a scenic sailing and fishing lake of the same name, has award-winning schools, bellow crime, natural seemliness, and homes as antidote to every budget. It topped the list of BusinessWeek.com’s 2009 rankings of the "Best Affordable Suburbs." Pewaukee was selected for Wisconsin in our state-by-state rankings, and scored No. 1 on our nationwide list.

The city of Pewaukee should not be confused with the village of Pewaukee, which the city surrounds. (Pewaukee village, which has a beach on the toward the east tip of the lake and serves as the downtown for the area, malicious just short of Pewaukee city in our scoring for Wisconsin.)

Close to Milwaukee

Pewaukee, which has about 12,800 residents, has managed to keep its rural character spite its growing population and location on a greater highway just 20 minutes from Milwaukee and 70 minutes from the college town of Madison. Among the region’session largest employers are large health-care providers such as Aurora Health Care, Covenant Healthcare, and GE Healthcare, a subsidiary of General Electric (GE), as well as Kohl’s Department Stores and Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance.

Pewaukee continues to grow, in part because of its proximity to Milwaukee, and its setting upon the body the eastern end of the four-mile-long Pewaukee Lake. The lake is popular for skating, and ice fishing during the winter and sailing, wet skiing, dizziness, and canoeing in the summer. "You can be near a metro area where you can go to a world-class museum, a zoo, and things parallel that but you’re out in the suburbs…where you have power to podagra to the end and see cows and picnic in the park," declared Harlan Clinkenbeard, who has been Pewaukee’sitting city planner for three decades.

BusinessWeek used facts from Manhattan-based OnBoard Informatics to choose one suburb within 25 miles of the most populated city in each state. The recession has flattened home prices across the country, but the idea behind the list is to contribute assistance readers find the most for their money within some of America’session largest metro areas.

Affordability is No. 1

We evaluated confines on a variety of factors but weighted affordability most heavily. We also considered lifestyle (compendious commutes, clean treble, moderate crime, sterling weather, and green space), the quality of schools, and the hardness of the topical economy. None of the places had populations of more than 60,000 or less than 5,000.

We fix places like Pewaukee that weren’t too far from the attractions of a big city, but likewise retained their small-town charm. The recession has brought down costs in straightforward about all of these communities. But some of these places possess even managed to draw in of great size businesses and new residents even in these unyielding times.

Companies be obliged recently invested $22 million in new industrial development in the small suburb of Brandon, S.D., east of Sioux Falls, said Dennis E. Olson, the city’sitting administrator and finance officer. Brandon is still growing by about 100 homes a year, compared to the 350-home annual pace during the housing boom, Olson said.

Good Schools a Draw

He said residents like the fact that Brandon has a small school district in which place students dispose a great education without getting lost in the crowd. They besides like the variety of homes, which range from on the point $225,000 to $440,000, he before-mentioned.

And by the agency of the way, it’s good. "We have our own police department, but I be possible to’t remember the last time we had a murder," Olson declared. "We had a guy who was growing marijuana in his basement for a few years but that was not any big have commerce."

Pewaukee father Sandy Wysocki said she loves the fact that totality the district’s K-12 schools are situated on a single campus because it creates a greater sense of community. And the campus setting allows for high school students to volunteer in elementary school classrooms and for elementary bring under subjection students to attend high school sports events.

Proximity Breeds Closeness

Sandy and her husband, Paul Wysocki, moved to Pewaukee two decades ago and have three children. One is in college and two attend the Pewaukee High School. "It’s a town where a lot of people grow up together," Sandy Wysocki related. "A allotment of kids possess been going to school together since kindergarten."

Want to see which was the Best Affordable Suburb in your state? Click in this place.

The wireless carrier’s fourth-quarter challenges may be shared by the rest of the industry in the coming months

By Olga Kharif

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"Economic uncertainty" was the phrase of the day for Sprint Nextel (S). During a Feb. 19 conference call, executives of the No. 3 U.S. wireless service provider used the brace words liberally to describe the company’s fourth-quarter results. In the three months ended in December, sales fell, losses ballooned, and customers jumped ship. There was in like manner little perceptibility into the future that the company declined to force a anticipate on the side of the current quarter.

Usually when Sprint reports a wicked quarter, it’s easy to blame challenges specific to the concourse, including subpar customer service and network performance. But this time around, Sprint’s woes augur a cragged year toward the entire industry.

Sprint Nextel’s results are an early indication that the tough economic times engulfing construction, banking, and other industries are catching up through wireless carriers. Already, the downturn has pushed equipment maker Nortel (NT) into bankruptcy and ravaged sales of phone manufacturers like Motorola (MOT). Now it’s the official function providers’ alteration. "I don’t think in that place’s any sector that’s been insensible," says Brent Iadarola, a global research director for consultant Frost & Sullivan. "The wireless sector is not immune."

Business Customer Exodus

Sprint Nextel may be sympathetic the straiten from businesses earliest because, among the top wireless carriers, it has the largest proportion of corporate customers. Sprint reported a "sizable" increase in turnover among corporate customers, which account for more than 25% of its user base. Companies are eliminating employees and canceling contracts for Research In Motion (RIMM) BlackBerrys and other business-friendly devices that run on the Sprint Nextel netting. "We can watch unemployment [rise] and see a guide impact on our enterprise employment," Sprint Nextel CEO Dan Hesse says in an parley with BusinessWeek.

Though Sprint is the largest national provider of wireless service to businesses, the adventurousness great emigration may also affect the top pair mobile-phone service providers: AT&T (T) and Verizon Wireless, that is owned by the agency of Verizon Communications (VZ) and Vodafone Group (VOD). Businesses are cutting back on air cards that connect laptops to the Web via wireless networks, for the reason that well as related data plans, says consultant Chetan Sharma. One maker of air cards, Sierra Wireless (SW), on Jan. 29 announced it would lay off 10% of its workforce jointly a small quantity in fourth-quarter revenue. About 12% of carriers’ data revenues come from data cards, Sharma estimates. While Hesse says Sprint isn’t feeling any impact yet, its rivals are. In a recent note, UBS (UBS) estimated that AT&T’s net tune card additions fell 121,000 in the fourth quarter, from 186,000 in the third part quarter and 166,000 in the second.

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PEORIA, Ariz. — Of all the touching, misty, joyful tales of this Junior Reprise, the most underrated comes from a man you’ve been hoping would be thrown overboard wearing a concrete life vest.

For years, Mariners fans have blamed team president Chuck Armstrong, along with CEO Howard Lincoln, for their team’s woes. As the playoff drought grew to seven seasons, as the high-profile oops multiplied, their longevity became their burden. They were here for the good, but now the bad smothers their entree.

You vilified them. You offered to purchase their guillotine. But a funny thing happened on the way to their execution.

Armstrong helped steer Ken Griffey Jr. back to Seattle.

He’s not seeking any credit or vindication, but he deserves his share. He’s cautious not to tack too many expectations onto this comeback tale, either. Nevertheless, as a longtime friend of the icon, Armstrong overflows with delight as he recounts his role in luring Griffey back to the place where he became a superstar.

“Oh, this is a wonderful thing to happen!” Armstrong exclaimed Thursday from his office in Seattle. “I’m so appreciative of him and his family for allowing it to come together. For me, this closes the loop. It brings back home our icon.”

How did it happen? Go back several months, to the start of free agency. General manager Jack Zduriencik had just been hired, and after he got comfortable and started mulling plans to improve the roster, Armstrong mentioned his familial relationship with Griffey and his agent, Brian Goldberg.

They remained tight, even though Griffey had been gone for a decade. The connection was so strong that, before Griffey was traded from Cincinnati to the Chicago White Sox last summer, Junior had Goldberg call Armstrong to inform him a deal was close.

Armstrong confirmed speculation from a year ago that the Mariners attempted to acquire Griffey from Cincinnati. The effort never gained much momentum, he said, because the Mariners never found any momentum. As both the Reds and Mariners struggled in 2008, Armstrong said the three friends “mutually agreed it was best for Ken to try and get back to the playoffs. That’s what he really wanted.”

The White Sox made the playoffs, but a bum left knee prevented Junior from having the impact he wanted. He quietly had offseason knee surgery as many teams whispered that he was done.

Armstrong wasn’t so sure. Maybe it was his love for Griffey. Maybe he just knew him better than most. So the team president offered his assistance to Zduriencik.

“Let me take the Griffey thing,” Armstrong told his new GM. “Obviously, you have autonomy to do what you want here, but I’ll look into this, and if you think acquiring Junior is the best baseball decision, then I will do everything I can to make it happen.”

After examining their options, Zduriencik and manager Don Wakamatsu agreed the Mariners could use Griffey’s left-handed bat. So Tuesday of last week, Armstrong flew to California, where Griffey was playing in a Pebble Beach pro-am golf tournament.

Griffey, his agent and Armstrong had dinner together at the Lodge at Pebble Beach that night. People kept coming over to say hello to Griffey, and Armstrong became nervous he would be spotted.

ESPN personality Chris Berman was playing in the tournament, and Armstrong worried there would be some huge premature story of “Griffey Flirting With Mariners Again” before Junior had the opportunity to process it all. But no one recognized Armstrong as a representative of the Mariners. Griffey introduced him to curious onlookers as “an old friend.”

After dinner, the three men went to Junior’s hotel room to talk some more. Armstrong wiggled past an ironing board in the middle of the room.

“You ironed your shirt?” he said.

“Yeah, I wanted to look good,” Griffey replied.

It spurred conversation of how much Junior had grown in the 22 years since the Mariners drafted him. They drifted back in time, to the first contract Griffey signed. What a long night that was. He didn’t put his signature on the paper until 2 or 3 a.m.

And, oh, remember how he made the team in 1989 at age 19 despite the fact that the Mariners were against bringing him up so quickly?

“You had no business making the team,” Armstrong told him, laughing, “but you were the best player at our camp.”

“Right then, I started trusting that you were going to give me a fair shake,” Junior said.

They talked about everything, providing updates on their families, laughing, joking and then turning serious when Griffey expressed he wanted to end his career the right way to preserve his legacy.

“Are you sure you don’t want me back just to help you sell tickets?” Griffey asked.

Armstrong shook his head.

“We want you back to help us win games and get this thing going again,” he replied.

A whirlwind ensued after that wonderful night of reminiscing. Media reports out of Seattle surfaced, declaring Griffey was on the verge of a return. Last Sunday, Junior and his wife, Melissa, made a clandestine visit to Peoria to meet Zduriencik and Wakamatsu. Griffey also took a physical.

Then Atlanta started bidding against Seattle, and it seemed like the Braves would sign him. Griffey was struggling with the decision, however.

“How would you like to be so far away from your family for seven months?” Junior asked Armstrong on Wednesday morning.

Griffey was speaking from his home in Orlando, a six-hour flight from Seattle. Armstrong prepared for a letdown.

He gave it a good try, he figured. At least the experience was cathartic for Armstrong. Griffey made him feel inspired again, and it was much needed after last season, which Armstrong described this way: “I don’t want to get overly maudlin, but 2008 was the worst year of my life.”

After the Mariners fired GM Bill Bavasi and manager John McLaren, Armstrong said he had a few passing thoughts about resigning. But he quickly immersed himself in the GM hunt.

“I’d been here for so long and knew the franchise, and I thought we’d be further delayed if I left,” Armstrong said. “I concluded that I thought I was the best guy to make the GM selection.”

He found a good one in Zduriencik. And then he outdid himself.

When Junior decided to return, Armstrong was on an airplane. He was returning to Seattle from Peoria on Wednesday, so after some failed attempts to reach him, Griffey’s agent called Zduriencik to make it official. Zduriencik told Goldberg that Armstrong was flying home, but he decided to let Griffey break the news to his old friend.

“I’m sure he’d like to talk to you,” Zduriencik said.

Shortly after Armstrong’s flight landed, he turned on his cellphone and received the call from Goldberg. He sounded very serious and put Griffey on the phone.

“It’s hard for me to tell you, but … ” Griffey said softly, pausing for effect, “I’m coming back!”

When the call concluded, Mariners team physician Mitch Storey, who was on that same flight, looked at Armstrong and noticed some wetness around his eyes.

“I knew you were tearing up,” Storey said, teasing.

“Yep,” Armstrong responded, “Ken’s a special person.”

After all the lows, Armstrong finally felt the ultimate high — pure joy. It’s a strong emotion. It’s even better than vindication.

Jerry Brewer: 206-464-2277 or

jbrewer@seattletimes.com