SEATTLE, Washington.  Bowing to pressure from its Left Coast, slacker dude fan base, the Seattle Mariners today announced that the Nirvana song "Smells Like Teen Spirit" will replace "The Star-Spangled Banner" as the anthem played before the team's home games at Safeco Field.

"We're in the entertainment business, and Francis Scott Key peaked on the Billboard Jingoistic Singles Chart around 1950," said M's general manager Bill Bavasi.  "Frankly, the Star-Spangled Banner is not depressing enough for Seattlians, or Seattlites, or whatever you call them."

"Smells Like Teen Spirit" was the first track and first single from Nirvana's 1991 debut album "Nevermind", and is generally credited with bringing the musical genre known as "grunge" to the attention of the world beyond Seattle.  Rolling Stone Magazine ranks "Teen Spirit" ninth on its list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences places it ahead of Herman Melville's "Moby Dick", Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman" and "The New Hollywood Squares" as a cultural achievement.

Conservative groups were quick to criticize the shift as indicative of the decline of patriotism in liberal "blue" states such as Washington.  "This is just more evidence, in case anybody needed it, that espresso drinks are poisoning the minds of America's youth," said Wendy Davis, President of Concerned Women for America.  Seattle is the headquarters of Starbucks and Seattle's Best Coffee, and leads the nation in the consumption of lattes and cappucinos.

Baseball commissioner Bud Selig said he would take no action against the team for the time being.  "Most of the day-to-day problems I face running major league baseball are like teenage acne," he said in response to a reporter's question.  "Ignore them and eventually they go away." 

Selig said if the Mariners' experiment is a success, he would consider using the 1953 Patti Page hit "How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?" as part of opening ceremonies at Miller Park before Brewers' games.  "That's my all-time favorite," he said with a wistful smile.

Mariners fans, historically a free-thinking, non-conformist group, were generally in favor of the change.  "Ten years ago all cell phones sounded the same," said Evan Martin, a graduate student at the University of Washington.  "Now everybody's got their own ring tone, so why shouldn't we all have different anthems?"

When it was pointed out that an anthem is intended to bind Americans together as a nation of states under a federal government headquartered in Washington, D.C., Martin was unfazed.  "Dude, you're wrong.  That is like a totally different Washington."

Copyright 2006, Con Chapman