Goodbye to a player and a clown.

Ichiro Suzuki is leaving the Mariners for the Yankees. J.P. Patches, the clown of Seattle, died Sunday.

Both take us back to happier times. Seeing Ichiro depart takes me back to a magical 2001 season for the Mariners, when the team won 116 games, Ichiro was in right field and Dave Niehaus was at the mike.

J.P. Patches, the city's TV clown from 1958 to 1981, left us for the big television in the sky Sunday. He died at the age of 84 of multiple myeloma. And I remember when seeing a pie meet face made my day.

"All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances," Shakespeare wrote in "As You Like It."

Play can still be play, even as play fields become base. A movie theater was a set for a killing field; a college football building, a mask for molestation.

Here is video of J.P. Patches, playing Ichiro's part, courtesy of Youtube user Igaveyouadesert.