Photo by Beth Hughes

The Seattle Mariners are progressive. While some teams in sports are punishing their players for tweeting (and even have gone so far as to ban media from doing it), the Mariners are not just allowing their players to to use social media, they’re embracing it. In fact, so much so that they hosted their very own Seattle Mariners Social Media Happy Hour event on Tuesday which included a panel discussion featuring many local social media thought leaders which consist of SMC Seattle board members Shauna Causey of Comcast and Elliott Pesut of Alaska Air, Jenni Hogan of KIRO TV, Lily Jang of Q13, Mike Salk of 710 ESPN, and M’s Director of Marketing Greg Greene and pitcher, Ryan Rowland-Smith.

With a room packed to the brim full of enthusiastic Mariners fans and social media enthusiasts alike, the event was streamed on Mariners.com and garnered quite the buzz, even being featured in USA Today.

As an organization, one can only be impressed with the Mariners and their willingness and enthusiasm for social media. In speaking with Kevin Martinez, Mariners Vice President of Marketing, he said they hope to do more events like the Mariners Social Media Happy Hour in the future.