"Chone Figgins is not a quitter. That's all he really wants you to know about him. Actually, he expects you to know this already, even though his first Mariners season was an embarrassing introduction akin to someone's pants falling down in public.

Figgins didn't regularly show the skills that enticed the Mariners to give him $36 million, but he doesn't think he made a poor impression. Because the struggles should've revealed his defining characteristic. He is not a quitter. He mentions this so many times that it should be considered the verbal equivalent of a schoolboy scribbling a phrase on a chalkboard over and over during detention.

To hear him tell it, his woes revealed his essence.

"It just shows what type of person I am," he says. "I didn't give up."

And a minute later, he says, "I'm not giving up."

And two minutes later: "Regardless of whether it's going bad or good, I'm still going to go out there and compete. Every. Single. Game."

And three minutes later: "I will never quit."

Then he went to lift weights.

If Figgins owned a parrot, he would teach it to recite the late basketball coach Jim Valvano's "Don't Ever Give Up" speech."