Mariners’ GM Jerry Dipoto optimistic despite recent slump

PHILADELPHIA — Jerry Dipoto once tried to collect the signature of every player in the history of Major League Baseball. He came reasonably close, gathering balls and cards, musty old licensing contracts, anything he could find. He sold them all, eventually, but never forgets a name.

Watching a game with Dipoto, the Seattle Mariners’ president of baseball operations, is like hopping aboard the great glass elevator from the old “Willy Wonka” movie. With the slightest prompt, you’re bouncing sideways and slant ways and long ways and square ways and front ways and any other ways you can think of.

So it was Monday when the Mariners played the Philadelphia Phillies in the final stop of a punishing trip that has taken them from surging to slumping. The voice of Dan Baker, the Phillies’ venerab