SEATTLE -- A Seattle Mariners season ticket holder and fervent heckler of opposing teams is suing the club after being told to pipe down or risk loss of his prized seats.

Anthony Ercolano, 44, of Seattle, a former Microsoft Corp. employee, filed the case Tuesday in King County Superior Court, accusing the Mariners of violating his freedom of speech and possibly of breaching his season ticket contract.

He said he was told in a telephone call from Mariners executive vice president Bob Aylward to lower the volume or give up his two $32,000 Diamond Club seats in the fifth row behind home plate.

The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages and asks that the Mariners be barred from ejecting him and from revoking his season tickets.

Mariners spokeswoman Rebecca Hale said the club had seen the complaint but would not comment on it.

In a letter earlier this summer, club lawyer Bruce Johnson wrote that Ercolano was disturbing others seated nearby.

"The Mariners have full authority to protect nearby fans in the Diamond Club from the heavy, incessant volume of noise created by Mr. Ercolano,'' Johnson wrote to Ercolano's lawyer, Paul Meiklejohn.

"These fans do not come to the ballpark to be repeatedly and constantly assaulted by Mr. Ercolano's noise,'' Johnson added.

According to the lawsuit, Aylward suggested that Ercolano consider buying seats elsewhere.

"Really, what he wants is to be free of harassment, and he'd like an apology from the Mariners,'' Meiklejohn said. "He feels that he spent a lot of money for these tickets ... and he didn't expect to be belittled.''

Ercolano, who usually brings his wife or one of his three daughters to the ballpark, says he has missed fewer than 15 games since he bought rights to the seats before Safeco Field opened in 1999.

"I believe in being loud at a baseball game,'' he wrote in a letter to Mariners president Chuck Armstrong.

He said he wanted to be close enough to be heard on the field when he shouts at a short batter to stand up, asks a young-looking player whom he is taking to the prom or mimics a bawling baby when a player argues with the ump.

Ercolano said he never uses foul language, comments on a low batting average or insults a player's family.

According to the lawsuit, the dispute arose in May when Aylward told Ercolano to, "tone it down.''

When Ercolano's wife called Aylward and asked what her husband should do when the scoreboard flashes, "Make noise,'' the club executive advised that he should take his cue from "the people sitting near him,'' Meiklejohn said.

"For (Ercolano), the enjoyment is in the baseball game and cheering and teaching his girls about the game,'' the lawyer said, "whereas with some other Diamond Club members, it's an opportunity to network and to set up business deals, and the game is sort of a sideline to that.''