The Seattle Mariners are three years older than I am. I’m older than anyone on their roster by four years, but most of the team is much younger. Their manager, Scott Servais, was in Little League when two new franchises, the Mariners and the Toronto Blue Jays, were introduced to American League play in 1977.
Eighteen years had passed, several of them with me rooting tirelessly and heartbrokenly for the Pacific Northwest’s only Major League team, when the M’s overcame a 13-game August deficit to convert a losing record into a tie for the AL West pennant with the then California Angels. The phrase was Refuse to Lose, and they did, drubbing the Angels 9-1 in Game 163 to earn a trip to the Division Series against the Yankees while I screamed at my television set in Albuquerque after I got home from high school. Five games later, they capped a most improbable comeback in the 11th inning with a two-run double, dogpiling Ken Griffey Jr. at the plate, earning a trip to the ALCS and clinching the greatest memory, to date, in Seattle baseball history.
Six years and another two playoff trips later, they wrapped up another fairy-tale improbability: one of baseball’s most hapless franchises had lost a world-class superstar to trades or free agency year after year: Randy Johnson, Griffey, Alex Rodriguez. And yet, on the back of rookie (in America, at least) MVP Ichiro Suzuki, the 2001 Mariners won more regular season games than anyone, ever. 116-46. Seventy games over .500. Of course, they lost in five games to a post-9/11 New York Yankees who themselves went on to lose to Randy Johnson in the World Series in seven games. Still, it felt like the beginning of a dynasty that just had to break through. ARod had taken them to the 2000 ALCS, so they’d been back-to-back times. Surely, there was more to come.
They haven’t been back to the playoffs since. It’s been twenty years – two longer than the M’s had to wait to make the playoffs in the first place.
In 2002, they won 93 games. In 2003, they won 93 games. In 2007, they won 88 games. In 2014, they won 87 games and were eliminated in the sixth inning of Game 162 by the Oakland A’s wrapping up their win while they had a one-game lead on the M’s. In 2018, they won 89 games. There were stinkers of years too – 99 losses in 2004. 101 twice after that. But their overall record from 2002-2020 has been 1415-1561, a decent .475 winning percentage. This has not been two decades of utter mediocrity. It’s been two decades of periodic frustration.
Come now the 2021 Seattle Mariners. Written off by everyone at the start of the season. No-hit twice in May, by two of the lowliest teams in the AL. Incredibly young, hopelessly inexperienced, riding the longest streak of playoff futility in North American sports. A five-game winning streak at the end of May puts them over .500. They’re 48-43 at the break, somehow just 3.5 games out of playoff position. They build a reputation for excellence in 1-run games, win 9 of their first 10 extra-inning contests. When they lose, they lose big. When they win, they win small, exciting, close and late, extra fun. In late July, they complete their most epic comeback in memory this millennium: an 11-8 win over the hated Houston Astros on a bottom of the eighth grand slam. Four innings prior, they’d been down 7-0.
The next morning, the General Manager traded their beloved closer to Houston in the middle of the series for a backup infielder. The clubhouse staged a small riot. Tempers flared, frustration boiled over, incredulity reigned. Though the trade made more sense in the context of a later trade and the new infielder, Abraham Toro, became a strong-hitting everyday 2B for the M’s, the damage felt like it had been done. The M’s went 4-9 in their next 13 games, careening out of contention.
But they got over it. They shook it off. And somehow, miraculously, they’ve gone 35-25 since. Including 11-2 in their last 13. To now stand one game away from tying for a playoff position. With one game to go.
Night before last, they were tied for that playoff spot, the second Wild Card, itself a ticket to a single-elimination road game that barely feels like it should count as breaking the playoff streak. They were down 2-1 to the Angels, at home, a familiar situation they’d won time and time again. They were riding a streak of 4 straight comeback wins. They only needed a run. They were playing in front of their first sellout crowd of the year, a newly invigorated baseball town ready to explode. In the 7th, Luis Torrens hit a leadoff triple. He didn’t score. In the 9th, Kyle Seager hit a leadoff double. He didn’t score. The Mariners lost exactly the kind of game they always won.
So after expecting the win the night before, I was already heartbroken when, clinging to a tenuous 3-1 lead, our most consistent clutch pitcher, Paul Sewald, coughed up a center-cut fastball for a three-run homer in the top of the 8th, soaring onto a tarp in right field and silencing another packed house in Seattle. I sat there, stunned. We were down 4-3 with six outs left in our season. It was happening again. Utter collapse, abject failure at the finish line. Immediately in the bottom of the frame, the Mariners rallied. They loaded the bases with one out. Ty France, the best hitter of the night so far, grounded weakly to third and Jarred Kelenic was barely thrown out at home trying to score. He’d reached base by getting pegged in the kneecap and we wondered if the replay-review play would have finished differently had he not been hit. Everything was conspiring against us. Mitch Haniger, who had all 3 RBI so far, came to the plate. He worked a full count. I was squinting at the TV, unable to fully watch. And then he smacked a base hit through the shift on the left side, scoring two. J.P. Crawford slid home with the winning run and jumped two feet in the air. The Mariners had more to play for in 2021. I yelped, then quickly dissolved to sobs. I’d been ready to cry at a loss, but was surprised by tears in a win. Game 162 matters. It counts.
The Mariners do not, sadly, control their own destiny. The storied Yankees, owners of 27 World Series titles, are a game up. So are the Boston Red Sox, darlings of the 2000s, winners of four titles since they broke their 86-year curse in 2004, the most anyone’s won in this century. The Mariners are even tied with the plucky heavy-hitting Blue Jays, their brothers also born in 1977, who won back-to-back championships in the early ’90s before the M’s had even played their first playoff game. The Mariners are the only team in baseball to have never even qualified for a World Series. They need to win today, then rely on the Yankees or Red Sox to lose, then wait for another Game 163, their first since 1995, to try to get into another single-elimination playoff game that may somehow lead to glory. If they qualify for the ALDS, they will face the best team in the League, the Tampa Bay Rays, who the Mariners somehow dominated this season, going 7-1.
If they’d lost more than one of those games, today wouldn’t matter. But it does. It matters.
My son is not yet a year old. He’s forty-three years younger than the Mariners. He’s never seen them struggle in obscurity, never seen them fail. Maybe he is the omen of better things for this team. Or maybe baseball just makes people irrational, makes them overvalue a child’s game played by millionaire adults to entertain and, more often, torture us. It is perhaps insane to play 162 games of baseball and fight for the reward of the right to play more baseball. But that’s all we want. The chance to play. The chance to play again.
Believe.
