Where Mariners’ season ending leaves fans

Sep 28, 2024, 4:43 PM

Fans cheer for Julio Rodriguez of the Seattle Mariners during a game at T-Mobile Park. (Steph Chambers/Getty Images)

(Steph Chambers/Getty Images)

Seattle Sports

I am an imposter. At least when it comes to ranting about the Seattle Mariners, which I’ve found myself doing a bit over the last 48 hours since they’ve been eliminated from postseason contention.

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It’s not the broken heart of a fan speaking here. The single most fascinating thing about sports, to me, is how teams build championship rosters, and as a former writer who loves a great story I, like Willy Wonka’s Veruca Salt stomping her feet in frustration, hate when I see the same one over, and over, and over.

What I crave are those stories of uncovering raw talent and unearthing every stone for the right piece. The ones of pulling off a blockbuster trade, or of getting the most from the former backup no one saw coming. The displays of dominance, godlike stretches of perfection, or even more fun, surprise – hello, Detroit Tigers – especially when the odds are stacked against a team. It makes the Mariners, a club who will never be able to compete with the Yankees and Dodgers’ payrolls, a perfect character. If only they could pull it off.

When they don’t, and when yet another season ends the way this one did, I always think of two people. Because working in sports changes the way you see things, I don’t feel the end of a season in my bones. But these two have, and I think of that a lot.

The first is my Uncle Jim, who, like most, fell in love with baseball at a very young age. Not the way that I love baseball – which is to see how the pieces of a puzzle fit together, or stare in awe of a transcendent performance – but the way that you love something you can’t explain. He couldn’t play for his high school team because he had to work after school cleaning stables, but he could play on Sundays as an outfielder for his church. He followed the Seattle Pilots for their sole season, and when they left, so did he – to the Marines. His sister, Kathy, would send box score clippings from other teams around the league. When he came back in the late 70s, he found two new loves in the same year: his wife, Pam, and the Seattle Mariners.

He didn’t often go to games, but did take his sister to one. It was May of 1982. They parked underneath an overpass and walked to the Kingdome. Jim sat his glove on his lap and showed Kathy how to eat peanuts “like a baseball fan,” letting the shells drop between their feet. He was giddy, and Kathy was still trying to figure out why this day, in a season with so many games, was so important.

“Who’s Gaylord Perry?”

After Perry became the 15th pitcher ever to notch his 300th win and fans cleared the stands, Kathy glanced down their aisle to see piles and piles of hulls sitting apart, all the way down the row, like ghosts watching history.

Jim would squeeze in a quick nap after work to make sure he could stay up for a full game. He watched every single one, every single season. And each April, Pam would put a sign on top of the television that read “This marriage on hold ‘till October,” which was a tongue-in-cheek show of her support for his love of the game, and a completely unnecessary one, because the only thing Jim loved more than baseball was Pam.

Health issues kept him from watching a game at T-Mobile Park, and Jim died a few years before the Mariners finally broke their playoff drought. But whenever the Mariners do something special – or when, like Thursday, they’re eliminated from contention – I think of him.

I do think of one other person, a childhood friend named Aaron. And it’s because his story is one so many Mariners fans currently live. His might even be your own: his youth was highlighted by the best Mariners teams we’ve ever seen. Griffey was a childhood hero. He can recall a million memories of abstract players. And he probably would never have guessed that when the Mariners 2001 season came to a close as he entered middle school, that he’d be married with children before his team sniffed the postseason again.

But he watches every season. He tracks stats and trades, and texts his friends to lament losses, celebrate wins, and pitch scenarios for the ways this team can finally make it all work. When they don’t, he’s learned to embrace the dark humor that comes with Mariners fandom. Underneath that, though, remains a sincere search for optimism that those faint memories of playoff baseball, always fading with the passing of time, can become sharper and more concrete by seeing something new.

Mariners fans have, arguably, gotten that. For the first time since 2003, the Mariners had a fourth consecutive winning season. Cal Raleigh is set to lead all catchers in home runs (32) for a third year in a row. Julio Rodriguez, despite a baffling performance, became just the second player (in addition to Kansas City’s Bobby Witt Jr.) to have three straight 20-20 seasons to begin his career. And as disappointing as 2024 was, Seattle will close the season with the best starting rotation in baseball. There are good pieces here. The makings of a great story.

It hasn’t been enough. Perhaps it’s a front office that must re-evaluate its own approach after failed free agent moves, or an ownership group that must make itself comfortable with risk. Of course, it would be foolish to ignore the players’ responsibility here as well. This kind of struggle requires a multi-pronged approach, and what matters most is that it not be the same approach that got them here.

The bigger picture is that baseball is a beautiful sport and the people who love it dearly will watch it no matter what. And while that feels to some like rewarding mediocrity, a love of baseball is a personal relationship. To watch and wait can feel powerless, but it’s not the job of a fan to push back against the thing that brings them joy.

Their single job is to care. It’s a task that’s sometimes painful but always effortless. Millions of fans of clubs across the country will pound their fists or shake their heads when their season ends in heartbreak, not because they didn’t know losing was possible, but because at some point they let themselves believe. That belief makes someone like Jim get to work early on weekdays so he can get home in time to watch his favorite team, and it makes a fan like Aaron beam when he realizes his children are old enough to throw a ball. Baseball becomes part of them. If you’re reading this, it’s probably part of you. And to that lover of the game one simple measure is owed: to give someone willing to believe something real to believe in.