After 21 long years of frustration and failure, of close calls and falling short, of hopeful spring training sessions and offseasons spent with regret, of entire careers without champagne parties for King Felix and Kyle Seager, of so much change, including three general managers, eight executives and two interim managers, from hundreds of players, from “Believe Big” to “True to the Blue” to “Sea Us Rise,” the Seattle Mariners are finally returning to the playoffs.
With a sore left thumb trying to play through in recent weeks and keeping him out of the grid despite his vehement protests Friday night, catcher Cal Raleigh walked up to the plate to squeeze the hit with two outs in the bottom of the ninth of a draw.
After using a 3-1 slider and smearing another slider from right-handed Domingo Acevedo, Raleigh didn’t miss the third slider in a row thrown at him.
He launched a majestic flying ball late into the night. As it climbed to right-field stance, its teammates and 44,754 raised their hands in anticipation of jubilation. The ball slammed into the windows of the Hit It Here Cafe, turning T-Mobile Park into beautiful mayhem and joyous mayhem with the Mariners 2-1 walk-off victory.
“The moment I knew it was fair, I just looked at the dugout and everyone was jumping up and down,” Raleigh said. “It’s not really a pressure moment. We have fun and play baseball. That’s how you should look at it.”
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As Raleigh circled the bases, put both hands on his head and said “oh my god,” as he approached second base, the sold-out crowd was a sea of hugs and high-fives. Somewhere as he looked down on Seattle’s starless night, Dave Niehaus yelled, “My oh, I don’t believe it,” and wept for what he was missing.
“The fact that we are on our margins and there are 40,000 people tonight is better than you might even dream of,” said manager Scott Servais. “We’ve got a lot of baseball ahead of us. We ended the drought tonight, which is a very special feeling. There are so many kids who grew up in the Pacific Northwest and don’t know anything about the Mariners who are in the playoffs.” sit, and now we can show them.’
In the midst of the raucous celebration, Jerry Dipoto, the Mariners president of baseball operations, hugged Servais, the manager he had chosen to lead this team after being hired before the 2016 season. Their journey was not easy. It involved a whirlwind of roster moves, numerous organizational changes, including a post-2018 season rebuilding plan, and a lot of criticism.
“We’ve been waiting a long time,” said Dipoto. “We have worked very hard. Everyone contributed in so many ways, from ideas to the work they put into execution on the field. And we deserve this moment.”
When the 2001 Mariners, who tied the Major League Baseball record with 116 wins, lost to the Yankees in the American League Championship Series, a return to the postseason felt like an inevitability, if not a possibility almost every year. Instead, a fanbase that first tasted the postseason celebrated with the “My Oh My” magic of Ken Griffey Jr. who scored from the first on Edgar Martinez’s double to the left in the Kingdome, the post-season appearances again in 1997 and 2000 and felt unfulfilled in the failure of 2001 waited years in disappointment and frustration, 21 to be exact, on a return to the postseason that never came despite promises and attitude.
Three months into a 2022 season full of expectations to make it into the postseason, the Mariners seemed destined to extend the drought to 22 years.
On June 19, they were eliminated by the Angels for a second consecutive game, losing 4-0 and finishing a terrible homestand. They were 29-39 and embarking on another long summer of irrelevance to baseball.
“It wasn’t liquid. It was not a linear road for us. We stumbled and we fell and I think that made us stronger,” said Dipoto. “And along the way we found stars, we found leaders and we found that we found a team that came together. I think right now you see a group of guys who believe they can beat anyone.”
Led by a strong starting rotation and a greedy bullpen and boosted by a 21-year-old rookie whose blend of talent and charisma has won a fan base, the Mariners made a stunning turnaround with a 14-game winning streak into the All-Star break. . On September 11, after winning two of three games against defending World Series champion Braves at T-Mobile Park, the Mariners were 79-61. They had gone from 10 games under .500 to 18 games over .500 in a span of 72 games.
By earning one of the American League’s three wildcard spots in the extended MLB playoffs, the Mariners ended the longest active drought in North America’s major professional sports. The weight of that unwanted distinction, which they inherited on January 2, 2018 when the Buffalo Bills made it to the NFL playoffs, went from annoyance to burden.
But instead of finding ways to apologize for the drought, Mitch Haniger, Marco Gonzales and JP Crawford embraced the weight of all those lost seasons and unfulfilled expectations. They made it their own to wear, knowing how gratifying it would be if they ended the series themselves and celebrated with a city they would own.
“I’m going to remember this day for the rest of my life,” Crawford said.
Haniger wrote an impassioned letter to Mariners fans after the 2021 season, saying they would end the drought with a colorful modifier, and Gonzales said it was everything the trio believed.
“We had to own it to end the streak and end the drought,” Gonzales said. “And that’s exactly what we did. We took ownership of it. While most of us haven’t, I don’t even know if Julio was still alive as he was in 2001 (he was 2 months old), but many of us took over and said, ‘This is our streak to end. Our drought will come to an end here.’ We believed in that.”
Haniger, the Mariners’ longest-serving member from 2017, was introspective as always. Rarely verbose, but always honest, when he spoke, he thought of those who had no time to celebrate.
“I’m very excited about the city of Seattle and the entire Mariners sales organization,” Haniger said. “I think about a lot of the guys who came before me, a lot of the staff have been here and gone. This is for everyone. I feel like it’s a party for everyone and I’m really happy we got it this year have accomplished.”
He paused and looked at his teammates, who were covered in champagne, celebrating what they’d done. With the intensity of an at bat in the ninth inning, he had something else to say.
“And we’re not done yet.”
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