Pennant Race!!!!

 This blogging on Thursdays thing is going super well for me given that it's Saturday.

I don't think I have time to go into my relationship with the Mariners, but I'll try to give it to you in a nutshell.

1977 the Mariners start as a professional baseball team in Seattle

1978 I was born

Until 1988 the Mariners field a solidly mediocre at times abysmal expansion team in the concrete crypt that was the Kingdome. I have sense memories of walking those endless ramps in and out of there. My dad once gave us a choice of 3 games in the $5 seats or 5 games in the $3 seats and was proud of our fan cred and math skills.

1989 19-year-old Ken Griffey, Jr. debuts with the Mariners and my walls quickly fill with Griffey posters

early 1990s were the Age of Griffey, with the father son duo and all star MVP and the locking down of my status as a Mariners fan (prior to Griffey I tended to root for the A's who had an AAA franchise in nearby Tacoma and whose stars I therefore knew well. That 1988 Series was the first I remember and was HEARTBREAKING, the 1989 Series was MY JAM)

May 1995: I have a memory of an inside the park homerun close to Memorial Day. My whole family was laughing, celebrating, jumping up and down and my mom stopped and said to me, "Now was that our guy or does he play for the other team?" My mom was a good baseball mom. This is the last baseball memory I have of her.

June 1995: My mom died suddenly when I was 16

August-October 1995: the Mariners went on the most historic stretch in their history, climbing from the middle of the pack to the playoffs. Meanwhile, my sister leaves for college, leaving my dad and I to cheer for the team that became much more than baseball in those months of our grief and transition. When they were eliminated after an historic tiebreaker and winning their first playoff series in come from behind fashion, I sobbed. It was never just about baseball.

1995-1999: An era of good, often playoff qualifying Mariner teams and me finishing high school and going to college. They never got further than the American League Championship Series. They would eventually become the only Major League Baseball team to never appear in a World Series. They have that title to this day. (To be fair, there are MLB teams who have not appeared in a Series since before the Mariners existed.)

2000: They blew up the Kingdome. I still have a piece of it that I totally stole. I saw them open Safeco Field, a friend gave me a ticket.

2001: After giving up Griffey, Randy Johnson, and Alex Rodriguez, the Mariners had an amazing season, winning a record tying 116 games and clinching after baseball's return after September 11. Once again in an era of grief and transition we watched playoffs that they wouldn't continue in as they lost a tough championship series in NYC.

2002 and on: After gutting their farm system to assemble the 2001 team the Mariners faltered, wavered, and eventually dropped to oblivion. In the past decade they have really only been close to a pennant race once, when they caught fire in the fall of 2016. It was not enough.

2020: with the pandemic surrounding us and no in person baseball, having several seasons earlier finally cut the cord on cable we couldn't justify just for Mariners games, I really stopped following baseball almost entirely. I literally could not tell you what the playoff structure was last year, except that it was different. I wondered at times if my era as a baseball fan was just over. I hadn't been to a game since July 2019 and the several games I had been to since the 2016 season were...well...really boring.

2021: I'll admit to not having come back fully and followed this team the way I once did, but I've kept my eye on them and over the past couple of months watched them really solidify into what they are now. They are fun to watch again. We are still cord cutters so I follow them almost exclusively by radio, listening to the marvelous Rick Rizzs who has been part of the Mariners nearly as long as I have. They put together an amazing September and crawled into a Wild Card race they really never should have been part of...they are too young, don't score enough runs, etc. But baseball is funny like that.

Today: So literally everyone has woken up to the existence of this team in the last 72 hours. They had 11,000 people in the stands for an absolutely phenomenal game Monday night, last night they had their first sellout in who can remember when. And they lost a tough and tight 2-1 game last night in which they had chances. So they had to win today. Winning today and tomorrow AND having someone else on the list lose tomorrow is literally their only chance of forcing a tie. To say the math isn't on their side is an understatement. And they played a BRILLIANT game in which they had a lead, lost it, came from behind, and the Angels, who have been out of it for weeks and deserve credit for how well they have played in this series, took it to the very last out. But they did it. They won.

Tomorrow: is game 162. Their only move is to force a tie. (Did I mention that that 1995 breakout season, the one everyone goes back to, ended in a tie and a tiebreaker game?) This is a scrappy team. Most of their fans couldn't name more than a couple of players on their team and the ones they know may be in their last days in Mariners uniforms as they look to free agency and the brilliant kids coming up behind them to take over. But that is next year and as my dad always says you can't count on next year. Ever. Ask the Angels who have played without several stars all year due to injuries. The Mariners manager said on the radio this week that the future is now.

It is incredibly difficult to explain my relationship to baseball, to this team, why a pennant race means so much. It's one of those things where if you know you know and if you don't nothing I say will ever really explain it. But tonight I listened to the game with my boys, particularly with James, and as I was explaining to him the nuance of the game, the history, what bullpen means, what scoring position is, as my dad explained it to me all those year ago...

I never know what my relationship with baseball is going to be like. It has FOR SURE fluctuated in 40 years watching this team. But tomorrow is game 162, they are staying alive, and for the moment...that is enough.

Media consumption: Huh. Well, I've listened to a lot of baseball. Josh finds it very funny that I can read and listen to baseball, but I have had a LOT of practice doing it. So right now I am reading a book called Flora Segunda that a co worker told me I must read literally 12 years ago and has been sitting on my shelf since then. It's not classic literature by any stretch but I'm surprising myself by enjoying it. I'm also reading a poetry collection called The Princess Saves Herself in This One by Amanda Lovelace which has some interesting stuff in it. I JUST picked up the next book in the Front Desk series at the bookstore this week so that is next and last week I finished the latest book in the Vanderbeekers series, a series that I adore and is ultimate comfort reading. I'm also reading an interlibrary loan book, a book by Lois Lenski from 1928 based on her childhood. It's been an interesting read especially alongside the Vanderbeekers because they have a lot in common but are from SUCH different eras.

TV, well when there's not baseball I've been working through the later seasons of Arrested Development which aren't half as good as the originals but aren't terrible either. Portia deRossi is terrible. Everyone else I'm fine with.

Today I'm grateful for watching baseball with James, baseball snacks, mom me time, Max hugs, more baseball tomorrow, bookstores, family, my dad, and another day of health and life for all of us and also for the Mariners.