Postseason Hope Weighs Heavily on Seattle Mariners Fans

SEATTLE — The acquainted sinking feeling returned shortly, within the first inning of the primary sport of probably the most anticipated Mariners homestand in an extended, lengthy whereas.

The group had entered Main League Baseball’s All-Star Sport bathing within the glow of a 14-game win streak, an expectation-less squad instantly turned bully. Popping out of the break, final weekend’s three-game sequence towards the A.L. West-leading Houston Astros was to be a litmus check.

Was it lastly OK to hold actual hope on the Seattle Mariners?

Whack. With one clear swing, an Astros house run confirmed the reply.

In Friday’s opener, the Mariners’ starter, the left-hander Marco Gonzales, had thrown a four-seam fastball that Jose Altuve couldn’t resist: too sluggish, too close to the guts of the strike zone.

It felt like an omen. Just like the Mariners’ marvelous and sudden successful streak was about to finish, quickly to get replaced by well-founded doubt.

That is baseball. It breaks your coronary heart. Within the twenty first century, no group, and no metropolis, understands this greater than Seattle.

Twenty seasons and not using a postseason look, the longest such drought in big-time American skilled sports activities. The one M.L.B. franchise to by no means make the World Sequence.

Seattle baseball followers possess two traits in abundance: dogged, unrewarded loyalty for the Mariners and the sports activities model of post-traumatic stress syndrome. As a local Seattleite and longtime Mariners fan who spent too many afternoons watching shedding baseball at the hours of darkness dankness of the long-gone Kingdome, I can attest to it. Within the Pacific Northwest, defeat tends to be endured politely. And relating to the Mariners, with profound resignation.

Issues solely received extra ominous Friday after Altuve’s homer when the Mariners went to bat, decided to even this tense affair — a house sport performed earlier than a uncommon midseason sellout crowd — with a run of their very own.

The Mariners’ magnetic leadoff hitter, the participant practically everybody within the stands wished to see, was a no-show. Julio Rodríguez, the 21-year-old phenom middle fielder who had simply blasted 81 balls over the outfield fence on the Residence Run Derby in Los Angeles, had been scratched from the lineup due to a sore wrist.

Strolling by means of the stands at T-Cellular Park, I might hear a collective sigh of deflation emanating from the gang.

“That is so on model,” Evan Riggs, a longtime fan, informed me. “In fact, they’d go down early. In fact, their finest participant wouldn’t play as a result of he simply received harm, in all probability within the All-Star Sport.”

“That is the Mariners.”

I couldn’t have put it any higher.

By way of June 20 the Mariners struggled to handle a report 10 video games below .500. However then they instantly turned baseball’s hottest group — victorious in 22 of 25 video games — and got here inside 10 video games of Houston within the chase for the A.L. West crown.

Out of nowhere, the Mariners instantly dangled on the precipice of hope.

So it harm, deeply but in addition unsurprisingly, when the Astros took a simple, wire-to-wire win, 5-2, Friday. The ache deepened Saturday, when the 39-year-old right-hander Justin Verlander propelled the Astros to a second victory, 3-1.

On Sunday, with Rodríguez nonetheless injured and out of the beginning lineup, Seattle fell behind 6-0 after three innings and succumbed, 8-5. The massive sequence turned out to be an agonizing sweep. Identical because it ever was.

A fast evaluation for individuals who don’t perceive the extent of this group’s struggling.

In its 46 years of existence, no group in baseball has been worse. A few of the sport’s most iconic stars have worn a Seattle uniform whereas of their primes — Ken Griffey Jr. on the prime of the checklist — however the Mariners have been to the playoffs solely 4 occasions, and all in a brief window from 1995 to 2001.

However these, supposedly, are the brand new Mariners. A group making an attempt to interrupt floor and slough off a previous most present gamers had no a part of. Followers in Seattle wish to dare to dream massive. However we are able to’t fairly let go. We count on the shoe to drop — or a bum wrist to start out one other shedding spiral.

Followers on the sequence final weekend echoed my apprehension:

“Cautious optimism is the very best I can do.”

“It’s like we’ve been right here earlier than, however each time we get burned.”

“It looks like they’ll lastly make the playoffs. It additionally looks like they’ll in all probability go on a shedding binge.”

Then there was this from Dusty Baker, the Astros’ supervisor, as he stood by the batting cage earlier than Friday’s sport, asking me what the temper of town is. They’re able to win massive, I informed him, however I’m fairly positive your group may have one thing to say about that.

Baker smiled. “Sure, we’ll.”

He isn’t a lot a soothsayer, as he’s used to main an actual contender. His Astros are 5-2 towards the M.L.B.-leading Yankees this season after sweeping a doubleheader in Houston final week. Towards the Mariners, their indefatigable precision was harking back to an ideal champion I watched at Wimbledon two weeks in the past. Like Novak Djokovic, when Houston places the clamps down, they don’t let go.

I’m virtually scared to dream that the Mariners are near changing into that sort of group. Humorous how sports activities can flip “the factor with feathers,” as Emily Dickinson referred to as hope, right into a weight to be shouldered.

In April, I used to be warily sure that Seattle, having constructed this group with sensible low season strikes and by creating the most effective minor league methods in baseball, would possibly eke additional than 2021’s end result, once they have been eradicated within the closing sport of the season.

Then got here that win streak by which they zoomed previous the sluggish and regular progress befitting charming underdogs.

Now I’m excited about what it can take to utterly shred Seattle’s status as well mannered losers wearing aqua jerseys. Guts. Daring. Phrases nobody was utilizing a month and a half in the past.

Administration needs to be emboldened by how shut the Mariners appear to breaking the lengthy cycle of despairing defeat. Lay down the chips and go all-in. The most important league commerce deadline is Aug. 2. Washington’s Juan Soto is on the buying and selling block — an excessive rarity as a result of 23-year-old superstars are probably the most coveted asset a group in any sport can have.

Do one thing massive, one thing akin to the early 2000s reeling-in of then 27-year-old Ichiro Suzuki. Now’s the time to interrupt what looks like a curse. All these proficient gamers within the minor leagues signify nothing greater than potential. Wrap up a bunch of them in a bushel, add a high quality starter from the main league group, and make the Nationals a suggestion they’d be fools to refuse.

Mariners Common Supervisor Jerry Dipoto has talked for weeks about making a pointy, stirring transfer earlier than the looming commerce deadline. He gained’t say what, sustaining a secrecy that solely tightens followers’ grip on the doubt that defines us.

“We haven’t been to the playoffs in 20 years,” Dipoto underscored to me this weekend. “We’re the franchise that hasn’t been to the World Sequence.”

“Followers shouldn’t belief us till we get there,” he mentioned, within the subsequent breath extolling his group’s rigorously calculated journey of enchancment.

However one of many stunning traits of a sports activities fan is the best way the video games enable us to hope for the inconceivable, even the irrational. An outfield of Rodríguez and Soto is simply that, however I’m dreaming it anyway, and I’m hardly alone.