It is October 1st, and the Seattle Mariners are tied for a playoff spot. I have never been able to type out those words on social media. Not on Twitter or Facebook. Even if I was a founding member of Myspace in 2003, I could not have said that. The buzz in the city is palpable. Who is to say if any of this is sustainable. Shoot, last time they made the playoffs, they finished with the best record in baseball history and promptly went on a nearly 20-year postseason drought. This is not about the 2021 Seattle Mariners. And it is certainly not about the 2022 Seattle Mariners or anything looking past this weekend. Rather, it is about how 45 years of arguably the weirdest team in professional sports has led us to this moment. The moment where it is October 1st, and the Seattle Mariners are tied for a playoff spot. Sorry, I just have to take advantage of finally being able to type those words.
Because the 2021 Seattle Mariners are not a movie, while not officially at least, we are going to use another movie, even if it is unofficially, as our jumping-off point. According to Letterboxd, Jon Bois and Alex Rubenstein have the 42nd highest rated “movie” of all time with The History of the Seattle Mariners. Take a brief second to consider everything that could potentially be considered a movie on Letterboxd real quick to appreciate that fully. The duo created the six-part documentary on the history of the Seattle Mariners as part of their Dorktown series for Secret Base (fka SB Nation) on Youtube. The series went back to the serial arsonist from 1932 that ultimately led to professional baseball coming to Seattle nearly 40 years later.
The magic of Jon Bois is that his videos have such a broad audience. Most Jon Bois videos are about sports, but he makes them in a way that even someone who has never seen a second of the subject he is talking about can still enjoy the video. Taking the reverse of that, he made a video on the TV series 24 and just how bizarre television was in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. I have not seen a moment of 24 outside of the video and was far too young to remember how weird the excessive nationalism was shortly after the turn of the century, but it was still an outstanding video.
Now imagine my excitement when I saw that Jon Bois was potentially working on a Seattle Mariners video. While my overall interest in sports has waned a bit over the last five years or so as I realize how it, like the rest of society, is designed solely for billionaires to make a profit while making life hell for as many people as they can to get there. It is quite strange being a baseball fan while also knowing an inkling about how poor the conditions are for minor league baseball players. Sure would be cool if they had a union or something—S/o Tipping Pitches on Twitter. Anyway, the politics of sports, especially baseball, paired with covering it up close, has seeped some of my enthusiasm away from it. Still, even with that, and a capitalist owner that I can’t stand, and a baseball team that has been anywhere from putrid to mediocre over my entire lifetime, I still can’t quit the Seattle Mariners.
Jon and Alex captured the dismal history of this ballclub so beautifully. This journey has never been about winning baseball games, well, other than that one time in 1995 when it actually kind of was. If results were the only thing that mattered, then all of this would be so much more miserable than reality. This is a team that did not post a winning record until their 15th year in existence. They have made the playoffs just four times in 44 years. That should mean a brutal experience for any fan, and maybe for fans of other teams, that is the case. It is just that green or red numbers ultimately don’t matter except in finance, and even then, it is questionable. As Jon said about the Mariners losing in Felix Hernández’s final start as the tearful crowd gave him a send-off fit for a king, who gives a shit?
You’d be hard-pressed to find a team facing more pressure with so little previous success than the 1995 Seattle Mariners. In what might be my favorite 24:11 of any piece of media I have ever seen, Jon and Alex brilliantly chronicle the 1995 ALDS between the Mariners and the New York Yankees. The Mariners were staring down a potential relocation after a stadium bond in King County failed on the ballot about a week earlier. It seemed all but certain that Seattle was going to lose their baseball team for the second time in less than 30 years. Right as they were nearing the height of their powers too. They had Ken Griffey Jr, a generational talent, who at 25 had already become the face of baseball, not just in the Pacific Northwest but across the country. They had one of the best pitchers in the game, finally finding his stride in Randy Johnson. They had one of the best hitters in the game in Edgar Martinez. They had a young shortstop in Alex Rodriguez who was primed to challenge Griffey for the mantle of the face of the game. It couldn’t possibly end like this. Not after 18 years of suffering. Not when they are on the precipice of something that seemed unfathomable before the arrival of Griffey six years earlier.
Then, with one crack of the bat down the left-field line, it suddenly wasn’t all over after all. One Edgar Martinez double later, and baseball in Seattle had new life. Gone were the relocation rumors with the funding to a new stadium. No, the 1995 Seattle Mariners did not reach the promised land that season, or (spoiler alert) any season since, but that does not matter. That one swing of the bat singlehandedly saved a game for an entire generation of fans to fall in love with it. A world series ring doesn’t have that sort of power.
The showrunners made some interesting casting decisions over the next few years by replacing fan favorites Griffey, Rodriguez, and Johnson prior to the 2001 season. However, newcomer Ichiro Suzuki, paired with 38-year-old Martinez and an unlikely cast of characters, somehow overcame the transition and won 116 games. That is why this team is so weird. Just when they should be dead, they somehow come back to life in the next episode. Unfortunately, the inverse of that is also true. Just when you think they are going to be contenders for years to come with a bright young core, they die almost instantly in the most comical way imaginable. That, friends, is known as the 2008 Seattle Mariners.
This team has never made a lick of sense. The only constant is the name and the city. The players have cycled through. Ownership has changed. Even the logo has changed a handful of times. None of that matters. This is still the Seattle Mariners. A team should win with two of the best players in the game playing in their primes together with Ichiro and Felix. A fringe reliever shouldn’t fill his manager’s toilet with Jello and jeopardize his career. A player should not throw it home with no one covering the plate — not in the doc, but it lives rent-free in my head. A team with a run differential of -48 should not be in the position to make the playoffs on October 1st. But here we are. Because, of course, we are. This lovable group of protagonists would not have it any other way. The Seattle Mariners have spent 45 years not playing by the book. Why would they start now?