As every school child in the greater Seattle area knows, the Mariners are the lone MLB team never to have appeared in the World Series. Many theories have been advanced, particularly in the early years, for this championship desert.
Bad indoor park that was brutal on pitchers. Bad outdoor ballpark that was brutal on hitters. A domed stadium in a culture that worships the outdoors in the world’s best summer. Grim travel problems for MLB’s most remote outpost. Dubious fan support. Resistant local politicians. Lame local media-rights revenues. Poor baseball talent evaluations. Most of all, ownerships that failed to play the big-boy financial game with rivals who were unafraid of a pro sport that lacked a player salary cap.
From MLB offices and the rival ownerships came a consensus that was never on the record. But behind closed doors, they said Seattle was a bad baseball town.
They had it wrong. Seattle was a town of bad baseball.
All of the negative factors contributed, in different amounts and different times, to creating bad baseball. But there is no single, intrinsic reason for going 0-for-49-years. Yet that truth leads only to exasperation.
In 2025, the historical BS has been benched. That is why this week has been so cathartic for so many longtime fans: The Mariners are offering good baseball in a commanding, no-excuses way that has mostly eluded them for half a century.
Partly by fetching quality rental players at the trade deadline, they ran past and over their annoying rivals, the Astros. The three-game sweep in Houston highlighted what has been an astonishing run of 17 wins in 18 September games heading into the final regular season series beginning Friday against the Los Angeles Dodgers of the National League, who at 90-69 share the same record as the Mariners. (Like me, I’m sure you recognized that likelihood as far back as spring training.)
The sequence at T-ball Park this week was saturated in champagne and cigar smoke. Victims were the worst team in baseball, the Colorado Rockies. On Tuesday, a 4-3 win clinched Seattle a playoff spot. Wednesday, a 9-2 win earned the Mariners the American League West division title, the first since 2001. Before they took the field Thursday, ahead of a 6-2 win over the Rocks (43-116), a loss by Cleveland assured the Mariners a gift most coveted — a first-round bye in the playoffs, a reward that goes to the AL division winners with the top two records. With no wild-card series, the Mariners will open the AL Division Series Oct. 4 in Seattle.
The winning streak allows the Mariners a respite.
“It means we’ve done something,” Dan Wilson, the ever-understated manager, Thursday night. “We were hoping to get that, and get back physically where we need to be.
“The trick is to stay ready.”
Besides rest, Wilson can set his pitching rotation and decide which starters will head to the bullpen, a custom developed with the advent of off-days during the playoffs. The Mariners are also free of the draining chore of scoreboard watching, hoping for rival contenders to get beaten by someone else.
For perspective on the late-season scramble for playoff berths, here’s a quick historical digression:
After an initial 18 years of futility, the Mariners made their first post-season appearance in 1995 despite harrowing travel circumstances. On Sunday, Oct. 1, the Mariners lost the last game of the 144-game, strike-shortened regular season to the Rangers in Texas, forcing a one-game, unscheduled playoff tiebreaker for the AL West title the next afternoon against the California Angels in the Kingdome. After beating the Angels 9-1, they flew to New York that evening — their third city in three days in three different time zones. The best-of-five series started Oct. 3 against the Yankees, gone 14 years from the post-season. After losing both games in hyperventilating Gotham, the Mariners returned to the Kingdome to beat the Yankees three times — 7-4, 11-8 and 6-5 — in the most preposterous Seattle sports sequence I have been privileged to cover in person. Exhausted, the Mariners were no match for Cleveland in the American League Championship Series.
Back to this week. Whether the 2025 upticks get the club to the World Series is uncertain. What is clear is the Mariners this time played the MLB postseason advancement like the big boys — they enhanced their opportunity.
The Mariners’ most pivotal business move came in March just before the opener, when the club signed catcher Cal Raleigh to a six-year contract extension that secured his prime years in Seattle. The bosses also did something little credited: They quietly ushered out popular but injury-pickled Mitch Haniger, despite owing him $15.5 million. Accepting the MLB reality of sunk costs is a sign of a serious operation. Much-criticized club president Jerry Dipoto deserves credit for finally getting the bosses to take risks over the easy life of a four-state (and western Canada) monopoly.
The Raleigh investment could not have gone better. His 59th and 60th home runs Wednesday, linking him with Babe Ruth and the division clinching, was so theatrical that Broadway might have considered it too absurd to stage.
There’s also something less empirical and more engaging about Raleigh’s long-term value. He’s one of the most likeable players in club history. That doesn’t count for squat when he’s either squatting or hitting, but in tumultuous times when quality leadership seems in short supply, his demeanor and character seems to radiate in the void.
Self-effacing, eager to please and cool to the point of being dead calm, Raleigh showed graceful humor when he embraced the Big Dumper sobriquet. Some players would have run from it; he makes commercials. Compared to some other heroes of the club’s past, he’s not as tempestuous as Randy Johnson, as moody as Ken Griffey Jr., or as inauthentic as Alex Rodriguez. And while the mystique of Ichiro added to his aura, Raleigh seems accessible and relatable. He won over a chunk of the national fan base in July when he claimed the Home Run Derby using his father as pitcher and younger brother as catcher. Now he’s winning over the baseball hard-cores by climbing the game’s most cherished individual statistical pinnacle — single-season home runs.
When Roger Maris in September 1961 was chasing Ruth’s 1927 record of 60, he was so anxiety-ridden, chunks of his hair fell out. Mickey Mantle might have said, “I’ll drink to that.” Raleigh just giggles. The other hitters of 60-plus homers — Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa — were loaded with PEDs. Only Yankees superstar Aaron Judge compares to Raleigh in the categories of managing the person and the moments.
Those two also lead the race for AL Most Valuable Player. Statistics can be shaped to favor each candidate. Raleigh should get an edge because he plays the game’s most difficult position. But in the event of a dead heat, the tie should go to the one who brings the most value to the least.
There’s no dispute from the Yankees ($300 million payroll) about the identity of the lesser team (Mariners $161 million). At least, until this October.
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