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Wait Till Next Year

· Column writing,Baseball,Family

To be a fan of baseball is to fall truly, hopelessly in love with its moments.

The game makes you wait. It’s a three-hour event with 20 minutes of action, but those 60-second intervals are sublime. A baseball game’s climax will stir your soul like the crescendo of a summer symphony or Hamlet’s soliloquy.

To be a fan of the Seattle Mariners is to cling to great moments of yesteryear and lesser moments today, while surrendering each season to the cruel reality that baseball’s ultimate moment—winning the World Series—may never come.

I grew up in Seattle and have been a Mariner fan my entire life. Before kindergarten, I forced myself to learn to read so I could decipher the Mariners’ box score in each morning’s newspaper.

The Mariners are the most incompetent and hapless franchise in Major League Baseball. They have played since 1977, yet are one of only two teams never to make the World Series.

No team has squandered money and talent with the hubristic arrogance of the Mariners’ ownership. A baseball franchise’s success is measured in postseason appearances. The Mariners have just four, all between 1995 and 2001. The New York Yankees have 54.

Seattle’s 17-year playoff drought is the longest active streak in North American sports, but it’s not the longest in franchise history. The Mariners missed the playoffs for their first 18 seasons.

Yet, year after year of this suffering has not stilled my mental and emotional obsession with the summer game. Why can’t I quit?

I come from a baseball family. My grandfather, Ros, grew up in Iowa in the 1930s and ’40s; the St. Louis Cardinals were his team. He moved his family, including my grandmother, my dad, Mike, and his three brothers, to St. Louis from 1965 to 1970.

St. Louis is baseball’s mecca in the Midwest. The Cardinals won the World Series in 1964 and oozed Hall of Fame talent. Tickets to Busch Stadium were cheaper than air conditioning.

They won another World Series in 1967. Ros and my uncle Paul loved ace pitcher Bob Gibson.

Gibson stalked his prey on the pitcher’s mound. His unsparing gaze cut down batters before his barrage of fastballs and sliders ever reached the plate. His arsenal was so diabolical to baseball offenses in 1968 that MLB lowered the mound by five inches in 1969, which is akin to the NBA widening its hoops.

Gibson painted his masterpiece in game one of the World Series in October 1968, when he struck out a record 17 Detroit Tigers. Paul was a sophomore in high school.

The Cardinals took a 3-1 series lead, but the Tigers stormed back to send it to a final, winner-take-all game. Gibson took the mound in the seventh game and threw scoreless frames until the seventh inning, when disaster struck. Cardinal center fielder Curt Flood misjudged a fly ball that turned into a two-run triple. The Cardinals lost 4-1, but Gibson would not relent. He finished the game as the losing pitcher.

“We were heartbroken,” Paul said.

All true fans know this feeling. It’s what separates the serious fans. Who else would gamble their hearts on their teams’ fates—and withstand the agony of losing?

I was a sophomore in high school in October 2001, when the Mariners finished their greatest season.

The Mariners tied the all-time record for wins in a regular season with 116. Winning baseball is an intoxicating brew, and I had been drinking deeply from announcer Dave Niehaus’ radio broadcasts for months.

The Mariners ran into the Yankees in the playoff semi-finals. The Yankees jumped to a 2-0 lead in the seven-game series, but the Mariners took game three. Game four was set for Sunday, Oct. 21, at Yankee Stadium.

I watched by myself in my parents’ basement. The tension grew with each scoreless inning. In the eighth, it snapped. Mariner second baseman Bret Boone launched a ball to left field that carried over the fence. Home run. The Mariners had a 1-0 lead and were six outs from tying the series. I was screaming.

The ball landed in the netting above Monument Park, Yankee Stadium’s museum for legends like Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio. The Seattle Mariners were shaking the graveyard.

My euphoria didn’t last 10 minutes. Yankee center fielder Bernie Williams smashed the game-tying home run and my heart shattered. It was only a tie, but it was over. The Mariners lost the game in the bottom of the ninth. They lost the season the next day with a 12-3 defeat.

That was it. Since then, the Mariners wasted another generational pitching talent, Felix Hernandez.

In August 2012, my grandfather was nearing the end of his life. Baseball had one moment left to give.

My dad, his brothers and their families moved to the Pacific Northwest in the 1980s and ’90s. My grandparents moved to Olympia. Ros adopted the Mariners, but he never abandoned the Cardinals.

My dad went to visit Ros on Aug. 15 and help him set up a cable box. Idly he flipped to the Mariners game; Felix Hernandez was pitching at Safeco Field. You had to watch when Felix pitched. He was that special.

My dad left for Seattle in the early innings, and my grandfather went down for a nap. Felix hadn’t surrendered a walk or a hit.

Felix threw the Mariners’ first and only perfect game that afternoon—27 batters faced and 27 retired. That was the last time my dad spoke to Ros; he died a few weeks later. He has no idea if Ros watched Felix’s perfection that afternoon, but he likes to think so. I do, too.

I wanted 2018 to be different. For a few weeks the Mariners obliged. They sprinted through June and their playoff chances surged to 90 percent.

Then, the team collapsed. My hopes wilted in the midsummer heat. Nevertheless, in September I went to Seattle to watch them play the Yankees with my girlfriend, Hadley, and nine other family members, including Paul, his wife, Deb, and daughter, Whitney, all Mariner super-fans.

Baseball’s magic came alive. In the eighth inning as I stood to clap, Deb turned to Hadley and said, “This could be your life one day.” We all laughed, but I don’t think she was joking. Deb wasn’t much of a fan before she met Paul.

The Mariners took a 3-2 lead, thanks to sharp base running from their superlative right fielder and most exciting player, Mitch Haniger.

The game was decided on the final swing. In the top of the ninth, Mariner closer Edwin Diaz faced Yankee slugger Giancarlo Stanton. With two outs, Stanton lifted a 98 mph fastball out to right.

The crack made the swing sound more dangerous than it was; Stanton had broken his bat. But the ball’s path spelled dire trouble. The Yankees had a runner on and a misplay would tie it. The ball hurtled down in short right field, its path now sped by gravity. The 30,000 fans inhaled.

Haniger’s glove thrust into the scene. He had made a full-extension leap and snagged the catch at the last possible second. The Mariners won. The stadium exploded. Paul turned to me and said if you gave Haniger another two years, he’d be the best player in baseball.

I believe him. Baseball has many more moments to give. Just wait till next year.

This column was published in the Idaho Mountain Express in October 2018.