Once Upon a Time in Baseball

Yes, I’m going to jump on the bandwagon and wax poetic about how wonderful the Seattle Mariners and their 2025 playoff run has been. Essentially coming back from the dead, they have reeled off 16 wins in the last 17 games to vault from marginally in the playoff race to solidly in control of the number 2 seeding, with a real chance to slip into the number one spot.

Hard to believe, especially when you consider the last 24 years of Mariner fan frustrations. Always close, but never in. Over the decades the M’s have typically suffered some late-stage calamity, always resulting in getting knocked out of the playoffs by a game or two. We M’s fans are cynical and jaded, conditioned to expect the worst, yet still yearly torturing ourselves with some unspoken, insane hope this year will be different. We talk in hushed voices to each other, afraid to jinx it; that some baseball god out there will hear our tone of hope thinly disguised as fatigue, disgust and resignation.

This year will be like the 1995 playoff run, won’t it? When they came from 14 games back in August to best the Los Angeles Angels in a one-game playoff, then went on to beat the Yankees by taking the last three of a five-game series, followed by nearly picking off Cleveland to get to the World Series. It was epic. The Kingdome actually did rock.

This year has the same vibe, the same rumblings. No one is whispering anymore. It’s all raucous, boisterous laughter, old men behaving like excited kids, and kids wondering why the old men are so over the moon about it. We’re going to beat the Yankees just like we did in ’95 and this time, we’re going to whoop it up in the World Series! YES!

And there’s more, much more. This year there is the ungodly great season of Cal Raleigh. A catcher has no right to play 158 of 162 regular season games. It’s just too taxing a position; too hard on the knees, too mentally tough to direct pitchers and defenses every day, much less try to generate any kind of personal offensive contribution. But here he is, defying history, the odds, every previous stat for the position, redefining what is possible. Sixty home runs is essentially unattainable in baseball – only ten men have ever done it. And no switch hitter, much less a catcher, has come close.

Cal Raleigh is doing the impossible. I don’t think even he understands it. He’s just trying to play each day, trying to keep in the groove, to just maintain a level-headed concentration. I saw him last night being interviewed, shaking his head in disbelief at his own accomplishments!

There aren’t enough superlatives. Words are inadequate. One can only sit and watch, bewildered at what he does, how he plays the game, how he seems to be observing himself with an out-of-body awareness. It’s the stuff of a metaphysical, meditative stream of consciousness. It’s a psychological Flow; a sci-fi movie of superhuman achievement to which Cal finds himself looking around, wondering as much as the rest of us, what is happening?!

From what I can tell, it couldn’t happen to a nicer, more deserving person. It’s a fairy tale, and a story that needs a fairy tale ending. Seems to me a World Series victory would be the perfect ending to such a ‘once upon a time’ story. It’s going to be great to sit back and watch it happen.