SEATTLE – When a weekend of sports heaven in Seattle threatened to devolve into a living hell for the local fans, Jorge Polanco and Julio Rodriguez offered salvation.
Entering Game 2 of the American League Division Series, the Mariners had gone nearly a quarter of a century since their last home playoff win. They hadn’t won a postseason game in Seattle since Oct. 15, 2001, when Dan Wilson was their catcher. Twenty-four years later, now the manager of the club he played for, Wilson insisted the weight of that drought did not add any more pressure to a Mariners season that was supposed to break the mold.
But the reality was obvious in a 3-2 win on Sunday that exorcised the demons of a long-suffering fanbase.
It was obvious in the home clubhouse before the game, where a sign read, “That we haven’t done something before doesn’t mean we can’t do it.”
It was obvious in the fourth inning, when Polanco homered off Tarik Skubal, and again in the sixth, when Polanco became the first player since Paul Goldschmidt four years ago to homer twice in a game off the Cy Young frontrunner, sending 47,371 fans at T-Mobile Park into a frenzy.
Jorge Polanco crushes his second HR of game, extending Mariners’ lead over Tigers
It was obvious when an eighth-inning error from Josh Naylor set up a game-tying two-run double from the Tigers’ Spencer Torkelson, hushing a crowd accustomed to heartbreak; and again in the bottom of the frame, when Rodriguez continued to add to his budding October résumé by responding with a go-ahead double that made the stadium shake.
“After I hit it, I kind of looked around a little bit,” Rodriguez said. “I could see everybody jumping around, and that made me feel really good. It was an awesome moment.”
Mariners’ Julio Rodríguez hits go-ahead double to retake lead over Tigers
And it was, perhaps, most obvious in the aftermath of a victory that finally wrote a new chapter of Mariners baseball: On Sunday night in Seattle, a burden was lifted.
“It’s a nice weight to get off the guys’ shoulders,” said Cal Raleigh, whose double in the eighth inning sparked the game-changing rally. “That’s a big relief for the guys just to get that one out of the way.”
After closer Andres Muñoz secured the final out, the camera panned to a fan in the stands weeping. Many stuck around to soak in the scene, basking in the revelry, hugging their spouses and significant others in delighted disbelief. The series wasn’t won, but the long wait was over. For the teenagers in attendance, it was their first time witnessing a Mariners team win a playoff game at T-Mobile Park.
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“It means a lot to give the fans what they deserve,” said Muñoz, who was part of the 2022 Mariners team that ended a 20-year playoff drought in Seattle. “I’ve been here for a little bit, and they deserve this. They’re really special fans. They’re with us, all the time.”
Packed Weekend for Seattle Sports
Seattle readied for a sports weekend like few others in the city’s history.
The Sounders hosted the Portland Timbers in an MLS rivalry game on Saturday night and the Seahawks took on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Sunday afternoon in NFL action, both games at Lumen Field. The Mariners hosted the Tigers at T-Mobile Park on both nights. The stadiums are right across the street from each other, one-tenth of a mile apart. Fans were encouraged to take public transit, and many reserved parking days in advance.
On Saturday afternoon, hours before the first pitch of the ALDS, music blasted from The Hall on Occidental, one of many sports bars in Pioneer Square getting the party started early. At a local convenience store, many of the workers were donning Mariners jerseys underneath their vests and nametags. In front of the stadium, sausage vendors were busy. Kids persuaded their parents to acquire trident inflatables.
In the sixth inning of Game 1, Rodriguez tied the game with a single. Across the street, fireworks went off. The Sounders scored 16 minutes into their match and held on. The soccer fans, who departed their game victoriously, were met outside by a lingering group of more dejected Mariners fans after Detroit took the first game of the ALDS in extra innings. Some of them still danced in the streets, nonetheless. Unlike the last time they lost a playoff game at home, the series was not over.
Saturday night in Seattle saw the Sounders and the Mariners playing across the street from each other.
There was a world in which the start times for the Seahawks and Mariners coincided on Sunday, which would have led to chaos. But MLB avoided that conflict by making the Mariners’ first pitch at 5:08, allowing the Seahawks to keep their scheduled 1:05 kickoff.
On Sunday morning, old Kam Chancellor jerseys mixed with brand new Julio Rodriguez jerseys in the streets of Seattle. Traveling Buccaneers fans were well-represented, too. There were jerseys of Mike Evans, Mike Alstott and Emeka Egbuka, an appropriate selection for the weekend.
In 2011, Egbuka, a Washington native, won MLB’s Pitch, Hit & Run Championship and got to throw out the first pitch at a Mariners game to Felix Hernandez.
“It’s a moment I’ve never forgotten, something that will stick with me the rest of my life,” Egbuka said earlier this week. “Yesterday I was doing an event at an elementary school around here, and hopefully I gave them some of those memories I had when I was younger.”
Egbuka was looking forward to the big sports weekend in Seattle. On Sunday, though, he played a role in an afternoon to forget for the local football fans.
The Bucs erased a late deficit and won on a last-second field goal. In front of a crowd of 68,804 at Lumen Field, Egbuka caught seven passes for 163 yards and a touchdown. Some of those fans would soon be part of the throng at T-Mobile Park, as evidenced by the speckles of lime green among a palate of navy inside the Mariners’ stadium. They were hoping their baseball team would offer a better outcome.
For so long, the thought of that was preposterous.
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From 2002-21, the Mariners failed to make the playoffs.
In the middle of that stretch of futility, Seattle fans lost their beloved NBA team.
“Probably the single most devastating sports moment ever in Seattle,” Larry Stone, the now-retired longtime sports columnist from The Seattle Times, told me. “They were a cornerstone franchise, the first pro team in Seattle before the Seahawks, before the Mariners and they had a huge emotional, deep following. When they left, it left a huge void.”
“It was kind of depression for anybody who grew up a Sonics fan,” said Seattle native and longtime Mariners fan Alex Akita. “I don’t think anybody ever envisioned something like that occurring, even though for a long time in the ’90s there were threats the Mariners would move, and in the mid-90s the Seahawks actually drove their moving vans down to L.A. and were planning to move. So, we kind of have this threat of our pro teams leaving for all time.”
Julio Rodriguez’s game-winning hit in Game 2 put the Mariners back on track in the ALDS. (Photo by Steph Chambers/Getty Images)
Stone believes the Sonics’ departure might have solidified Seattle sports fans’ attachment to the remaining teams in town.
Only, there was little to cheer about across the city’s sports landscape at the time.
“No matter what team you were a fan of in that year,” Akita said, “they were all terrible.”
On April 16, 2008, the SuperSonics played their final game before moving to Oklahoma City. That same year, the Seahawks won four games in Mike Holmgren’s final season as head coach. The Mariners were almost as pitiful, going 61-101. College football offered no respite, as the Washington Huskies went winless.
It was then that Akita started his own sports blog as an outlet for his pain.
“Things were so bad across the board,” Akita said. “Luckily in the few years that followed, the Seahawks got a lot better. After that, the Mariners didn’t do a whole lot to help. It was just kind of a weird time, and it feels like for most of my adulthood that’s kind of where we’ve been stuck in.”
Cal Raleigh has had a breakout year with 60 home runs this season. (Photo by Rob Leiter/MLB Photos via Getty Images)
The Seahawks won the Super Bowl in 2013 and made it again the following season. The Sounders won the MLS Cup in 2016 and 2019. The Storm won the WNBA Finals in 2018 and 2020.
The Mariners, meanwhile, remain the only MLB team that has never made it to the World Series, a fact that hangs over the franchise.
“The feeling has always been one of falling short and letting you down,” Stone said. “But when the Mariners are good, I think the passion of the Mariners fan rivals and maybe exceeds that of the Seahawks fan. You saw it in ‘95, the greatest example of that.”
That year, the Mariners made it to the playoffs for the first time in their 19-year existence. Akita was 10 years old when he attended the 1995 ALDS, where the Mariners advanced past the Yankees.
But unable to replicate their golden years from 1995-2001, when the Mariners made the playoffs four times, another lengthy postseason drought followed. The Mariners did not return to the postseason again until 2022, when they swept the Blue Jays in the wild-card series before dropping the first two games of the ALDS in Houston.
On Oct. 15, 2022, exactly 21 years to the day of their last home playoff game, one long wait ended.
“The energy before the game was awesome, like nothing I’d ever seen before,” Akita said.
By the 18th inning, however, the atmosphere had shifted. The Mariners did not score a run in a shutout defeat that ended their season. And the wait for a home playoff victory endured.
“That game was as tense of a game I’ve ever covered,” Stone said.
“You kind of knew in that game, if they don’t find a burst, they’re never going to score a run,” Akita said. “Every Mariner fan, every hardcore Mariner fan, is constantly scarred by the bad offenses.”
But this year, an unprecedented 60-homer season from Raleigh and a trade deadline that brought in top sluggers Naylor and Eugenio Suárez injected a different feeling of hope into the franchise and its devoted fanbase.
That hope continued to swell when the Mariners ended the regular season winning 17 of their final 21 games to capture their first division title since 2001.
“It does feel like we have the most complete lineup we’ve ever had and the deepest lineup we’ve ever had,” general manager Justin Hollander told me Friday. “I think there are threats one through nine, guys that will make you pay for a mistake.”
In Game 1 of the ALDS, familiar feelings came flooding back in another extra-inning loss at T-Mobile Park.
But a day later, that new-look lineup paid off. Akita stood next to his wife and their 2-year-old daughter in the 200 level at T-Mobile Park, among the tens of thousands in a devoted fanbase that watched their Mariners lift a 24-year burden.
A new age in Seattle baseball had dawned as the series went back to Detroit tied 1-1.
“These fans are phenomenal,” Mariners pitcher Luis Castillo said through an interpreter after delivering 4.2 scoreless innings in Game 2. “And I think they really deserve it.”
Rowan Kavner is an MLB writer for FOX Sports. He previously covered the L.A. Dodgers, LA Clippers and Dallas Cowboys. An LSU grad, Rowan was born in California, grew up in Texas, then moved back to the West Coast in 2014. Follow him on X at @RowanKavner.
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