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Faith, hope and baseball


When I was a kid in the mid-1970s, I dressed up like Steve Garvey, the Dodgers’ great first baseman at the time, for Halloween.

In other words, baseball and I go way back. And as soon as my family moved to the Seattle area, 11-year-old me transferred my fandom from the Dodgers—and, to a lesser degree, from the Angels—to the Mariners.

My parents took me and my brothers to numerous games in that concrete entombment known as the Kingdome. There, I saw Baseball Hall of Famer Gaylord Perry pitch in the twilight of his career. I saw players whose names are still known by diehard Mariners fans, from Ken Phelps to Danny Tartabull, Gorman Thomas to Harold Reynolds, pitcher Mark Langston to “Mr. Mariner” Alvin Davis.

As a team, the Mariners were, in a word, hapless. During those seasons while I was growing up, the team always finished below .500. I was 20 years old before the Mariners finally recorded a winning season. I was out of college before they made their first playoff appearance. They still have never made it to the World Series.

And, after a run of seven consecutive seasons when they looked like serious contenders, the Mariners slipped back into mediocrity after 2001. My teenage kid, who spent years playing on Little League teams, has never seen his favorite major-league team in the playoffs. Mariners fans are well-acquainted with disappointment.

Which is why us fans have to celebrate when we can. We’re not spoiled by success; instead, we hold on dearly to the few scraps of it that we have. Fans of more successful teams mock this stance, but that just strengthens our loyalty.

Last year, pitcher James Paxton’s no-hitter brought about fanatical cheers, as did closer Edwin Diaz’s nearly unblemished save record. The team finished third and teased us with a promising future.

And then Mariners’ management held a fire sale. The front office dealt Paxton, along with nearly all the other highest-profile players on the team. It made some sense strategically: dump highly paid players, especially older guys, and rebuild with a young, talented nucleus, even if those players need some time to be competitive.

But fandom is hardly logical, so us Mariners fans grieved all this during the off-season that had the happy contrast of seeing Mariners legendary hitter Edgar Martinez, one of my sports heroes, finally elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. And then we settled in for a new baseball season of no expectations for my team.

Which is a lie, at least in my case. Despite my best efforts, I ALWAYS have expectations and hope as a new season dawns. Even the Jesuits will tell you that the season’s opening day is a time of hope.

That said, I braced myself for immediate disappointment. And then this team full of unfamiliar faces and names just started hitting and winning. This historically offensively challenged team hit bucketfuls of home runs, actually setting a new record in the process. Despite the preseason prognosticating that this edition of the Mariners would be terrible, the team quickly climbed to the best record in Major League Baseball the first two weeks of the young season.

Baseball was fun again.

As I write this, the team’s high-flying streak has rediscovered gravity again. After losing two home series in a row, the Seattle team is merely the second- or third-best team in baseball right now, and the weaknesses of this squad—namely, relief pitching—are more evident lately.

Still, the Mariners hit home runs in 20 straight games to start the season, setting a new all-time record. And, at least for now, there’s a palpable sense that, even when they fall behind or give up a lead, this team will rally to win, which it did the past couple nights against the Angels. For the first time in a long while, it’s fun to watch—or, more accurately, listen to on the radio—as I wash dinner dishes and help coerce our children toward bedtime.

Maybe they don’t have Steve Garvey, or Ron Cey and Davey Lopes, but these youngsters wearing the stylized “S” on their caps are restoring my faith in baseball. I suspect this team’s good fortunes may wane by the time the stretch of the season in July and August arrives, and there are plenty of naysayers on Twitter trying to quash all hope by repeating that prediction. The surprise of what’s happened so far, however, is enough for now. #GoMs!


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