It felt impossible, after fine margins decided the first two games of their ALDS, that the Seattle Mariners would be capable of winning a game comfortably, and yet here we are. They weathered Tarik Skubal while in Seattle, traveled to Detroit for a game that got just weird enough—thanks to a rain delay that pushed the start time back three hours and the channel to FS2—and won Tuesday’s Game 3, 8-4 at that.
There’s a temptation to hedge, or find some new totemic representation of what is making this team win in the playoffs, or to try very, very hard not to jinx anything. But for all the Etsy witches hard at work in their labs, perhaps the most magical sensation in the world is the Mariners winning not because of charming, random bullshit, but because the team is legitimately performing well. Expecting offensive listlessness from this team is now dated—per park-adjusted hitting stats, the Mariners were the third-best offense in baseball this year—and just being able to write out that sentence evokes a “Can’t believe this is my life” sentiment. Watch three home runs off of three separate Tigers pitchers, and, yeah, October is truly for the big boys.
First, it was Eugenio Suárez, one of the Mariners’ two trade-deadline acquisitions, who turned on a fastball down the middle of the plate and made it a 3-0 ballgame in the top of the fourth inning. Then it was J.P. Crawford, batting ninth, who lined a sweeper to right field to make it 5-1 in the top of the sixth inning. And then it was none but Cal Raleigh, the Big Dumper himself, who, while batting lefty, still managed to flick homer number 61 to left field for an 8-1 lead in the top of the ninth, all but guaranteeing the win.
Raleigh’s home run bounced in the Mariners’ bullpen and up the wall, where it was snagged by a lone fan wearing Mariners teal in a sea of Tigers orange. Closer inspection of the fan revealed that his shirt read, in sparkling silver lettering, “DUMP 61 HERE.” Extended observation of the fan revealed that after catching the baseball, he immediately took off his shirt, and, underneath, was wearing another shirt, of the exact same style, that read “DUMP 62 HERE.”
The fan later told the media that he had made the shirts himself at home with a Cricut machine, and originally wore them to the Mariners’ final regular-season game while sitting in right field, to better his odds. In Detroit, he found a seat in the first row right behind the bullpen. “I’m like, ‘OK, maybe he’ll just knock a miracle one back there,’ and I guess that’s what happened,” the fan said. Which is to say that though the Mariners may not need magic to win their games, it does not preclude magic from gracing their games anyway.
With a seven-run lead in hand, there should have been no real reason to fret. Still, you could be forgiven for some nervousness through the bottom of the ninth, as Mariners reliever Caleb Ferguson allowed three runs on three hits without recording a single out. But I was able to put aside my stress over the state of the game—including the snagged line-drive double play to eventually end it—for some real irritation that the Mariners were forced to bring out Andrés Muñoz, when they would have to play again in less than 24 hours. That’s one last gift from a Mariners team: the luxury of worrying about minutiae, and arrogance of forward thinking.
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