Every team has its highs and lows, frustration, heartbreak, greatness and confusion, but no other team is like this one. The Seattle Mariners are eminently lovable, profoundly human and stunningly, outrageously weird. There is no more fascinating team across the entire history of American sports.
Felix Hernandez, the hero of the modern-day Mariners, did everything he could to drag them into the playoffs. Lord, how he tried. He never made it happen, because no one man ever can. But to call them cursed, we’d argue, would be to miss the point of the Seattle Mariners entirely.
Ichiro Suzuki was the most unconventional and electrifying baseball player of the 21st century. During the 2000s, he and the Mariners pieced together a beautiful, infuriating story.
The late-‘90s Seattle Mariners were like nothing we’ve seen before or since. This was a team that had featured four Hall of Fame-caliber players – Ken Griffey Jr., Edgar Martinez, Randy Johnson, and Alex Rodriguez – in their primes. What could go wrong? Absolutely nothing. Everything went fine.
After nearly 20 years of losing baseball, the Seattle Mariners were likely to be sold and moved out of town. But on the field, they and the Yankees were playing out one of the most dramatic playoff series baseball has ever seen.
After years of abject irrelevance, the Seattle Mariners suddenly became the team of Ken Griffey Jr., one of the most beloved athletes in American history. The Toilet Years were over. The era of anonymous cellar-dwelling had ended. Now, they found themselves in the fight of their lives, battling the California Angels in one of the most dramatic playoff races in baseball history.
We mean it. “Arson will get you a baseball team” is not the lesson here. In fact, there is no lesson at all. There is only the Seattle Mariners, who in their early years did nothing but screw around and play out some of the weirdest stories in the history of baseball.
Every team has its highs and lows, frustration, heartbreak, greatness and confusion, but no other team is like this one. The Seattle Mariners are eminently lovable, profoundly human and stunningly, outrageously weird. There is no more fascinating team across the entire history of American sports.
