SEATTLE – The suite where the architects sit, on the club level of this jewelbox by Elliott Bay, is literally framed by history. Decorating the outer walls of the Seattle Mariners’ executive suite are rows and rows of timeless text, deliriously delivered by Dave Niehaus for a division series victory three decades old.
“The Mariners are going to play for the American League championship! I don’t believe it! It just continues!”
Someday soon – next spring, or maybe next week – there will be new exclamation points, toasting a team that has finally made its own history. The Mariners did it on Friday night, reaching the AL Championship Series for the first time in a generation, needing more innings than any winner-take-all game in postseason history to get there.
My, oh my.
There are new heroes in Seattle now, pitchers who pushed to new places, lineup cornerstones and late additions, certified stars and a pint-sized pinch-hitter. The Mariners outlasted the Detroit Tigers in 15 exhausting, exhilarating innings, 3-2, when Jorge Polanco singled home J.P. Crawford in the 298th minute of the game of their lives.
“My experience feels like the ground was shaking every inning,” said Leo Rivas, whose seismic single tied Game 5 in the seventh. “It just feels amazing.”
The crowd of 47,025 erupted for the 5-foot-8 Rivas, a switch-hitting everyman celebrating his 28th birthday in style. It would take 337 more pitches, each pulsating with possibility, to reach the finish.
When Polanco lashed his the game-winner, through the right side off a Tommy Kahnle changeup, Crawford shimmied off third with a spin. It was over. Crawford, the longest-tenured Mariner, all but tiptoed his way to the plate, savoring a 90-foot yellow brick road to Toronto, where the ALCS begins on Sunday.
“Let’s party,” Crawford said later, in the sudsy clubhouse. “That’s all that was on my mind – let’s go bust some bottles!”
They deserved to let loose. The Mariners took both games started by Tarik Skubal, the Tigers’ growling ace who lost twice to Seattle in the regular season, too. Skubal bullied his way through two no-decisions in this series, allowing three runs in 13 innings, with one walk and 22 strikeouts. Yet somehow, Seattle prevailed, the kind of feat that makes a team feel invincible.
“Going out there and winning games that Skubal starts is pretty hard to do – and our team did it four times,” said Jerry Dipoto, the Mariners’ president of baseball operations. “It’s a tribute to every guy in that clubhouse, to the pitchers for keeping it close. We knew this was not going to be a football score, that it was going to be a tight pitchers’ duel, and our general take was: keep it close until Skubal’s out of there and we’ve got a chance to win this game.”
They scratched a lead off Skubal in the second when Josh Naylor, the stocky, savvy first baseman acquired at the trading deadline, doubled, swiped third and scored on a Mitch Garver sacrifice fly. From there, Seattle must have felt like a basketball team leading late, Skubal’s pitch count ticking up like seconds coming off a clock.
As it turned out, of course, it wasn’t late at all. Mariners starter George Kirby had left with a shutout in the sixth, only to watch it disappear when his nemesis, Kerry Carpenter, smoked a two-run homer off Gabe Speier. Skubal was spent by the end of that inning with 99 pitches – and the bullpen could not contain Rivas, who sent the game deep into the night.
“That guy prepares like no one I’ve ever seen before,” Crawford said. “Whatever you throw at him, he’s gonna be ready.”
In the seventh, though, Rivas was ready to run for Polanco, who was on second with two outs. A coach, Manny Acta, told him he was hitting instead because Detroit had just brought in a lefty, Tyler Holton.
“Hey, Papa, come here,” Acta told Rivas. “Go get this guy.”
“All right,” Rivas replied. “I’ve got him.”
Rivas had studied the lefties, he said, and knew that Holton threw cutters and changeups. He took a cutter, then drilled a changeup to bring home Polanco. New ballgame.
Seattle pitchers had a 3.28 ERA at home this season, the best in the AL playoff field, and they were done allowing runs for the night. But to make it through, they all had to give more than usual. That’s a risk of pulling starters early, as managers tend to do in October, but it worked this time because five relievers flawlessly followed Speier.
Matt Brash got six outs for the first time in two years. Closer Andrés Muñoz walked two – the Mariners’ only non-intentional walks of the game – but escaped the self-made jam and then worked a 1-2-3 ninth.
Up next was Logan Gilbert, on two days’ rest, making his first relief appearance since 2017 for Stetson University. He fired two scoreless innings. Eduard Bazardo got eight outs, a career high. Luis Castillo, relieving for the first time since 2016 with the Class-A Jupiter Hammerheads, retired all four hitters he faced.
It’s October. Everyone’s tired. Everyone’s ready.
“It was adrenaline,” Gilbert said. “Red-Hot on the arm, coffee in the pre-workout. The fans are going crazy, 50,000. At that point, you don’t feel anything.”
Both lineups kept demanding more from their pitchers, almost daring one to break. The Tigers stranded six runners in extra innings. Twice, the Mariners started an extra inning with first and second and no outs, but couldn’t score. It almost felt like the ghost-runner rule – mothballed for October – was still in play.
The pitchers were just that good. Seattle hit .207 in the ALDS, with six homers and 58 strikeouts. Detroit hit .201, with five homers and 55 strikeouts. It was a full series, and then some, of the Spider-Man Pointing meme.
“Having experienced the Tigers for five days, they play our game,” Dipoto said. “They (throw) strike one, they win the 1-1 (counts), they fill it up, and that made it an incredibly close five-game series. I don’t know how you can play a closer series, and I’m proud of our guys.
“I still feel like we have the deepest roster in the league. We really tapped our pitching. I may need to pitch on Sunday, which is not good for anybody. But we’ll figure it out.”
Dipoto, a former reliever, said he expects Bryan Woo, an All-Star starter who has missed three weeks with pectoral inflammation, to pitch in the ALCS. But he does not know when that would be, which means that Seattle could still be scrambling for a fresh arm to start the ALCS opener in Toronto on Sunday.
Thirty years ago, that duty fell to Bob Wolcott, a rookie known best for tackling Ken Griffey Jr. at home plate after Edgar Martínez doubled to topple the New York Yankees. Wolcott beat Cleveland in Game 1 of the ALCS, but Seattle lost in six games.
The Mariners played for the pennant again in 2000 and 2001, both seasons ending in the Bronx. Now they are back – after two fallow decades, a wrenching sweep by the Houston Astros in a 2022 division series and two follow-up seasons of missing the field by one game.
All of it hardened the Mariners, preparing them for survival.
“It makes this that much sweeter,” said Cal Raleigh, the slugging catcher who could be the league’s MVP. “We’ve been working hard, and that sting from the past couple of years, you remember that. I love these guys.”
Dan Wilson, the Mariners’ manager, was the last catcher to guide this franchise to the ALCS. The players clustered near him in the clubhouse after Game 5, goggles strapped around commemorative ALCS caps. Wilson’s message was simple.
“What you guys keep doing is special, it’s powerful,” he shouted. “You’ve changed this team, you’ve changed this organization…”
Then Wilson pointed upwards, to his right, toward the shimmering field in the only major-league town that has never hosted the World Series.
“And you’ve changed that city. Let’s keep going!”
The party was on. They had earned it. It just continues.