Another bad news hit the Mariners: Their head coach shed tears as four of his star players made a final decision to terminate their huge contracts.
The Mariners also received devastating news: their head coach broke down in tears when four of his top players decided to end their enormous contracts.
At the same moment that young Matthew Boyd learned the Seattle Mariners were out of the playoffs, the Ford Crown Victoria arrived at the Peace Arch Border Crossing. Boyd was a defenseman with the Seattle Sno-King youth hockey team and was traveling to Canada with his father. The depressing news was broadcast over the vehicle radio by Mariners announcer Dave Niehaus.
Boyd, who had grown used to his heroes always playing in October, recalled being “so dejected, like, ‘We’re not going to the playoffs?'” “At that time in my childhood, I was somewhat spoiled. They were so wonderful, and now this weight was there, like, “Why, Dad? Why is this proceeding?
In twenty years, Boyd has experienced a lot of growth—college, professional baseball, marriage, and kids. He currently pitches for his hometown team. The Mariners have never, however, made it back to the postseason. Stars came and went, expectations rising and falling, and they arrived four times in all, from 1995 and 2001. Still flickers the afterglow.
Remembering his double to defeat the Yankees in the 1995 playoffs, Edgar Martinez stated the other day, “People will say, ‘I was with my son; we were all in the living room’ — they remember what they were doing at that time.” “That memory sticks to the fans a lot because of what it meant to them as a family and as fans.”
The baseball gods softened as well. Since the Mariners’ final playoff game, four clubs have won their first-ever championship, while three more—the Boston Red Sox, Chicago White Sox, and Chicago Cubs—have ended more than eight decades of futility streaks. Mariners wait, though.
“I actually think the Cubs and the Red Sox, in a really warped way, were good for the Seattle sports fan because they showed us that, yeah, it could actually happen here in Seattle,” said Bill Binder, a season ticket holder since the Mariners’ founding in 1977. We are getting close, not that you want to wait that long.
The Mariners are still the only team in baseball to never win a World Series, and with their brilliant center fielder Julio Rodríguez suffering a back injury last week, their road may have become more difficult. Nevertheless, it seems like their wait to make the playoffs is finally, thankfully, coming to an end. With 10 games remaining, the squad was 83-69, four games ahead of an A.L. wild-card place.
“I think we’re going to feel just as good as any team in baseball when we get there,” Mariners closer Paul Sewald said. Not that anyone wants to see us, in my opinion.
That is, opponents, he means. People in the Pacific Northwest are eager, particularly those who have internally labored toward this time.
