Cal Raleigh is ours

And the Home Run Derby champ.

The most important thing to understand is that this isn’t normal. Though, you probably already know that. Mariners fans don’t get to experience things like this. At least, not without a catch. Never to this level of enjoyment.

I’ve been a Mariner fan since 2000 and I’ve never seen anything like the week we saw from Cal Raleigh and the media ecosystem that seems to orbit the beloved catcher—and his rotund backside.

I know I like just wrote about Cal—at least to an extent—and I do have a couple half-written other drafts in the hopper but like I often say, I write this blog for me, too.

During work today, I edited a podcast where the guest was a longtime law blogger, and she was talking about why she mixes in a lot of posts on the personal side of being a lawyer.

Talking about how she has a number of posts about her daughters mixed over a couple of decades, she said something along the lines of “It’s one thing to have a picture—it’s another to have words describing how you felt.”

Cal, Todd and Todd, Jr. had me all up in my feelings on Monday.

I wish I wrote this the evening of the derby, so the emotions were more raw and the words more relevant time-wise, but whatever.

I know it’s a ridiculous thing to say about glorified batting practice but Cal not only thriving on the national stage—but winning, undeniably the victor—was one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen as a Mariners fan.

That says a lot about being an M’s fan in the first place, sure, but hell—it still happened. And it ruled.

If you’re on Twitter—and it’s so sick that most of you are not—you may have seen this post from Jay Cuda bouncing around.

Honestly, it took me a while to find the Mariners, crazy as that is. Ichiro had his MVP. And a couple batting titles.

Twenty years will sneak up on you if you let it, though. And boy have the Mariners let it.

But while we don’t have any of that stuff, we’ll always have Monday night. We got three more Home Run Derby wins, too—tied with the Yankees for the most by any team. Junior had a hat trick.

And that’s probably the closest approximation to what we’re seeing from Cal, Ken Griffey Jr. sweeping the nation in the ‘90s. To this day, he’s probably the coolest baseball player to ever live.

Cal Raleigh isn’t that but, shit, I’ll tell you—it feels like it sometimes right now.

The guy is everywhere and yet, part of the charm is that he’s still this “Awww shucks” coach’s son who, on the one hand, seems as surprised as everyone else to be swept up in all this. But at the same time, it’s like he’s bred for it.

On that, I want to hit the moment that crushed me.

I was trying to not be a total sap all night, only producing an ear-to-ear smile and shake of the head as I reveled how much the Raleighs seemed to exude pure joy out there.

It had the feel of the fellas messing around in the backyard, or on a road trip for travel ball.

It was one of those load-bearing family moments that live with you every day, like now that it’s in the past, I wish I could be transported across time to be back in my family’s fire-engine red Suburban, all seven of us, driving ~2,000 miles across the continent to Wisconsin.

Except this was literally the Home Run Derby. On ESPN.

Anyway, that moment.

As we could hear and see all night, Todd Raleigh Jr. was the hype man. Cal said as much, but I don’t think the younger Todd’s ever had a better day in his life.

A few minutes into Cal’s round—following commentators chuckling at Todd, Jr. lifting his mask up to, in their view, get on TV—I texted the GC that “Todd Jr.’s IG story is about to be nuts tonight. LeBron-level slices.”

I didn’t end up checking but he would’ve had plenty of reason for it. Guy was the star of the night, with a meaningful impact.

I loved, loved that Cal said he was surprised by Todd’s presence behind the plate, taking control of the situation by both hyping up his brother and helping his dad find his spots.

Male relationships are effing weird, man. Guys express things in different ways, if at all.

So to have it be this moment, this stage, for Cal to take notice of something that’d seemingly slipped by, that “Damn, my kid brother can lead. He’s built for taking control of the game,” was too cool.

That wasn’t what broke me, though.

On what I guess was officially SportsCenter, after things had calmed down, they had the ESPN broadcasters on the field at a desk like they do 20 minutes after Sunday Night Football and what-have-you.

After they talked with Cal, they turned to the younger Raleigh and Eduardo Pérez asked him what he was going to get out of all this, given his contributions. He guessed a car, which was fitting.

Then Karl Ravech asked Raleigh, Jr. about how he learned to be such a leader, which Pérez then relayed because he was closer and T didn’t have a headset.

“Ehhhmmm, I dunnoh,” Todd Jr. said with a voice identical to Cal’s, tilting his head to the side—like Cal, sitting beside him, does when asked by McAfee or Dan Patrick or Pardon My Take about his nickname or the latest four-homer weekend. “I don’t know, just watching him, pretty much. He’s always done it.

“Just—I always wanted to be like him.”

That’s the good stuff.

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Tomorrow night, we’ll be back at the ballpark. I’ll be back at the ballpark.

And we’ll all give Cal Raleigh—our guy, the Home Run Derby champ—a standing ovation when he steps to the plate in the first.

He is ours. He’s as beloved a ball player as the city of Seattle has seen in a long time, and a level and type of beloved that’s unique unto itself.

Not only is he here, but he’s going to be here.

He’s everywhere and with everyone right now, and will be in the months ahead if he keeps running up the back of Aaron Judge in this MVP race. A moment or three in October wouldn’t hurt, either.

But above all else, he is ours. One of the best to ever put on the uniform.

Like these warm summer nights, orange twilight creeping over the Olympic Mountains even at 10pm, you have to pause and appreciate it.

Like I said, this isn’t normal. It’s special.

It’s the good stuff.

Go M’s.