God, Cal Raleigh rules
A lot of words on one of my favorite Mariners games ever—and a short and sweet baseball road trip.
Cal Raleigh will be so many people’s all-time favorite Mariner.
From Ballard to Bozeman to Puyallup to Pullman to Portland (both of them), there are folks for which the foundation has been poured. For others, it’s already solidified.
The franchise cornerstone of franchise cornerstones is their guy. Now until forever.
Cal is in the midst of one of the greatest seasons in Mariners history. It may end up as one of the great seasons in baseball history.
And there’s a nine-year-old somewhere who will be telling their grandkids about how their favorite player will forever be Cal Raleigh and that his mythical 2025 was when they knew for sure.
There might be a 38-year-old who does the same.
To be on the ground in Chicago and then Minneapolis in the heart of it, as he went thermonuclear to match the midwestern weather, was one of the great sports experiences of my life.
For context, and most of y’all know this from past writing or social, I grew up in La Crosse, Wisconsin. It’s a classic town of about 50,000 on the Mississippi River and about somewhere around between Chicago and the Twin Cities.
When the schedule came out last year, always absurdly early, this stretch was circled.
Wouldn’t it be fun if—
My wife and I daydreamed on it for a while. We talked about it with folks.
A neat little trick to make things happen is to tell people you’re going to do them. So then you kind of have to. Or experience a ton of anxiety. Or if things really break right, both.
This was going to be a post with some of the more nerdy stats on the context in which Cal currently resides, but as I started, something else sounded more fun. So let’s riff. For a while.
It’s one of those posts that’s for you and for me.
The night before we left, last Tuesday, we were debating whether or not to go to the ballpark. We had planned to catch the game but when it came close time to head out, neither of us had finished packing. One of us had yet to start.
“We’ll be home by ten,” my better half said. And she was right. Easy 35-minute bike ride in and 40-minute ride home on an idyllic Seattle evening. Only needed a flannel and wool socks with the Birks.
We found our way into some seats about midway up the lower bowl, behind home but slightly to the left. About straight up from Boston’s on-deck circle.
You love those games where the good guys lead big early and this was that.
Top second. Two outs, bases loaded. One run in. Dumper up.
God it’s so damn cool when he ambushes the first pitch, the torpedo bat whipping through the zone not like, well, a whip—but a wrecking ball.
With Cal batting lefty, and us looking up the first-base line, you couldn’t set it any better. Better blocking than an old-school Scorsese joint.
Walker Buehler looked to jump ahead with an elevated fastball and holy hell did that thing get elevated. With a launch angle of 43 degrees, only seven home runs this year more resembled a smooth 56-degree wedge shot from about 90 out.
There comes a time in your life when you realize it’s a lot easier to judge a fly ball by just looking at the outfielder.
I tracked the ball, I tracked Roman Anthony in right. The ball, Anthony, the ball, Anthony…
“Maybe…maybe…maaaaaybe?” I thought and probably said.
Anthony looked up and the ball parachuted down five rows deep like a lukewarm hotdog.
Did you know omens can be good? For a long time, I didn’t know omens could be good.
Wrigley Field was the ballpark I went to most as a kid. If you consult that old United Countries of Baseball map from Nike, you will see the Cubbie blue creeps along the southern Wisconsin border before it makes its way up the east side of the Mississippi River, to La Crosse.
We got up to a game every summer or so when we lived there. Would even loop back on trips home after we moved to Seattle.
One time, we bought counterfeit tickets at an old Taco Bell where a big six-floor building stands now. It has a Crumbl and a Culver’s. I regret not going to the Wrigleyville Culver’s.
My wife and I biked to the ballpark, like we do at home. We took some very overpriced bikeshare e-bikes north along the lakefront before hanging a left into the neighborhoods. I routed us to Murphy’s Bleachers and that’s where we went.
We parked our bikes a couple blocks away and walked up Sheffield towards the Center Field Gate. The bar’s across the street.
We walked our way in past a group that had to be George Kirby’s family because a small crew of ‘em had jerseys and we saw them on the field after the game. At about the same spot I was when me and my brothers were when we found out the Cubs traded for Rich Harden—their attempt at a rebuttal for C.C. Sabbathia to Milwaukee—I ordered the coldest Old Style you’d ever seen. And two Miller Lites, one for the lady.
Outside, we stood in the shade and absorbed the atmosphere—the “Memories so thick, you’ll have the brush them away from your face” of it all.
Just me? Okay, maybe just me.
They’d moved the Harry Caray statue since the last time I was there. It’s across the street from Murphy’s now. We got a picture with that before making our way all the round to home plate, making sure we got the full loop of the exterior.
It’s crazy how much the whole place has changed. Like, way changed. There’s a whole big building on the same square block as the ballpark. The game is real estate now, I guess.
That red marquee still hits the same, though.
Actually, it hits even better now. The Seattle Mariners at Wrigley Field. In the middle of a Friday afternoon. That’s the good stuff.
To be in this building, but watching my hometown club—the club I both love and love to hate—just pure giddiness from me as we walked in. In the rush of it all, I couldn’t immediately figure out how to, uh, just, get upstairs.
We got it sorted, and even got a scorecard and a photo with the 2016 World Series trophy in the process.
Scurrying up the series of ramps, one not always connecting with another we got to our seats just in time for first pitch. As far as timeliness, that’s above-average for us and ballgames.
Not being there with for a potential Julio leadoff shot or Cal being Cal was a non-negotiable with the universe. Had to be there. Especially after nailing down the perfect seats.
We settled in—first row of the upper deck. Just like some favorite seats back at home. But for an upper deck built and added in 1928, you’re not way up there. You’re on top of everything.
And Cal was right on that first-pitch fastball from Matthew Boyd.
Going into the trip, I said I’d be happy if we saw one Cal Raleigh home run—that’d be pretty good. But there he was, first time up.
J.P. rolled over to second. Julio flew out to right, just missed dunking one in the basket. And then Cal banged a piss-missile off the bricks.
Officially, it wasn’t off the bricks. It was a the green paneling above the bricks, below the first row of the bleachers. In my mind, it was the bricks. I pictured a scuffed-up ball, scored like clay with a bit of red hue ricocheting back onto the field.
God, it was good.
It was that kind of day for hitting—made clear by Ian Happ’s leadoff bomb into the batter’s eye bushes.
It was hot has hell and the wind was blowing out so hard you could hear the flags perched above the canopy—praise be for that shade—whipping and cracking with every gust.
Shit, Mitch Garver came into this game with zero home runs off actual pitchers and left with two.
The Mariners trailed most of the game, which was surprisingly easy to forget. The three-spot in the first from the Cubs was tough but you knew the Mariners would have their chances. The vibe was too good.
Absurdly, Sammy Sosa was there for the first time in two decades? That day of all days?
Anyway, yes, trailing all day. Er, a little more than half of it. Until the first of two Garver home runs (still nuts)—the first a two-run shot notting things up at four apiece.
In the seventh, the Cubs went to lefty Caleb Thielbar to, ideally, get two outs from J.P. and Cole Young before getting to the righties in Julio and Cal. He did that. I get the move—bird in the bush is better than two in the hand. I think that applies? Either way, you play for now and deal with the future as it comes.
That damn third out wasn’t coming for Thielbar, though.
After hitting the ball hard all day with nothing to show for it, Julio got a gift of a call on a borderline 0-0 hammer (these things swing games!) and then punched the 1-0 fastball away into right.
Here comes the big man.
Cal went up hunting, because of course he did. He fouls off a fastball outside, forehead-high.
Breaking ball the dirt. Good take.
Then, boom.
The 1-1 is a fastball right down the dick.
And Cal tomahawks it onto Waveland.
The wind and temperature were helping on some other balls that day, yeah, but the only difference it may have made on the 106 mph liner was whether it went out of Wrigley or through a bleacher bum’s chest.
“NOW THIS BALL IS SMASHED! IT’S DOWN THE LIIINE! THIS BALL IS GONE! IT’S OUT OF WRIGLEY!!!” was the call from Aaron Goldsmith.
I don’t know what I said to my wife. I’m sure I hugged her. I don’t know what I thought other than that it was one of the best things I’d ever seen. Pure delirium.
In a magical season, a moment to match—just for me, it felt like.
I’ve been to a lot of baseball games in my life. Hundreds and hundreds. That homer careening off a bleacher railing on its way out of the building was one of the five or so most enjoyable things I’ve ever seen. It was perfect.
And let me tell you, you go from that…immediately into the seventh-inning stretch at the ballpark that does it best? That’s livin’ right there.
That’s really what this trip was about—kind of the richness of life. And, at times, too much richness.
That Friday afternoon was the perfect amount.
We even got a photo with our guy.
The next day was a social affair. I went with a cousin of mine and her husband—we were staying with them and found out the day before he was able to snag some seats through his law firm.
Ridiculously, they were in the shade again. First row of the upper deck again.
The Mariners got pantsed a bit, of course. With Emerson Hancock pitching on the inside of an air fryer, that will happen. They fought back, but we were playing with house money.
Here’s how nuts this trip was. And this is getting a bit navel-gazy but it’s also mostly for me anyway so whatever.
Part of the reason I went to Wrigley Field as a kid was that we had family there. Not the folks living there now, but a family on my dad’s side—and a cousin almost exactly my age. Well, same actual age, born months apart.
I came across this photo, shuffling through a box at my dad’s house and taking phone pictures of the good ones, maybe a week before the trip.
I don’t know if it was the last time we were both at Wrigley but it was a long, long time ago.
They lived in Chicago when we lived in La Crosse. We moved to Seattle, they moved to Alabama.
On the off day before the series, my cousin responded to an Instagram Story of mine, the obligatory Bean photo. I saw it while sipping a Miller Lite at a dark dive bar called Rossi’s. This was after chugging half of it, which, after we’d been out in the heat, went down like a cold seltzer.
“Are you in Chicago this weekend?”
He was flying up from Birmingham with his son for the Saturday game. They ended up sitting right beneath us, down on the main level.
After I shot them a photo showing them as much, they came up and said hello. We visited a bit postgame as well.
“When we were your age,” I said to his four-year-old, “your dad and I went to ballgames here.”
That’s the good stuff.
The Mariners didn’t win, but they battled.
And Cal still homered. It was a 98 mph pop-fly to left with an expected batting average of .100.
A nice little wink from the universe, a pleasant send-off from the Friendly Confines.
Sunday we drove from Chicago to La Crosse. We planned it so we’d be able to spend the night night there, maybe some of the afternoon.
Having a little too much fun Saturday night condensed the timeline a bit, though. A Culver’s trip immediately after picking up the rental car was a necessity.
We hadn’t made it past the Chicago exurbs before Cal Raleigh’s first-inning two-run tank to right-center.
What a trip.
A quick pitstop in Madison to see my Mom’s sisters jutted into the game, which was more than fine. An hour’s worth of conversing in the living room of a house I’d been in so many times before was bookended by the Mariners leading 7-4 in the sixth and 12-6 in the 8th.
Our black Kia Soul had wireless Airplay, so it picked up where we left off when we got in the car. We’d checked the score, so we knew what happened, but let it play through for another hour or so anyway.
We got to La Crosse in the mid-evening and enjoyed a couple hours chatting in the backyard of a couple old family friends, an older husband and wife. Well, they were my parents’ friends, the folks they’d go out to dinner with way back when I was a little kid. I watched Willy Wonka for the first time in their basement when my brothers were born.
They’re so good to see when we’re back home—especially after my Mom passed.
We had homemade milkshakes, even talked a little baseball. Doug has a ten-day baseball bus trip coming up with his son, who I’d see in Minneapolis. It’d be their third such East Coast bus trip, but first in a while.
This game will grip you.
As sunset neared, we had to go. When we mapped out our limited time in La Crosse, it was determined that, sunset, was the perfect time to go see my Mom—up on Grandad Bluff, where we said goodbye a few years ago.
So we did.
I’m a big fan of Minneapolis. Good politics, great bike infrastructure, more family. Fantastic ballpark, too.
We stayed with cousins there as well. Like in Chicago, it was a daughter of one my Mom’s closest sisters, and her husband.
Game one at Target Field was a rout. But you know that.
Us Mariners fans are all still a bit grumpy about how we went from the high of taking the first two only to roll over in the third and fourth, yeah.
Going from the series win at Wrigley to being there for that first game, though? Too funny. Too good.
The power hadn’t been there as much in June for Julio—so he had to be due. At least, with how right things had been going for us, the JRod tank only made sense.
From our seats—and you’ll never believe where—in the first few rows of the upper deck, it looked like a nuke in the mold of the ones Nelson Cruz would hit in the same building.
Gonna pull up the numbers here and, yerp, 112 mph and 442 feet, that’s about right.
Headed to the ninth, it was 7-2, so not much at stake. But not nothing.
We went to the ballgame with my cousin and her husband and, as mentioned, the son of the family friends we saw in La Crosse. And, well, they hadn’t seen a gotta see a Big Dumper homer.
If he was to come to the plate in the ninth, at least three of Dom Canzone, Ben Williamson, Cole Young, J.P. and Julio would need to reach. It was unlikely but, if it happened, there’d be traffic. And ideally, no reason not to pitch to him.
Dom single. Ben Williamson fluke infield single. Away we go.
It still took a two-out two-RBI Julio Rodríguez double to make it a possibility. Actually, not only that but Joey Wentz thinking “Hey, what the shit, it’s 9-2 with two outs in the ninth so I may as well pitch to the guy with a base open.”
11-2, Mariners.
A 2-1 breaking ball that was supposed to stay away broke right towards the barrel, letter-high. Because of course it did.
That’s the run we were on. That’s the run Cal was on.
I sent a simple “lmao” to the Family group chat.
There was no Cal home run in our road trip’s finale. But he did blister a ball off the fence in left-center in his first AB.
It didn’t look like it ever really had a chance as a hard and low liner the other way, but it also missed going out by only a handful of feet.
“That would’ve been hilarious,” my brother Conner texted.
And it would’ve. He did still collect a pair hits, drew a walk, drove a run in and scored himself. Light work.
Going from 5-0 to 5-5 sucked, and the vibes were not good late. Though things had been so pleasant on our personal road trip thus far, a 2-2 record sounded a lot worse than heading back to Seattle at 3-1.
So, naturally, the Mariners pushed a run across against Jhoann Duran. This guy. This absolutely inhumane reliever.
But Jorge Polanco got hit in the foot with an 88 mph 0-2 slider and your Seattle Mariners were in business.
Howwwwww many times do you see that run come around to score? they say after the leadoff free base.
I try to remember that when it’s the M’s because it doesn’t feel like it’s a lot.
Cole Young—Cole Freakin’ Young—grounded a 97 mph splitter (!!!) back up the middle to get pinch runner Dylan Moore over to third.
After a J.P. HBP, the only thing they needed was for Julio to not strike out. Not strike out against a dude with stuff mentioned above and the 28 percent K-rate to match. After falling down 0-2.
So he didn’t. He hit his second sacrifice fly of the night. And of the season. And only the seventh of his career.
Of course.
Glad we could be there to help.
I’m finishing this now here on Friday evening and if you’ve indulged me this far, thank you. Like I said above, this post’s for me, too. To have a for a while.
But I’ll leave you with this. I’ve said it before on here, I think.
You gotta live while you’re livin’.
You gotta get out there and enjoy it all.
This season from Cal Raleigh may end up being one of the greatest baseball stories I witness in my life. But you do gotta get out and witness it, however you can.
If it ends up being worth ten fWAR or whatever, that’ll be so cool. Maybe it’s the signature MVP season in a Hall of Fame career for one of this franchise’s most beloved figures.
For me, it’ll all be captured with that shot onto Waveland—and this trip as a whole.
Get out there, live with the people you love.
Again, it’s Friday. The ballgame’s on. Better get to it.
Go M’s.
Thanks Colin. Great article. My first visit to Wrigley was in 1980. Benn a number of times with my last game there last year. It is a magic place.