Here we go (again)

Your Seattle Mariners play a baseball game today.

God, I love baseball.

I should remember that the first time one of the (three??) lefty relievers is summoned to face a same-handed foe in a big spot and walks him on five pitches.

Nobody’s ever ready for that—if we’re ever ready for that.

I’ve burned this quote before in a spring training post but after a quick search it wasn’t on this blog so I don’t feel bad doing it again. Because it’s Harry Caray and I know he loved baseball, too.

It's the fans that need spring training. You gotta get 'em interested. Wake 'em up and let 'em know that their season is coming, the good times are gonna roll.

There were traces of snow in Seattle earlier this week. First and only snow of the winter, and somewhere in the city it landed on a cherry blossom bud already showing a speck of pink.

It’s supposed to rain for four days straight but today, spring is officially sprung because I’ll be able be able to put a ballgame on in the background of a workday.

I can almost hear Rick and Gary and Shannon and whoever else they have working these early broadcasts. I can almost almost hear Peter Falk from the Princess Bride (and ensuing meme),

“Okay. Alright. Now let’s see—where were we? Ohhhh yes, in the pit of despair.”

It’s weird to think about. When there’s no baseball at all, there’s nothing. When baseball stuff starts happening again, it all comes racing back. There’s some real scar tissue there.

I felt it for the first time, like pressing a lie bump on your tongue against a one of your front teeth, when I heard Dan Wilson say “You can’t get to the World Series with any kind of shortcut…” and recoiled in thought with

“Oh yeah it may not be a shortcut but using Muñoz with five outs to go would’ve been A PRETTY DAMN GOOD ROUTE THERE!”

It’s going to be on folks’ minds. It’s already on folks’ minds.

That’s been a common question circling around camp as I see various media hits—how do you bounce back from that? How do you reset, learn from the experience and push on towards a championship?

Like almost everything, you just gotta take it one day at a time.

Teams do learn from their postseason failures, see up close what it takes to have a truly special season and go about repeating what led them there but correcting whatever halted their climb. Happens quite a bit, actually.

We won’t know if the 2026 Mariners will do that for a very long time. But I do know they play a game almost every single day between now and then.

And it’s going to be a hell of a journey. It always is.

Most fan bases don’t have a team like this right now. They all have hope now but for many that’s all they have.

We have a lot more.

Let the good times roll.