The reason Seinfeld is so eminently rewatchable and a residual revenue goldmine is that every episode, no matter how many times you see it, has hysterical side jokes you forget about.
In one, where I can’t even remember what the broader plot is because this has nothing to do with it, Kramer is driving the rest of the group someplace and turns to shout out the window at another passing car.
“HEY, your lights are onnnnnn!”
“…it’s a funeral procession,” George informs him softly.
The “vacation from ourselves” is like that, a throwaway. Specifically, it’s the cold open for the premiere of the show’s ninth season.
You see, back in the old days with big network shows, they’d do these tongue-in-cheek references to the characters being gone or up to something over the summer break.
In the scene above, instead of taking a typical vacation, George and Jerry haven taken a vacation from themselves—by growing mustaches.
The Mariners are in the midst of a similar vacation from themselves, pulling out of a nosedive and into a winning streak that has them a half-game shy of the division lead.
It’s fitting, then, it includes mustaches.
From a competitive standpoint, the Mariners have been in similar spots before. Divish had a good piece outlining it recently, that this season closely echoes each of the last four.
All of those teams could’ve made or missed the playoffs, including the 2022 squad that ended the drought and got through to the ALDS.
This year’s squad, with this precipitous edge between a division title and out of the picture completely, most closely resembles post-playoff year of 2023, what was supposed to be—and felt like—the true ascendance portion of this era of Mariners Baseball.
At the end of August, I wrote a post literally titled “Is this heaven?” as the M’s led the division and looked fated for more.
They’d cede their AL West lead on September 5th and never regain it. Two years and a week on, it’s still the latest in a season they’ve been in first place since they finished the 2001 campaign 70 games over.
Like 2023, it’s—*bangs fist on table like Aaron Boone but in a good way*—all right in front of them.
That team’s final ten games opened with three on the road in Texas and then seven at home—first the Astros and then the Rangers.
The Mariners lost the first four and that was that. Cal ripped the organization for not adding like the Rangers did. Then they won the title.
Very Mariners. More Mariners than almost anything, really.
The last two nights have been the opposite.
Very un-M’s, dude.
Tuesday night had a lot. The biggest moment was probably Randy Arozarena’s home run. Up two, the Cards let the Mariners’ #8 and #9 hitters both reach.
Then Matthew Liberatore went 2-0 to Randy and it was like those scenes in movies when someone falls off the subway platform and onto the tracks, getting to their feet only to see a train bearing down on them.
Liberatore, the very player the Cardinals acquired in trading away Arozarena, was not yanked away to safety at the last minute. He was smashed against the front of the train, and the ball off the facade of the left-field bleachers.
3-2 Mariners. They gave the lead right back. But only briefly.
Enter Naylz.
It was only a solo shot but it was the shot in the game. I’ll say it for as long as he’s a Seattle Mariner and probably long past it but Josh Naylor is the straw that stirs the drink.
Please, please forgive me but—
Like another Canadian, Naylor’s a cold dude who’s getting back to his ways.
The performance has been there. The attitude though, the visible emotion, that’s new—at least in a Mariners uniform.
As Dave Valle mentioned on the broadcast (and boy he’s been great since returning), some guys just get pennant fever.
Maybe that’s what this is:
It raises the question, as Mariner Muse asked on Twitter: is Josh Naylor the greatest trade deadline pickup in Mariners history?
I don’t have the time or desire to take an analytical look because after Austin Jackson and Kendrys Morales (The Return) and Cameron Maybin and José Offerman and Rey Sánchez, getting a good player and having them be great is enjoyable enough for me.
The Mariners just don’t do that.
Finally, last night.
“LEO RIVAS WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?”
What a line. What a moment.
The Dan Wilson Mariners and extra innings go together like brushing your teeth and a tall glass of “Most Pulp” Florida’s Natural.
In the 10th, Wilson called for a bunt from Cole Young. Popped up.
Why not give it another chance in the 11th, after Jorge Polanco doubled home the tying run?
Well, because Luke Raley was up and J.P. Crawford and Cole Young set to follow him. Raley’s not having his best year but his bat’s better than Young and Crawford’s.
So that went as one might expect.
Jump ahead to the 13th, the Mariners again only needing a run to walk it off and get a much-needed win after every other team they’re worried about got theirs, and it’s Leo Rivas to the plate.
Little. Leo. Rivas.
You bunt, right? I mean, you might not. But Dan Wilson surely would. Right?
—RIGHT?
First pitch.
Note the first baseman. Note the ball.
That’s the good stuff.
There’s been a lot of that lately as the mustached Mariners fly onward with the wind of an Etsy witch beneath their wings.
Why can’t this Mariners team be the one that’s unlike all the others?
It looks like it right now.
Maybe it doesn’t continue through all 17 of the season’s remaining games, but maybe it does just enough to hang a new pennant above the right field stanchion.
With a win tonight, the Mariners climb atop the American League West.
There’s nothing like a pennant race. And we Mariners fans haven’t got enough of them.
It’s night after night after night, every pitch and every play mattering.
The five wins in this streak haven’t always been the easiest to come by but, once the Mariners got home, it’s felt every early evening that they would come.
The opener of a four-game set against the woeful second-half Anaheim Angels? Yeah, the Mariners should get that.
So let’s do it. Do what every Mariners team for decades hasn’t done.
Seize the West and never look back.
Go M’s.