That was the hit we’ve been looking for
That’s the good stuff.
There are not many experiences in sports that can touch sitting along the near-baseline, any deck, when one of your dudes hits an absolute tracer to the pull-side.
I’m talking the ones where you know it’s gone immediately and can enjoy the ball’s full arc across your field of vision, one side to the other. Even on absolute bolts, like Randy’s, you still have enough time to momentarily ponder where it’s going to end up.
Like it’s gone, but how gone?
Into the upper tank, Yordán in left didn’t even move—that’s how gone.
On the subject of Cuban sluggers, those left field bleachers were a spot once frequented by the elder Vladimir Guerrero. One night, now a couple decades ago, he did it twice.
It’s a little better when it’s one of the good guys. The Mariners—and Mariners fans—have been looking for that hit all year long. All these long, excruciating two whole weeks.
It’s funny, but it felt that damn good all the same.
There were about 45,000 fans in the building tonight. And it felt like it.
Maybe everyone else didn’t live like this but, even in a family of seven, I was raised as a kid to keep an eye on blocks of open seats. Open seats better than our own, of course.
Four there, two sections over from the near end of the dugout—keep an eye on those.
It’s just something that doesn’t go away.
In the glory days of the early-aughts, a solid long-lasting chunk of dark green seats was tough to come by. That’s what the building was like tonight.
Full buildings like that, or ones close, I always think—that right there, that’s your KPI. We want—nay, fiend for—a World Championship, but in the heat of the regular season, the Mariners should aim a for packed, lively building every time they take the field and let the rest of the whole operation work backwards from there.
You saw it tonight—or you may have seen your M’s on good, old public airwaves. Those are your airwaves!
It’s good stuff.
There’s something about good Friday nights, about the big moments in the big wins that mark the start of big weekends and big homestands.
They make me think about how spring and summer nights now, even when they’re on the road, one of every three people out in the city is wearing something Mariners.
Friday nights like tonight, when the diaspora of 45K watching in SoDo and even more watching elsewhere makes their way into the best and worst bars, it’s almost everyone.
Baseball is communal like that. And that’s why a homer like that one tonight is so powerful. It’s a jolt to not just the dugout and the clubhouse and the ballpark, but the city.
More of that, please.
Go M’s.