My oh my!

In a game that will sure­ly enter the annals of not only team but league his­to­ry as one of the great­est come­back wins of all time, the Seat­tle Mariners pre­vailed 10–9 over the Toron­to Blue Jays at Rogers Cen­tre to win the decid­ing game in a best of three wild card series, keep­ing their sea­son going and set­ting up a sec­ond play­off series with their divi­sion rival, the Hous­ton Astros.

At one point, the Mariners were down by sev­en runs, hav­ing failed to repli­cate the pitch­ing dom­i­nance of their Game 1 win the pre­vi­ous night, in which they blanked the Blue Jays 4–0 on the strength of a gem of an out­ing from ace Luis Castil­lo, a pitch­er who joined the Mariners mid­sea­son thanks to a trade with Cincinnati.

With the Jays hav­ing got­ten to starter Rob­bie Ray — a Jay him­self last sea­son — and his replace­ment, reliev­er Paul Sewald, it looked to many watch­ing like this wild card series would be be head­ed to a Game 3 tomor­row in Toronto.

But loy­al and stead­fast Mariners fans did­n’t give up on their team.

This is, after all, a squad that has ral­lied when down before to win, includ­ing in the bot­tom of the ninth over Atlanta a few weeks ago after Sewald gave up mul­ti­ple home runs to the defend­ing World Series champions.

Fans watch­ing at T‑Mobile Park put shoes on their heads to sig­nal to any­one watch­ing — espe­cial­ly ESPN jour­nal­ists — that they still still believed.

That faith was well placed.

Giv­en a 1% chance of win­ning by ESPN after Toron­to built a big lead, Seat­tle play­ers stepped up and deliv­ered run after after run to close the gap.

On the anniver­sary of their wild win over the Yan­kees in the 1995 Amer­i­can League Divi­sion Series — a game that yield­ed the euphor­ic Edgar Mar­tinez hit now known sim­ply and affec­tion­ate­ly as “The Dou­ble” — the Mariners recap­tured their 1995 “Refuse to Lose” mag­ic and put togeth­er enough hits to get back into the game. Most of the bat­ting order made a con­tri­bu­tion to the effort:

• Jarred Kelenic hit a sac­ri­fice fly in the 5th to score Adam Fra­zier, final­ly putting the Mariners on the board mid­way through the game.
• The Mariners loaded the bases in the 6th, posi­tion­ing them to take advan­tage of a wild pitch that allowed Ty France to score. Cal Raleigh and Euge­nio Suárez then crossed home plate thanks to a tow­er­ing three-run blast launched by Car­los San­tana, a key addi­tion to this year’s team.
• Raleigh and Suárez were back at it in the eighth inning, with Suárez scor­ing on a sin­gle by Raleigh. J.P. Craw­ford sub­se­quent­ly dou­bled to score Fra­zier, Raleigh, and Mitch Haniger. This mas­sive hit tied the game at 9–9.
• Raleigh got back on base again in the ninth inning and was ready to run when Adam Fra­zier dou­bled to deep right field. This run put the M’s ahead.

Reliev­er Andres Munoz, who was bril­liant in Game 1, kept the Blue Jays at bay in the bot­tom of the eighth, while rook­ie phe­nom George Kir­by got the final three outs for the Mariners in the bot­tom of the ninth, seal­ing the improb­a­ble vic­to­ry. The final base­ball hit by the Blue Jays land­ed in the glove of fan favorite Julio Rodriguez, the Mariners’ dynam­ic cen­ter field­er and the future of the franchise.

The tri­umph is the great­est come­back win on the road in MLB play­off history.

The ’95 Mariners, play­ing the deci­sive Game 5 at home, had to over­come a Yan­kees team that had a strong line­up and a lead late in the game. They would go on to lose to Cleve­land in the 1995 Amer­i­can League Cham­pi­onship Series.

As it so hap­pens, the New York Yan­kees and the Cleve­land Guardians are the oth­er two AL teams still alive in the 2022 play­offs, along with the Mariners and the Astros. If the Mariners beat the Astros next week — some­thing the team, its fans, and the greater Pacif­ic North­west would real­ly like to do — Seat­tle would then face either the Yan­kees (who elim­i­nat­ed them in both the 2000 and 2001 ALCS) or the Guardians (who elim­i­nat­ed them in the 1995 ALCS).

That’s right: the road to the World Series goes through two of the three teams that arguably have tor­ment­ed the Mariners the most over the course of their four plus decades of exis­tence. Right now, the M’s are the only MLB club to have nev­er appeared in a World Series. That won’t change until Seat­tle wins a league pen­nant. The cheat­ing Astros have dom­i­nat­ed the divi­sion for most of the past few years, while Guardians and Yan­kees have the dis­tinc­tions of being the teams that have pre­vent­ed the Mariners from reach­ing the World Series.

Before this year, the Mariners had made only four post­sea­son runs. They all came in the late 1990s or ear­ly 2000s: 1995, 1997, 2000, 2001. Three of those teams, as men­tioned, reached the ALCS, while the ’97 Mariners got elim­i­nat­ed in the ALDS by the Bal­ti­more Ori­oles. The ’22 Mariners amus­ing­ly have the dis­tinc­tion of hav­ing elim­i­nat­ed the Ori­oles from the play­offs. When they clinched the last A.L. wild card spot on Sep­tem­ber 30th, they snuffed out Bal­ti­more’s post­sea­son hopes.

The Ori­oles had been try­ing to get one of the Amer­i­can League’s three wild card spots, but could­n’t catch Seat­tle or AL East rivals Toron­to and Tam­pa Bay.

Toron­to and Tam­pa Bay have now fall­en (the Guardians swept the Rays to take the oth­er Amer­i­can League Wild Card Series), leav­ing the Seat­tle Mariners as the sole AL wild card team left stand­ing in the 2022 postseason.

When Cal Raleigh hit a walkoff home run last month to clinch a berth and end a twen­ty-one year play­off drought, Mariners fans every­where rejoiced.

Tonight, they did so again.

Just mak­ing the play­offs was an accom­plish­ment, but this team and its fans under­stand­ably want more. Much more. They want to make the most of an oppor­tu­ni­ty to play excit­ing post­sea­son base­ball, inspire the Pacif­ic North­west, earn nation­al respect, and bring home a cham­pi­onship to a region that last expe­ri­enced a play­off run decades ago. To do that, they’ll need to keep winning.

But as they demon­strat­ed in Toron­to, they have the poten­tial to make a deep run. The 2022 Mariners are a team with not only tal­ent, but also grit, con­ta­gious cama­raderie, and seri­ous resilience. When these M’s say “Sea Us Rise,” they mean it. They embraced the chaos, they won, they danced, and they advanced.