He wound up agreeing to let me repost his memories of some of the ’95 games he went to, and they’re provided below, but you can go here to read his account of all the games he attended in 1995.

I was at Game 5.

Yep, I was there. In the third deck down the right field line. It was bedlam. It was amazing. It was seminal. But, honestly, I barely remember it. It was all a blur. No. My most vivid memory of Game 5 came nearly five years later, on the morning of March 26, 2000, on a stranger’s floor in Washington D.C.

Here’s the story.

I moved to D.C., from Seattle, in October, 1999, after graduating from law school. I was a brand-new baby-lawyer at the Department of Justice and I didn’t know a soul. Well, I did have a friend from the fraternity house at the University of Michigan who lived there. But this was it. I was on my own for the first time. It was exciting and challenging, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t miss home.

Six months after starting work, I’d become friends with some of the new lawyers who’d started at Justice around the same time. I was out drinking with a group of Justice newbies on the night of Saturday, March 25, and we all ended up at some random stranger’s apartment early Sunday morning. As people snatched up spare beds and couches, I was left with the living room floor. There was no chance I could sleep.

So, instead, I turned on the TV. And, to my everlasting delight, ESPN Classic was airing the “Best games ever played at the Kingdome,” in anticipation of the Kingdome demolition later that morning.

Lying on that floor, I watched the game again for the first time. Extra Innings. Randy Johnson out of the bullpen. “Black” Jack McDowell. Stupid Randy Velarde. Yankees take the lead. Joey Cora bunts and slides around Mattingly. Junior’s line drive single. Runners at the corners . . . .

Up comes Edgar . . .

Wow. Things were changing in Seattle. Edgar’s double led directly to the demolition of the Kingdome. Safeco Field was open. The next year, that beautiful new stadium would play host the 2001 All-Star Game, a rookie named Ichiro, and a winning streak the likes of which no one had ever seen.

And one drunk M’s fan, lying on a stranger’s floor three-thousand miles away, felt like he was home.

With Apologies to Ernest L. Thayer and Casey At The Bat

The outlook wasn’t brilliant for the Mariner Nine that day;
The score stood 4 to 4 as the eleventh inning began its play.
And when Kelley scored for the Yankees, and the Unit was to blame
A sickly silence fell upon the patrons of the game.

A straggling few got up to wail in deep despair. The rest
Clung to that hope that springs eternal in the human breast;
They thought if only Joey or Junior could get a whack at that—
We’d put up even money then with Edgar at the bat.

So Joey preceded Edgar, as did Junior and his Rake,
And the former was a banjo and the latter had had a break;
So upon that stricken multitude the rally cap was the hat
For there was a chance of runners on with Edgar coming to the bat.

And Joey laid down a bunt single, to the wonderment of all,
And Griffey, kept hopes alive and tore the cover off the ball;
And when the dust had lifted, and the fans saw what had occurred,
Hysteria reigned across the Dome, and many an eye was blurred.

Then from sixty thousand throats and more there rose a lusty yell;
It rumbled through Snoqualmie Valley, it rattled in the dell;
It knocked upon THE mountain and it recoiled upon the flat,
For Edgar, mighty Edgar was advancing to the bat.

There was an ease in Edgar’s manner as he stepped into his place;
There was a pride in Edgar’s bearing and a smile on Edgar’s face.
And when responding to the cheers, he lightly doffed his hat,
No stranger in the crowd could doubt ‘twas Edgar at the bat.

A hundred thousand eyes were on him as he rubbed his hands with dirt;
Many thousand tongues applauded when he wiped them on his shirt.
Then while the writhing pitcher ground the ball into his hip,
Defiance gleamed in Edgar’s eye, a smile curled Edgar’s lip.

And now the leather covered sphere came hurling through the air,
And Edgar stood a watching it in coiled readiness there.
Close by the sturdy batsman the ball unheeded sped—
“That ain’t my pitch,” said Edgar. “Strike one.” the umpire said.

From the Dome seats black with people, went up a muffled roar,
Like the beating of the storm-waves on a stern and distant shore.
“Kill him! Kill the umpire!” shouted someone in the stand;
And it’s likely they have killed him had not Sweet Lou raised his hand.

With a smile of Christian charity Pinella’s visage shown;
He stilled the raising tumult; he bade the game go on.
He signaled to the umpire, and once more the spheroid flew;
But Edgar saw, read, and swung before the umpire could say “Strike two!”

Oh, somewhere in this favored town the sun is shining bright;
The band is playing at Safeco, and Seattle hearts are light.
And everywhere folks are laughing, and everywhere children shout;
For there still is joy in Marinerville—cause mighty Edgar did NOT strike out.

Bud Orr
Baseball Boyz Banquet 2003

So how was I going to get tickets. We had made the trip over from Leavenworth six or seven times that summer. We had grown totally distraught early in the year when Junior broke his wrist and we had watched unbelieving as the rest of the team sucked it up and played better than they ever had. I knew that we just had to be in the stands if they went to the playoffs.

So, I was standing in front of about 200 people in an East Wenatchee auditorium when tickets went on sale at 10:00 am. I told my audience we would take a short break while I made a phone call. I dialed and prayed. Ten minutes came and went and I was still on hold, 20 minutes and the crowd I was teaching had filed back in. I was still on hold but I had to start speaking again. So I handed my cell phone (it was huge compared to what we all use today) to someone in the first row and I told them to let me know if anyone picked up. About 10 minutes later someone did. I excused myself and told the crowd I had to take a phone call again and I was sorry, got on with the ticket agent and scored three tickets in the 2nd deck right over Junior in centerfield.

When I got off the phone no one in the audience of 200+ could figure out why I was jumping up and down and screaming until someone said, “You just got playoff tickets? Didn’t you?” I admitted that I had and the crowd started applauding. It was beyond cool.

Jump forward a few weeks to the night of the one game playoff against California. I wasn’t able to get tickets to that game. I was sure we would have it won long before that (because I was a total believer) but a good friend went and we sat in the pizza parlor he owned in Leavenworth (me and my kids) and watched that game. When they finally won we went nuts.

But the next two games were two of the worst of my life. Watching the games from Yankee Stadium with my kids as we lost both of them and knowing that if you couldn’t get Jay (still my all-time favorite baseball player) to win for you in Yankee Stadium then maybe things were over. It made me hate the Yankees and that bastard Jim Leyritz more than any group of people before or since. I still hate the Yankees. Maybe the Mariners were just too tired. Maybe my kids and I would only get to use one of those precious tickets I had bought in front of 200 audience members.

So two days later, I went to my kids schools and picked them up around noon and we made the drive to the Dome (sorry, I have always capitalized it–it was kind of shrine to me) and watched them win. OMG! It was incredible. We did Refuse to Lose. We got lost leaving the Dome that night but we didn’t care–we had won. Did I mention I had one of the worst colds of my life. So here I am driving over Snoqualmie Pass twice a day for three days and not able to take any cold medication. My kids and I talked more in those three days of traveling than we ever had before. (I guess five days if you count the Cleveland games).

The next day my kids went to school and I went to work. Thankfully I work for myself so I could go in at 4:30 am and get my days work done and then I picked them up again at noon and we headed west. The second night was even more unbelievable than the first. When Edgar makes the Hall, it should be more about that game than about The Double. A three run homer and a grand salami. Our seats were just above where that ball (the salami) went out and we couldn’t see it go. (Remember how bad the sight lines were in the Dome looking down from the upper decks.) We had to wait for the rest of the Dome to go NUTS when the ball went out to know he had done it.

That third night. Oh geez! I still get tears in my eyes when I think of it. Nothing makes me emotional like that game. Up and down, up and down. The whole night. Still today, I count it as one of the five best days in my life, maybe top three. I remember so much of it. And when Joey pulled off that wonderful bunt and then Griff pushed him on to third we just knew that there was no way we were going to lose. It wasn’t possible. I don’t care if Babe Ruth (or any other of the Yankee legends of the past) had come back from the dead and pitched that inning or got to bat first in the next one, we knew there was no way we could lose. If you were there when you saw Edgar come up, you knew too. There was no way for us to lose. We didn’t even have to refuse at that point. It was destiny.

I can still see that swing in my mind. It was so sweet. That ball bounding into left field. It didn’t even look like it was hit that hard. But we knew we were tied. I was watching the ball and my son grabbed my arm and screamed that Junior was going for it. OMG! I had never, NOT EVER, seen him run that fast. Even after a fly ball in centerfield. When he scored—pandemonium.

If you were there and as into the Mariners as we were you will understand when I say that I am sitting here in my kitchen right now, typing this, with tears streaming down my face. That was it. I could die happy. Now don’t get me wrong. I lead a GREAT life. I have remarried (to a woman who likes baseball) and I have moved to Redmond so I don’t have the Leavenworth drive to get to Safeco and my kids have grown and are two of the best people you could ever want to meet but that night was beyond special. That night stands out. It is perhaps my most vivid memory. And not just the game. The exhilarating drive home with my kids. I look back now at those five games (the three with the Yankees and the two with Cleveland) and the trips to and from the Dome and I think that’s when we truly connected. We had been close before but my son and I found a common ground that we have kept going for all these years. And it’s a memory that I can replay over and over again of the best of times with my kids. For that I am truly thankful.

I want to mention the other two games. Well, really only one. For the life of me, I can’t remember the first game with Cleveland. I remember that Hershiser pitched for them and that we had a young kid on the mound who loaded the bases in the first and then got out of the jam but I can’t remember his name. Was it Dave Fleming? (My son would know but it’s too early to call him.) [It was Bob Wolcott.] I do remember that, of course, Cleveland won. And I remember they won the next night too. And that we were done. But you know what? If you are like me, that last night…when it was over…that was the second best night of the playoffs. Sure Joey cried in the dugout while Alex comforted him but if you were there you remember that we in the stands didn’t Refuse to Lose, we refused to leave. We screamed, cheered, applauded and just kept going until the team came out. My kids and I had a two and a half hour drive to go home after a loss but we stayed for almost an hour until they came out and we thanked them for what was perhaps the best month of baseball in the history of the game.

I grew up in Southern Cal. I learned baseball from Vin Scully listening to Dodger games on my bedside radio after my parents had told me to go to bed. Before 1995, the best game in baseball history had been the night Gibson hit the home run off Eckersley to win the first game of the World Series in 1988. And then my boys in blue going on to win in just five games from the Mighty A’s. Well September and October of 1995 made that look like little league. It was magic. Truly magic. Thank you so much for putting this site together. It made me write this down which I have never done before.

By DrKoob

Romance in the stands
Unbeknownst to me, my boyfriend had been wanting to ask me to marry him, but wanted the occasion to be very special. He was trying to decide how to pull this off when the Mariners did it for him. It happened on Oct. 8, the final game with the Yankees. It was that fabulous and magical moment when Edgar, with Griffey on base, hit that sweet line drive into the left-field corner, which scored Griffey from first to win the game. In the midst of 57,411 screaming, over-the-edge Mariner fans, Daniel turned to me, told me to take my earplugs out, and proposed to me. I am a huge Mariner fan, and he knew how special that moment was to me. I want to thank the Mariners for giving me the most exciting, magical and romantic moment of my life. – Mary Ogdon & Daniel Clark

Angel on her shoulder
I inherited my season tickets from my friend, Kathy Walsh, after I found her unexplainably dead on her dining room floor Memorial Day weekend. We had attended many games together, and her family gave me a set of season tickets. I attended all the rest of the games, and Kathy was sitting on my shoulder. This was my grief therapy. – Sandi Meggert

Brightened our home
My dad took me to my first Mariner game in 1979 when I was 10 years old. Last Christmas, my dad was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He has spent the last nine months confined to the house, but we have still enjoyed watching the games on TV. I know that even while his health is deteriorating, it has been a joy to him to watch the games. Thanks for bringing a little light into our lives for the past 16 years, and especially in the past month. – Betsy Coffey

You had to be there. To really understand how much this city responded when the Mariners made it into the playoffs for the first time in 1995, you had to have been here to feel the palpable shift after 18 years of bad baseball.

The Mariners’ late season ascent that August and September is a fond memory for many people who, like me, don’t even consider themselves sports fans.

The business and culture around Seattle baseball — from the romance of Emil Sick’s Pacific Coast League Rainiers, to the single-season backroom shenanigans of the Pilots, to the years of anonymous struggles and threatened sales of the pre-1995 Mariners — had always been far more fascinating to me than anything happening on the field.

But all that changed, officially, on October 2, 1995 when the Mariners played the Angels in a one-game tiebreaker to decide which team would go on to the division series. A win for the home team would send the Mariners to their first post-season play in franchise history.

On that particular day, I was working for the Business Volunteers for the Arts (BVA) program of the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce. The game took place right in the middle of “The Art & Technology Symposium” that BVA was producing at Intiman Theatre. My memories of the crude “technology” on display that day may as well be in sepia toned prints — it seems like a century ago. That the game was taking place at the same time was also pretty distracting, and only a few people carried cellphones in 1995, and the cellphones were only, well, phones. I remember stepping out into the Intiman courtyard several times during the program to get updates from a now-forgotten attendee who was in touch by cellphone with someone attending the game at the Kingdome.

There are legends in many cities about how you could walk through town on a summer night in the 1930s and 1940s and not miss a word of the local baseball broadcast as radios played from each house. While taking a walk through Wallingford during game five of the Mariners-Yankees division series, my wife and I couldn’t hear any of the play-by-play (it was October in Seattle, after all, and windows were closed), but we did hear simultaneous whoops coming from houses in all directions each time the Mariners did something good. It’s one of my most vivid memories of feeling like a Seattleite, feeling really connected to the city.

Though they would ultimately lose to Cleveland in the American League championship series, the ’95 Mariners had erased years of scorn and derision, and had set the city afire.

By Feliks Banel

For those of you who weren’t there in 1995, you will never understand what that season meant to the city of Seattle and to the people who grew up following the Mariners. Because I’m not exaggerating when I say this. That season changed everything. EVERYTHING. Everything that is good or bad about Mariners baseball all came about because of those epic six weeks in 1995. If the Mariners hadn’t made that playoff run, in the manner that they did, at the time that they did, I doubt they would even still be here today.

My backstory as a Mariner fan is a little bit more personal than most. You see, I wasn’t one of those “The New M’s!” fans who jumped on the bandwagon when Ken Griffey Jr. showed up in 1989. Nor was I was one of the “Refuse to Lose” fans who suddenly showed up in 1995. No way, sir. I was a diehard. My brother and I were Junior Mariners going all the way back to 1981.

I was 7 years old in 1981. And that was the first summer that my parents signed me up to be a “Junior Mariner.” Have you ever heard of the Junior Mariner program? Of course you haven’t. The Mariners only had about 7,000 fans a game back then. They were the most ridiculous franchise on the face of the Earth. But my mom signed me up to be a Junior Mariner in 1981, which meant I got a package in the mail containing a crappy plastic batting helmet, a 99 cent batting glove, and free tickets to 8 games during the 1981 season.

Oh, and they weren’t the good games, mind you.

No way.

The Junior Mariner (aka free) games were the ones against the A’s, the Rangers, the Indians, and the Twins. Good lord. Did you ever watch a game between the 1981 Mariners and the 1981 Twins? Of course you didn’t, no one did. I swear, they had so few fans in the stands those nights that they probably would have let me pitch.

So anyway, that’s my backstory. I grew up as a Junior Mariner, my family attended between 20-30 games in the Kingdome every year of the 80′s, and I grew up learning to love a team that in no way was ever going to amount to anything. Seriously, do you know what the highlight of my childhood was as a Mariners fan? The fact that one time we scored 7 runs in an inning against the Yankees. I had never seen this before. Seven runs in an inning? By the Mariners? This feat boggled my mind.

Remember, Al Cowens was considered our “cleanup” hitter back then. As an 80′s Mariner fan, you learned not to expect much.

Through it all– good and bad– I was there in the Kingdome for everything. I sat behind the stupid plexiglass in left field. I fell in love with players like Todd Cruz. I thought Mickey Brantley was going to end up in the Hall of Fame. I convinced myself that you could field a contender with players like Greg “Pee Wee” Briley. Heck, I still say that 1989-90 Erik Hanson was one of the best pitchers of all time.

Year in and year out, I was there, and I loved my Mariners. I followed them with a passion. I was so passionate about them, in fact, that after a particularly frustrating loss in 1989– followed by me smashing a bat into a wall– my mom suggested I might want to attend some sort of anger counseling class. She said my life depended far too much on if the Mariners won or lost that night. And do you know what? She was right. I literally had days of my life where I was pissed off just because Mike Schooler blew a save in the 9th the night before. The Mariners were all I ever thought about when I was a teenager.

As you can guess, I had an unhappy childhood.

—-THE MAGICAL SEASON OF 1995—–

People say that there weren’t any Mariner fans before 1995. And I’m sorry, but that’s B.S. There were tons of Mariners fans. TONS. There were tons of young Mariners fans, just like me. The Mariners were always popular among young people. The only problem was that you sort of had to keep your fandom on the down low when you were talking to people. There wasn’t much incentive to walking around saying, “Hey guys, I’m a Mariners fan”, when you know you’re talking about the worst franchise in American League history. Because you have to remember, the Mariners sucked. Sure they were lovable, and sure people liked them. But they didn’t have a season where they finished over .500 until 1991. They went 83-79 in ’91 (in their 15th year of existence), and people in Seattle celebrated like we had just won the World Series. They had parades and celebrations around the city and everything.

A parade for 83 wins? Does this sound like a fan base that is any way prepared for postseason baseball???

And this is where my story begins.

The year is 1995, and the Mariners are the same old lovable bunch of underachieving players they have always been. You knew they were going to be good, thanks to players like Griffey, Randy Johnson, and Edgar, but at the same time you also knew not to get your hopes up. After all, remember, we’re talking about the Mariners here. Expecting a World Series would be like expecting a cure for the common cold. Sounds nice, but it aint gonna happen.

I was in college down in the Bay Area in the summer of ’95. I was midway through my sophomore year at Santa Clara University, which meant that this was my second year as a Mariner fan living in California. And this, of course, made hardcore Mariner fandom particularly difficult for me.

In 1995 it was almost impossible to follow the Mariners if you didn’t live in Seattle. Remember, this was all pre internet, pre Fox Sports Northwest, pre Baseball Tonight, pre everything. If the Mariners weren’t the Game of the Week on ESPN, they would never be on TV. And guess what? The Mariners never were on the Game of the Week on ESPN. So following them on a day in and day out basis in California was pretty much impossible. If you got 10 seconds of a Griffey highlight on Sportscenter, that was all you could ask for.

And then it happened.

—-GRIFFEY GETS HURT—-

On May 26, 1995, Ken Griffey Jr. smashed into a wall in the Kingdome and broke his wrist. He was likely out for the season.

Crap.

The best player in franchise history? The only reason to watch Sportscenter? The only player we had that anyone outside Seattle cared even the slightest bit about? Hurt. Gone for the season.

Well isn’t that just wonderful.

My thoughts on Griffey’s injury– and on the Mariners’ season in general at that point– were nicely summed up in an interview by a visibly shocked Jay Buhner. He said, “Um, we really can’t afford to even screw up a bunt anymore.”

Nicely put.

So Griffey was out. The Mariners were done. The 1995 season was shot. There was no more reason to watch.

I have to admit, for the first time in my life, I literally gave up on the Seattle Mariners that night. For the first time in my life, after all the heartache, after all the anger issues, after all my Mariner fanaticism, I finally just shrugged my shoulders and said, “Screw it.” For the first time since 1981, I made peace with the fact that the Mariners were going to suck this year, and I couldn’t do anything about it. For the first time in my life, I made the decision not to care.

So I turned off the Mariners, and I moved on with my life.

—- THE COMEBACK —-

Of course you all know what happened next. The Mariners started winning.

Despite the fact that they had lost their best player, the M’s somehow came together and put together one of the most miraculous runs in baseball history. All of a sudden, guys you had never heard of like Alex Diaz and Rich Amaral were pulling out highlight catches every night. Guys like Doug Strange and Chris Widger were getting game winning hits.

Even though the Mariners should have been dead and buried, they weren’t. They kept winning. It was inexplicable.

It was like the famous quote from the movie Rocky. Nobody told these guys it was a damn exhibition. They thought they were still in the race. They think it’s a damn fight!

Around August, it became evident to every Mariner fan on the face of the Earth (even me) that the M’s might actually have a chance to be interesting this year. Because it wasn’t just that the no-name Mariners were hanging in the race. It was also that the first place Angels were starting to lose. The Angels lost their shortstop Gary DiSarcina to a freak broken thumb injury, and all of a sudden they started this complete and inexplicable free-fall.

The Angels were going down. All of a sudden they couldn’t buy a win.

And here came the Mariners!

And better yet… here came the news that Ken Griffey Jr. was going to be back sooner than expected!

As August of 1995 came around, things were starting to get very very interesting in the A.L. West. Even I, the first year skeptic, had started to come back around. Because you could just feel it. The Mariners were not going to go away. They were going to give the Angels an actual run for their money. You could feel it. You could just taste it. The Mariners were going to be in an actual pennant race.

A Mariners pennant race? With a healthy Griffey! For the first time ever!

Allow me to steal a phrase: My oh my!

—- REFUSE TO LOSE —-

Most people name August 24th as the day that “Refuse to Lose” officially began. But I will always disagree with that. I was at the Kingdome a week before that, on August 18th. The M’s were playing the Boston Red Sox that night, it was Bob Wolcott’s major league debut, the Dome was buzzing, and it was a game I will never forget.

Why will I never forget it?

Well because the M’s were facing knuckleballer Tim Wakefield that night. Tim “14-1, 1.50″ Wakefield, to be exact. For some reason the guy was unhittable in 1995. But he came into the Kingdome on August 18th and the M’s just completely ripped him apart. Mike Blowers hit a pair of long home runs off Wakefield that night (including a grand slam in the first), and I remember sitting there thinking, “Holy crap, the M’s just destroyed the best pitcher in baseball. He didn’t even last three innings. Maybe we really ARE for real this season.”

A week later, the M’s beat John Wetteland and the Yankees on August 24th, and Refuse to Lose was officially on.

There are so many great memories of that 6 week stretch run in 95: Trading for Andy Benes… signing Vince Coleman… Doug Strange homering against the Rangers… Tino Martinez beating Dennis Eckersley… the Angels completely collapsing… Norm Charlton being picked up off the scrap heap after he took a ball to the face in Philadelphia, and then having a miraculous renaissance with the Mariners… but the one game I will always remember came against the A’s right in the middle of Refuse to Lose delirium. There was one game where the M’s were down something like 6-0 against Todd Van Poppel, and then got home runs from Vince Coleman and Alex Diaz to tie up the score and eventually win the game.

I swear to God, I listened to that entire game on the radio down in California (on the A’s radio network), and I was jumping up and down on every pitch over the last three innings. It was by far the most exciting comeback I have ever heard in my life. I remember Rick Rizzs and Ron Fairly nearly having heart attacks when Alex Diaz hit a 3 run homer off Rick Honeycutt in the bottom of the 8th. Fittingly, it was the first right-handed home run Diaz had ever hit in his life.

Again, you have to remember, we had never heard anything like this as Mariner fans. Anything. EVER! The team just kept winning, and winning, and winning. Every win was a comeback. And every game was more exciting and more memorable than the one before it. We had entered into that hallowed ground that most baseball fans will only experience once or twice in their entire lives. we had entered baseball nirvana.

None of us in the Northwest had any idea how to handle this.

—- THE ONE GAME PLAYOFF —-

So the regular season ended, and the M’s finished tied with the Angels for first place.

This was a very big deal.

Why was this a very big deal?

Well this aspect of the 95 season has sort of been forgotten over time, but the playoff game against the Angels was the first “winner takes all” playoff game in 17 years. The last time there had been a one-game playoff in baseball, Bucky Dent had homered to knock off the Red Sox back in 1978. So anyone with even a passing interest in baseball history was watching the Mariners-Angels game that night. It was epic. No matter if the M’s won or lost, this sort of thing didn’t happen very often in baseball. It was going to be historic.

I was down in California the night of the M’s-Angels game, and I was on pins and needles all day. I couldn’t concentrate at all. I just sat there in my classes all day, and all I could think about was, “Is Randy Johnson going to come through tonight? Is this really going to be our first postseason as Mariner fans? Can the Big Unit come through in the biggest game of his life?”

Well, obviously, he did. The Big Unit completely shut down the Angels (and our old friend Mark Langston) and pitched one of the most dominating games I have ever witnessed in my life. The Angels weren’t even close to beating him. People forget this now, but for 7 2/3 innings, Johnson threw a one hit shutout. How’s that for clutch? In a one game playoff, in the biggest game of his life, the Big Unit almost had a no-hitter!

Of course everyone remembers the Luis Sojo triple down the right field line that cleared the bases in the bottom of the 7th. Hell, how can you not remember it? It was one of the weirdest Mariners plays I had ever seen. J.T. Snow, one of the best fielding first basemen of the 90′s, completely botched a grounder down the line and it turned into a triple.

Good lord, what a moment. I remember jumping up and down in my living room as Sojo ran around the bases and then scored. The crowd was going crazy. Mark Langston just sat there on the ground, dejected. Because at that point, with the Mariners up 5-0, you knew it was over. That was the game. That was our Bucky Dent moment. Even Dave Niehaus, who was going out of his way not to jinx anything on the radio, all but proclaimed victory after Sojo cleared the bases. Because he knew it as well as we did. With the Mariners up 5-0 behind Randy Johnson? You might as well start printing up the playoff tickets.

Oh yeah, and another small bit of trivia about October 2nd. A lot of people have forgotten this, but the verdict in the O.J. Simpson murder trial came in the exact same night as the M’s-Angels game. In fact, if you listen to the audio tape of the game, you can hear the KIRO news people talk about it around the 4th or 5th inning.

The O.J. Verdict and the Sojo triple. On the exact same night. You talk about history!

—- THE SERIES WITH THE YANKEES —-

And now we come to the historic ALDS against the Yankees.

There are two things that I think should be mentioned when it comes to talking about the Yankees series. First, you have to keep in mind that, as Mariner fans, we had been through the wringer over the past 5 weeks of the season. Emotions were everywhere. People were drained. The Mariners made the playoffs! Our Mariners! The lovable losers! We already felt like we had conquered the world.

The second thing that people should keep in mind was that the Mariners were NOT the big story in baseball at that particular moment. Oh, they might have been huge if you lived in Seattle, but outside of Seattle? No one could have cared less. The big story in baseball (and one that pissed me off to no end) was that the beloved Yankees were playing in their first postseason in 14 years. That was all that anyone talked about on ESPN and in the national media. It was Yankees this, and Yankees that. And oh, how wonderful it is that Don Mattingly will finally get to play in his first postseason. Wouldn’t it be great if Donnie Baseball won the World Series in his final year as a Yankee?

Blah, blahdeeda, blah blah.

Um, isn’t it also a big story that the Mariners are playing in their first-ever postseason? Remember us? You know, we’re playing in this series too.

The world wasn’t yet sick of the Yankees in 1995 (like they would be a few years later), but if you were a Mariners fan, you certainly weren’t all that fond of them. The M’s and Yankees had had a lot of bad blood between them leading up to this series. In particular, there was an ongoing feud between Randy Johnson and the Yankees’ Jim Leyritz that was about as ugly as feuds got. It started with a fastball that Johnson ricocheted off of Leyritz’s head back in ’94, and the ugliness and beanballs had been escalating between the two teams ever since. So when the M’s were matched up against the Yankees in the 95 playoffs, you have to remember that these were two teams that very much already didn’t like each other. The rivalry was already there, even before the ’95 playoffs.

So anyway, the Mariners went to New York and they dropped the first two games of the series. Both losses were heartbreakers. Jim effing Leyritz even beat us in game 2 with a game-winning homer in the 15th. That sucked.

The national media, of course, was very pro-Yankees at this point of the series. The beloved Yankees were about to advance to the ALCS? Donnie Baseball might get to play in a World Series? Hooray for baseball! Hooray for America!

I was still down in California in college at this point, and that night my mom called me on the phone and she dropped a bombshell on me. She said, “Mario, I just got two tickets to Game 3 in the Kingdome on Friday. You want to fly up and see a playoff game?”

I was stunned. Huh? How the hell did she get tickets? Every ticket had been sold out for days. What kind of strings had this woman managed to pull?

“I got them through a guy in Canada,” she admitted. “And it might not have been legal, so don’t ask any questions.”

“You don’t want to know,” my dad affirmed. “Just fly up, it will be fun.”

I was on the next flight home to Seattle.

—- GAME 3 —-

I arrived home and I greeted my mom and dad, and my mom said she had actually gotten tickets to all three games– Games 3, 4 and 5. She said if the Mariners kept winning, we would be able to see the whole series. I said, “Nah, they won’t be winning three games, they’re the Mariners.” So we agreed that I would just stick around all weekend and enjoy my trip to Seattle. If nothing else, I figured I’d get to watch my first ever playoff game, and then I’d fly back to California happy. All would be right in the world.

The big thing to do for Mariners games at that time was to make a sign to hang in the Kingdome. There were probably 2,000 signs at every game during Refuse to Lose, and I wanted to be a part of that. So my first goal was to think up a clever sign I could bring to the game.

Naturally, being that I hated the Yankees, and the media’s relentless fawning over them, the message on my sign was obvious.

“MATTINGLY AINT EVER PLAYING IN A WORLD SERIES,” I wrote, in big angry red letters. “SCREW HIM.”

“Um, do you think that’s appropriate?” my dad asked, after seeing it.

“Probably not,” I said, “But it needs to be said.”

Just to be safe, I painted a much more appropriate message on the back of my sign. I wrote, “Hey Yankees, welcome to the Dome. Now get the hell out.” If I didn’t want to hang up the Mattingly one, I could use that one instead. I decided I would get to the game and make it a judgment call.

Friday night, my mom and I headed off to the Kingdome for Game 3 of the ALDS. And as you can guess, it was complete delirium. 50,000+ screaming fans. The loudest building you have ever heard in your life. For the first time ever, the Kingdome was like a damn gladiator arena. Like the Seahawk games back in the mid 80′s, the fans were actually turning the Kingdome into a weapon to use against our opponents. It was totally unlike your typical Mariners crowd.

I was in the Kingdome for two minutes before I turned to my mom and said, “I don’t think the Yankees will be winning here. It’s too intimidating.” My mom, who was two feet away from me, turned to me and screamed, “WHAT?” It was so loud in the Kingdome that you couldn’t hear a person talking right next to you. And that’s when I had a sneaking suspicion that the Yankees were going to be in for some trouble. They were now in the lion’s den.

The seats my mom had gotten were pretty much as far from home plate as you could possibly get. We were in the 300 level, upper deck, something like seats 999Y and 999Z. We were essentially sitting with our backs against the concrete wall of the Kingdome. Oh well. I guess beggars can’t be choosers. Luckily I had a nice close wall on which to hang up my sign.

I chose the sign that said, “Yankees, welcome to the dome. Now get the hell out.” Call me a wimp, but I opted for diplomacy.

You all probably know what happened in Game 3. The Kingdome was louder than it had ever been before, Randy Johnson shut down the Yankees on 6 hits, some fan threw a quarter and hit Yankee outfielder Gerald Williams in the mouth, and the Mariners lived on to fight another day. It was a lot of fun.

And now there was going to be a Game 4 Saturday in Seattle.

—- GAME 4 —-

At this point I have to add an important anecdote to my Mariners story. You’ll see why in a second.

The next day– Saturday, October 7th– was a very important day in Seattle sports. Not only were the Mariners playing the Yankees in Game 4 of the ALDS, the University of Washington also had a big football game against Notre Dame over at Husky Stadium.

And, well, if you know anything about Seattle, you will know it has always been a football town. Always. Football will always trump baseball in the Northwest. That game had been sold out for months. UW against Notre Dame was HUGE.

For some reason, my parents had tickets to the UW-Notre Dame game that afternoon. I guess they’d had about as much faith in the Mariners winning all three games as I did, because all along our plan had been to go to the Mariners game on Friday, and then the UW football game on Saturday. But now that the Mariners were playing on Saturday too, this wound up being a bit of a dilemma. Hmmm, do we scrap the Husky tickets and just watch the Mariners? Or do we try to hit both games, traffic be damned? What’s the appropriate decision here?

In the end, we decided to watch the first half of the Husky game, and then leave at halftime and drive over to the Kingdome to watch the Mariners game.

And this is the part of the story I will always remember.

To my dying day, I will never forget the visual I saw that day at Husky Stadium. I could live to be 100 years old, and I will never forget the amazing thing that transpired that Saturday, October 7th, 1995. To me, this was the #1 reminder I will always have of how important the Mariners-Yankees series was to Seattle.

At halftime of the UW-Notre Dame game, NEARLY HALF THE STADIUM stood up, headed for the exits, and drove over the Kingdome.

Half the stadium left the Husky game! Against Notre Dame! That has never happened in Seattle, it never will again happen in Seattle, and it was just stunning to see in a football town like Seattle. People actually chose the Mariners over the University of Washington football team. In 1995. It was unbelievable.

To my dying day, I will never forget that.

So anyway, we went back to the Kingdome for Game 4 and sure enough, the Mariners won again. The Yankees jumped out early against Chris Bosio, but the M’s came back on a pair of homers from Edgar Martinez (“Get out the rye bread and the mustard…”) to win the game, 11-8. And I will always remember that Bernie Williams gave us a heart attack when he flew out to the wall against Bill Risley to end the game. It was a sloppy game, and it wasn’t pretty at all, but hey, a win was a win. And now we had forced another do or die one-game showdown tomorrow afternoon.

The ALDS was tied.

It was now winner takes all.

—- GAME 5 —-

Sunday, October 8th was a day that few people who lived in Seattle will ever forget.

My God. How could you ask for a better game? How could you ask for more drama? How could you forget a moment like Edgar Martinez doubling down the line to win the game?

Well for me, I was at the Kingdome that day, and I will say one thing. There was a lot of great drama in that game (Doug Strange walking with the bases loaded in the bottom of the 8th was a personal favorite), but there was one moment that– bar none– will always be the most exciting baseball moment I have ever seen in my life. I don’t care if the Mariners win 30 World Series in my lifetime, nothing will ever top the moment when Randy Johnson come in to pitch in relief in the top of the 9th.

Picture it: It’s the top of the 9th. The Yankees have two men on. No outs. Tie game. The fans are uncharacteristically quiet because the Yankees are putting together a 9th inning rally.

All weekend long the newspapers have been saying that RANDY JOHNSON MIGHT BE AVAILABLE IN RELIEF. LOU PINIELLA MIGHT OPT TO USE THE BIG UNIT IN A CLOSE GAME.

So Piniella comes out to the mound, and the crowd starts to buzz a little bit.

All weekend long the crowd has been screaming their heads off. This is by far the loudest place I have ever been in my life. My mom, sitting right next to me, hasn’t heard a word I have said for three days. But the minute Lou motions down to the bullpen for the Big Unit, in the top of the 9th, the crowd decides that it is going to explode.

“Now pitching for the Mariners….”

The decibel level immediately climbs up into the stratosphere.

“…. nummmmmmber fifty onnnnnnnne…..”

LOUD SCREAMING.

“…. Rannnnnnnnnndyyyyyyy Johnnnnnnnnnnnnnson!”

Like I said, to the day I die, I will always remember where I was and what I was doing at that exact moment in time. When Randy Johnson came into the game, accompanied by “Welcome to the Jungle” blaring over the loudspeakers, I felt like I was watching a movie. It was like I was watching the movie Major League, and Ricky “Wild Thing” Vaughn had just been summoned from the bullpen to strike out Clu Heywood. I felt like I was going to pass out. It was so surreal I had to turn to my mom to ask if this was really happening.

The applause for Randy Johnson didn’t die down for about five minutes. And the best part was that you knew the Yankees were never going to score. Randy (a very emotional player) was so pumped up for this moment that he probably could have thrown a ball through the wall of the Kingdome. He was completely amped, and the crowd was going absolutely bananas.

Oh yeah, and the best part of the moment? Looking down in my binoculars and seeing Wade Boggs’ shoulders slump when he realized he was going to have to hit against an amped up Randy Johnson.

To this day, I think back to Wade’s terrified body language in the on deck circle, and it still makes me laugh. He looked like a deer in headlights. He was a future Hall of Famer, a member of the 3,000 hit club, one of the best hitters of the 20th century, yet he knew he had no chance. The Big Unit was going to strike him out, that was just all there was to it.

—- THE ENDING OF GAME 5 —-

Anyway, you all know how the game ended. The Yankees scored once in the eleventh, the Mariners scored twice in the bottom of the eleventh, and 57,000 fans went home screaming into the night in delirious ecstasy.

Well, okay, make that 50,000 fans minus one.

You see, I wasn’t there for Edgar’s double in the eleventh. I didn’t get to see it in person. I’d like to say that I did, but due to unfortunate circumstances, I’d had to leave the Kingdome early that night. I had a test in college the next morning down in California, and I had to catch the last flight out of SeaTac or I wouldn’t have been back for it.

All weekend long I had known that if there were indeed a Game 5, my schedule was going to suddenly get extraordinarily tight. And all throughout Game 5, I kept telling myself, “This game better not go extra innings. This game better not go extra innings.” Because I knew that if it went past 9 innings, I was going to have to leave early.

Sure enough, it did. And I did.

Talk about a dagger to the heart.

It crushed my soul, but I had to leave Game 5 after the M’s went down scoreless in the bottom of the 9th. My dad drove me to SeaTac, I watched the eleventh inning on a TV in a SeaTac bar, and it was one of the greatest moments in my life when Edgar doubled home Cora and Griffey in the bottom of the eleventh to win the game. I celebrated with a bunch of random strangers in a SeaTac sports bar.

And P.S. I still think Cora ran out of the baseline on the bunt just before Edgar’s double.

Ten minutes later I was on a plane back to California. I was still amped. I knew I had been through something I would never experience again in my life.

The Mariners had just had their first postseason experience.

They had won the series with the Yankees. In the most exciting manner possible.

I had actually seen a vendor selling– and had actually eaten— a Luis Sojo Burger at a cafe in Pioneer Square.

After all those years of misery, after all those years of frustration, after all my rage as a kid because the Mariners always let me down, they had finally done something to make the city fall in love with them.

I fell asleep on the plane, smiling.

My baseball fanatic virginity had officially been lost.

For the first time ever, my beloved Mariners were winners.

Mario Lanza
Upland, California
October 8, 2009

By Mark L. Norton

When the Yankees went ahead in the top of the inning, I got very mad and left our room for the fantail of the ship. At the bar a Yankee fan commented that the M’s had two runners on and Edgar coming up. I ran into the inside bar and joined my little band of M’s fans in front of the TV. When Edgar lined the ball down the left field line I turned to the gang and said, “At least we’re tied again.” When I looked again, Junior was rounding third and I knew we had won.

Unfortunately I did not get a chance to hear Dave Niehaus do the call live (National TV), but every time I hear it now I get goosebumps…

(To make matters worse for me, I had a chance to go to the Angels playoff game (co-worker had seats 4 rows behind homeplate), but since I left on my vacation the next day, my boss was a little unwilling to let me go.  To add insult to injury, radio reception in our building sucked.  Once again I never got to hear a classic M’s call (Everybody Scores!!!!!).

By Grant Kenn

By Mark Wood