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.

Arne: You came to this project as a Yankees fan, right? I’ve always assumed this ALDS was the province of Mariner fans, so I’m curious to find out why you decided to write about it from over in New Jersey.

Chris: I was born in 1981 so the ’95 series was the first time I had seen the Yankees make the playoffs. They have seemingly made it to the postseason every year since, but back in ’95, this was a huge deal in NYC. Plus, like many Yankee fans, Don Mattingly was by far my favorite player, so there was an overwhelming sense of relief that he finally made the postseason. The games were beyond anything baseball fans could have hoped for and despite the outcome, I often thought back upon the series and how exciting it all was. As I got older, I learned more and more about it and found there was more to the story than just the five games, so I thought it would make for a good book.

Arne: Your book’s to a large extent about the swan song of Don Mattingly. Could you talk a little bit about how he figured in the ALDS. It seems that him striking out three times against Randy Johnson in game 3 was an emotional turning point in the series.

Chris: I think for many Yankee fans, it was almost more about Don Mattingly making the playoffs and winning the World Series than about the Yankees doing so. Very few people knew for certain if he was returning after that season, so for fans, it became crucial that the Yankees win it then and there. Additionally, his performance during the series (10 hits, 6 RBI and a home run) reminded many of the dominating player he had been during the 1980s. Mattingly was the only left handed batter in the lineup against Johnson, showing Showalter’s faith in him. Unfortunately, it did not work out well for Mattingly and even Seattle fans, who had been mostly cordial to him, began taunting him after the three strikeout performance.

Arne: The N.Y. vs. Seattle baseball dynamic really got going in ’95, then it became a recurring rivalry for the next six years. And of course a lot of Mariner fans are still disgusted by Alex Rodriguez leaving town, so he’s helped make the Yankees a continuing object of dislike in the Northwest. It’s somewhat well known here that Seattle’s first name was “New York Alki,” or “New York by and by,” and Seattle still seems to emulate itself on New York City in some ways. What are your thoughts on the sports rivalry between the two cities?

Chris: From 1995 to 2001, the Yankees-Mariners was possibly the best rivalry in baseball. Most of that was driven by the Division Series, but you had dynamic players on both sides and there were always NY/Seattle connections, whether it be Lou Piniella, Tino Martinez, Jay Buhner, or Luis Sojo. I think just about every city takes pride in defeating the Yankees, but especially Seattle because they had a one up on everyone because of what happened in ’95.

Arne: What take does the average Yankee fan have on the ’95 ALDS?

Chris: I don’t want to speak for all fans, but for me it’s mostly bittersweet. I think the Yankees had an excellent chance of beating the Indians in the ALCS that year and getting to the World Series. Had they done so, it would have been very difficult for Steinbrenner not to have brought back Buck Showalter and other members of the team. It was disappointing for fans that off season to slowly see their favorite players start leaving for other teams, and then to not have Mattingly return was almost unthinkable. Yet the Yankee dynasty of ’96-’01 does not happen if the Yankees don’t lose that series, so in a twisted way, you almost seem grateful that Edgar hit that double (although the pain of watching that and reliving the moment, as a Yankee fan, never goes away).

Arne: What do you think was the biggest mistake the Yankees made during ALDS to help the Mariners come back?

Chris: I wouldn’t call it a mistake, but not utilizing Mariano Rivera. It’s not a mistake because no one knew just what Rivera brought to the table. He hadn’t pitched well during the regular season, and yet he dominated Seattle in the playoffs. Had Showalter known then what we all know now (a fact Buck admits), Rivera would have been brought in sooner in Game 5, possibly pitched out of that 8th inning jam without letting the Mariners tie the game, and today we would be talking about the Tampa Bay Mariners. But it would be unfair to blame Showalter for that because no one had a clue and anyone who says otherwise is simply not telling the truth.

Arne: I’ve always thought Yankee fans have a grudge against Randy Johnson because of his feats in the ALDS and the ’01 World Series, and because he then didn’t do too well in New York. Do you agree?

Chris: Again, I don’t want to speak for all fans, but I think that is probably fair. What is odd about that is that the Yankees actually performed very well historically against Johnson during the regular season. I don’t have the exact stats, but I believe few teams did better. But when it came playoff time, he simply dominated them in two separate years. Johnson came to NY with high expectations and, in the minds of fans anyway, never lived up to them.

Arne: How did the interviews for the book go? Who did you talk to, what did they say, and what were your impressions of them?

Chris: I spoke to approximately 70 people for the book. They ranged from umpires, to team personnel, people who had been on the teams in the ’80s, and of course, the coaches, managers and players who were there in ’95. Just about everyone was very supportive of the concept and for those who took part in the series, they all loved talking about the experience (even the Yankees). On the NY side, many of those guys had great memories of their teammates and coaches, many of whom they never played with again after the Game 5 loss. For Seattle, most of the players simply couldn’t stop talking about what a great experience it was and how Seattle baseball really came to life that year.

Arne: Along the same lines, which Mariner players and/or officials were the most interesting to research and to interview?

Chris: Researching the Mariners’ early history was fun because, frankly, the team was so bad. They were just so many oddities that I kept discovering, like Wills trying to make the batter’s box bigger, or a guy who gave up a home run on the first pitch he threw in the majors. Everyone I interviewed, and I sincerely mean this, was fantastic. No one hesitated to share stories or memories. Jay Buhner and Chris Bosio stick out most of all because I spent the most time with them. They are both open and frank guys who not only shared stories of the series, but also gave me a deeper understanding and appreciation for little aspects of the game (how to pitch certain hitters, what to do against a David Cone slider, etc.).

Arne: The trade of Tino Martinez and Jeff Nelson after the ’95 season was, along with the trade of Jason Varitek and Derek Lowe two years later, one of the great Mariner missteps that kept the team from doing more with its amazing talent in the ’90s. Did you have the chance to talk with Nelson and/or Martinez about the trade? Also, did any of the Mariners officials you talked with describe the reasoning behind it?

Chris: While I was able to interview more than half of the players who took part in the series, unfortunately, Tino and Jeff Nelson were not among them. Obviously, from the Yankees side, the trade became necessary once Don Mattingly made clear he was not returning for 1996.

Arne: There were so many themes and subtexts to the Mariners/Yankees rivalry in the ’90s and early ’00s, with all the players, and Piniella, having experience with both teams in their careers, and the re-emergence of the Yankees as a team good enough to be worthy of rooting against even if you were three thousand miles away. What was the attitude toward those Mariner teams in and around New York City?

Chris: I think Yankee fans always held a resentment against the Mariners for what happened in ’95, at least until the 2000 and or 2001 seasons. The Kingdome always seemed to be a nightmare for the Yankees, and players like Junior, Edgar and Randy Johnson were easy for New Yorkers to pick out as villains because they handled the Yankees well. After the 2000 and ’01 ALCS, I think that bitterness died away, not just because the Yankees won those series, but because so many of the key players were gone from both teams.

Arne: Stepping away from the ’95 ALDS for a final question, how do you remember the ’01 ALCS? It’s obviously overshadowed by that year’s World Series, but that was such a uniquely important and moving time, to have playoff baseball about 10 miles north of the World Trade Center site.

Chris: That entire playoff run for the Yankees was obviously a special moment in New York. It seemed like the one time when people, at least not collectively for a change, weren’t praying for the Yankees not to win again. The Yankees played many fantastic games that postseason, including Game 4 against Seattle, and to be able to clinch the League Championship at home meant a lot to the city that year. Additionally, at least from the fans’ perspective, the Yankees were trying to prevent the 116-win Mariners from eclipsing the ’98 Yankees as perhaps the greatest single season team in history, so to beat them and maintain that aura was especially satisfying.

Donnelly then describes the course of the Mariners and Yankees’ regular seasons in ’95, but this is all a prelude to the main event: a highly detailed account of the five games of the ALDS. Donnelly describes each game at an inning by inning level, interspersing short profiles of players on the two teams–not just the superstars, but also players like Tim Belcher, Sterling Hitchcock, and Joey Cora. For key at-bats,  Donnelly zooms in even closer to describe individual pitches and the mentality of the pitcher and hitter during the at-bat. You can read some more about the book and buy it here. Meanwhile, here’s an excerpt describing Edgar Martinez’s grand slam in game 4:

Wetteland, working cautiously, threw two straight breaking balls to Martinez, both outside. It was impossible to pitch to Martinez, regardless of the situation, but Wetteland wanted to keep the ball outside, hoping Martinez would end up hitting the ball hard somewhere for an out and keep the damage to a minimum. Wetteland’s breaking ball was not working and he could not afford to walk Martinez. Down 2-0 in the count, he delivered a fastball straight down the middle. Martinez swung under the pitch, sending a high pop down the first base line in foul territory and the Yankees almost caught a break. Randy Velarde made a mad dash for the ball, nearly tripping over the visiting team bullpen mounds in the process.

Stretching as far as he could, he stabbed at the ball, but it dropped just out of his reach in foul territory. Had Velarde caught it, Vince Coleman would most likely have scored from third base giving the Mariners the lead, but considering how the Mariners’ bullpen had pitched in the series, a one run lead would not have assured victory. Instead of an out, Martinez was presented with a second chance.

Wetteland fired two more fastballs and Martinez fouled off each of them. The tension and anticipation inside the Kingdom on each pitch was utterly nerve racking. The count now 2-2, Wetteland got the sign from Mike Stanley, brought his hands to his belt, checked the runners, and delivered a fastball straight down the middle. “I wanted to get just one good slider over to Edgar (but) I had to come in with it (a fastball). When you do that you have to live with the consequences,” said Wetteland. Martinez, following through with a lightening fast swing, sent the ball screaming to straight away center field. It was hit so hard that fans didn’t have enough time to contemplate whether it may or may not go over the fence. The ball quickly sailed over the center field wall just to the right of the 405 foot mark and crashed into the batter’s eye tarp for a grand slam. Mariners’ announcer Dave Niehaus, sounding like he might blow a vocal chord, could barely contemplate what he was seeing. “Get out the rye bread and the mustard…a graaaaand salaaami,” the overly excited broadcaster screamed into his microphone. “I don’t believe it, my oh my!” In the Mariners’ dugout, Lou Piniella high fived Lee Elia with both hands.

The crowd reaction surpassed anything that had ever taken place inside the Kingdome to that point. It was ear-shattering, painful, and unreal. A mix of elation and pure pandemonium.

Martinez, mild mannered and rarely one to wear emotions on his sleeve, raised his right arm in triumph after seeing the ball clear the fence. The emotional display was certainly justified. Martinez had just hit the biggest home run in the history of the Mariners’ franchise. “I was only trying to make contact,” said Martinez. “I was surprised it went out. I was so excited. As a kid you always dream of hitting a home run like that, and here it is in the playoffs.” His team, once down 5-0 and looking at the end of their season, was now leading 10-6. Just two hours ago they had been thinking about spring training in 1996. Now they were starting to think about Game 5 the next night.

John Wetteland stood dejected on the mound. Things had collapsed so rapidly it was hard to contemplate what had just happened. “It was just a poor, ugly, non-inning,” said Wetteland after the game. “I started off bad and things caved in on me from there. The walk, the ball off Griffey’s foot…it was just ugly all around.” Seconds after Martinez’s shot had crashed behind the centerfield wall, Buck Showalter was already making his way towards the mound. Chaos ensued all around him as “Shout” blasted from the loud speakers and 57,000 people sang along. Just a minute after giving up the home run, Wetteland sat on the bench in stunned silence.

Cone reflects on his split-finger fastball to Doug Strange for ball four, a bases-loaded walk that let in the tying run in the eighth inning of game 5.  He says: “It took me forever to get over that. I couldn’t sleep. I almost didn’t go out of my house for a couple of weeks after. I’d thrown a hundred and forty-six pitches in the game up to that point, and I had nothing left, but I was still sure that was the right call. I just didn’t execute. Maybe I’m stubborn, but I have this conviction that I should be able to deliver any pitch in any situation.

“I’ll never forget that flight home. My catcher, Mike Stanley, kept telling me it was his fault for calling the pitch, but I wouldn’t let him get away with it. Buck Showalter, the manager, must have known that he was finished with the Yankees after the loss, and Donnie Mattingly is somewhere else in the plane, going home for good and knowing that he’s never going to play in a World Series. I’d let them all down.”

A little bit later in A Pitcher’s Story, Cone talks about Randy Johnson’s performance in the ALDS, specifically Randy coming in to relieve in game 5. Cone:  “I can’t say enough good things about the man who can perform like that when the price is so high.”

Cone adds: “This was the game I’d come out of, after that base on balls. I’m in the dugout, thinking how I’d let the team down, but when Randy Johnson comes in I stopped being an opponent. What Randy did-that disregard for long-term effects-is what real players do. I was proud of him. He had back trouble the next year and had to go on the D.L., and there may be a connection, but you don’t think of that at the time. What we knew, watching him, was that he’d already beat us on a four-hitter and here he is back again after only one day of rest, ready to pitch some more, because he was their best. I was in awe, watching.

“Here’s a man about to become a free agent who could name his own price anywhere, and he pitches on like that, regardless of the risk to his career. This came on the heels of a bitter strike, when the players had been hammered in public opinion. I think America began to change its mind about players right there. Sitting in the dugout, I applauded him as a fan.”

As for Cone’s 147 pitches in game 5, he says: “I’d have thrown two hundred and forty-seven to win that game.”

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

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

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

Here’s most of his column from Tuesday, October 17, the day the Mariners lost the ALCS to Cleveland:

Invincible Summer: It’s Here At Last

For all these turbulent baseball-nutty weeks, I have sat by my window and watched the crowds pouring toward the Kingdome. Sometimes, I admit – sentimental slob – to shedding a tear or two.

You see, I live in Pioneer Square. I can see these crowds, full of joy and hope, chanting our victory slogan, “Refuse to Lose.”

They carry placards and defiant homemade signs. They wear baggy shorts, cutoff jeans, baseball caps on backward, carrying seat cushions and backpacks, bringing their own food to the games because they can’t afford a Kingdome hot dog.

There are young moms and dads, a lot of them pushing baby strollers. Some chip in and travel proudly in horse carriages.

I’ve lived among these people, I know them. All during those dreary, losing years when their hopes were betrayed by dumb management and penurious owners, these people were there – always hoping for a better break.

Watching people in those awful, draining years, cravings crashed, expectations bamboozled, you think of Albert Camus, the French philosopher, who once said: “In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” The invincible summer. It has finally come to these loyal, happy people going past my window to the Kingdome. Joy just radiates up from the sidewalk at First and Jackson.

Millionaires may own baseball, millionaires may play it, but the working people, men and women, make the game possible.

Because baseball is a game of hope, it is also a game for losers. Good teams often lose more games than they win. Yet fans stay loyal. Hope is the pursuit of happiness, isn’t it? What else is there?

It is the game for every guy who lost a good account. It is the game for waiters who get stiffed. It is the game for every guy who goes to work for short dough at a job he hates.

It is the game, as Jimmy Breslin once wrote, “for every woman who looks up 10 years later and sees her husband eating dinner in a T-shirt and wonders how the hell she ever let this guy talk her into getting married.”

We are up in the clouds with euphoria, and our kings and heroes are named Edgar and Tino and Jay and Junior and Mike; our guardian angel is a giraffe-tall, turkey-necked, scowling, tired-armed fellow named Randy Johnson.

This mostly naive, silly thing called baseball has given us a close-knit, intimate kind of community hope. And there’s always next year.

And here, from Tuesday, September 26, is Emmett’s column on why the “Vote On Stadium Was A Vote About Our Happiness – Period”: it struck me as the best argument for building a replacement for the Kingdome Watson made during the whole year.

I wish every day could be like last Wednesday and the days that followed. The afterglow is still there, and I am so delighted I might sing a song.

Later in this column I will toot my own horn. We should all toot our own horns, for, as Jimmy Breslin once wrote, “If you do not blow your own horn there will be no music.”

Last Wednesday I awoke to find that the baseball-stadium ballot measure had won, or was winning.

This was good for several whoops, followed by a celebratory walk with Tiger Too. I couldn’t stop laughing with joy. Even if the mail-in ballots beat the stadium tax measure, it would be very hard on the Mariner owners. With a vote as close as that, can you imagine all these rich guys saying they still planned to sell the team out of town?

Hell, if they tried that, they might as well send somebody down to Debo Rent-A-Clown on 42nd Avenue South and hire a new team spokesman.

Even as this is written (before the latest vote count showing the stadium proposal trailing by 1,500 votes) you know these owners will not sell the Mariners to Orlando, Memphis or any village in southern Rhodesia. Happily, they are stuck with this team.

If they tried to bail out now, they wouldn’t be safe on the streets after dark. They’d have to wear disguises just to enter a lunch counter.

I do not mean to be unduly hard on these rich owners. Basically, they are as good as rich guys ever get – and they deserve credit for keeping the Mariners here.

I am now ready to toot my own horn.

The only toot worth mentioning is my constant, repetitious, redundant, continual, endless, often boring notion that the only issue about a new baseball stadium was – happiness!

The Mariners proved how happy baseball can make a city. You would need a pipe wrench to get fans down from the chandeliers.

We are not so rich a city that we can export fun beyond the county line; we can’t act like a bunch of bean-counters cutting down on the paper clip overhead.

All last week I watched as the Mariners, bless their hearts, fought fiercely into first place. They hung on even more fiercely. God, it was wonderful!

The TV cameras panned into the crowd, as well they might. There you saw fun being had. You saw young moms and pops holding up their babies while they cheered. Baseball is like that – you don’t take babies to a football game; you don’t drag them to a symphony. This is family fun, as only baseball provides it.

All during the stadium vote campaign, I kept saying, “Don’t complicate it! The issue isn’t economics, jobs, tourist dollars, recycled money, salaries, wealth, or anything else that isn’t worth a grunt.”

The idea was to vote ourselves some fun. How much fun do YOU have? Every day you hear of the homeless, shrinking Medicare, AIDS, fires, earthquakes, dirty movies. Life is full of miseries, more than enough to keep our per capita joylessness much too high.

So baseball, like a lot of other silly things we enjoy, helps pacify the sad glands. We must keep it. Do it. Have fun.

That’s all this baseball team means to us. When this team wins, it takes the whole city on a joyride. It takes us all together.

This wasn’t the playoffs or a crucial late-season game, but the excitement around the bullpen was at that sort of level as Johnson first tossed the ball in the outfield, then slid open the gate and made his way into the pen.  Really meaningful Mariner games have been scarce ever since 2001, but Randy was going to give us one even if he got ejected in the first inning. No matter what happened in the game, this would be our last chance to see him up close, so it’s no wonder the stairs leading down to the bullpen were jammed, you saw cameras everywhere, and we craned our necks through the crowd to get a better glimpse. Not even the dour and usually efficient Safeco ushers were able to really manage this crowd.

As Randy threw, one guy who looked a bit like Jay Buhner kept yelling “Randeeee!,” hoping for a wave or glance from Johnson; he didn’t give it. We’ve all heard about the Big Unit’s game face, but I’d never seen it up close.  Separated by a few rows of people, what comes across most clearly is what he doesn’t do: look over at us or the field, or up at the sky, or into the stands, or say anything, sniff the air, take care of an itch, motion at anything other than the catcher.  It’s just him, the ball, the pitching motion, and a catcher’s glove. The “Randeeee!” guy said as much to me when I admitted that yes, I wanted the Unit to win and leave Seattle with a bang. I think we were all hoping for at least a 10-strikeout game, and with luck, a no-hitter.  The Mariners could make up the loss sometime later: getting a game closer to .500 in late May just wasn’t as important as Randy Johnson coming back and delivering something memorable for his audience.

Johnson stopped throwing, faced the bullpen wall, took his cap off. It took a second for me to realize it was time for the national anthem. I felt sheepish for paying really too much attention to just some warmup throws, put away the camera, tried to regain some perspective. A few people around the bullpen kept taking shots of Johnson as the anthem played.

Up in the left field stands, there was an old lady with ’95 on the back of her blue Mariners cap in the row beneath me, some quiet Giants fans on both sides, some rowdier Mariners and Giants fans farther off to the side. When Aaron Rowand hit his leadoff homer our way, I noticed the vendors with their orange shirts were practically silent Giants supporters, adding to the already sizable mix of Giants’ colors at the ballpark.

Randy came in with a 94 mph fastball in the first inning, then he walked Adrian Beltre after getting an 0-2 count and closed the first with a swinging strikeout of Wladimir Balentien. It felt a little like old times: the dangerously fast and erratic Big Unit of the early ’90s was trying to re-emerge. Through five innings, Randy was still a little erratic, striking out six, but sometimes missing with his slider way outside and low to lefties, and taking a while to get hitters out. He’d thrown about 90 pitches. The Mariners were just getting singles, including one silly bloop over Johnson’s head by Kenji Johjima that might have gone 80 feet, but no one could catch.

In the bottom of the sixth, it became obvious this wasn’t the 30-year-old Unit, or even the 40-year-old Unit: he went to 3-2 counts on Russell Branyan and Jose Lopez, took 10 pitches to strike out Branyan after getting a 1-2 count, and had Lopez eke a single through the infield on his eighth pitch after getting an 0-2 count. These were guys he would have struck out quickly a few years ago. He’d thrown about 115 pitches, and just wasn’t getting the ball by hitters. Randy still has some speed, he’s still effective, he’s still pretty durable: but he’s not Cy Young material anymore.

He left the game to unanimous cheers, lifted his left arm to acknowledge them as he crossed into foul territory, and settled into the dugout. We might have brought him back out with renewed applause, but an NBA highlight flashed on the screen, and the moment was over.

For whatever reason, the Mariners didn’t do anything to acknowledge Johnson’s career with the team, unless that came before I got to Safeco: no highlights on the video screen, no call for applause from the fans, no first pitch thrown out by Dan Wilson or another player from the ’90s Mariner teams. That didn’t seem right, but maybe the ownership still resents him leaving town, and anyway he’s been gone long enough that they figured it wasn’t necessary. Still, when I looked from the left field stands toward the street, there was a banner attached to a lamppost with Wilson leaping into Johnson’s arms after defeating the Angels in the ’95 division playoff.

So exactly what does all this have to do with 1995? Well, I didn’t go to any of Randy Johnson’s three earlier returns to Seattle, with the Diamondbacks in 1999 and then twice with the Yankees, in 2005 and 2006, so I don’t know how those ones compare. But it’s obvious the Big Unit’s fans are still legion in Puget Sound, more than a decade after he left town.

This time was different, I think, simply because of the distance time provides. Randy’s practically at the end of his career, with quite a few more wins after leaving Seattle than he had with the Mariners; kids born in 1995 will be going to high school in the fall; the Kingdome’s a fading memory. There must be a few people still accusing Johnson of malingering in 1998 or just upset that he didn’t stay on with Seattle. But the people who were at Safeco on Friday to see Johnson pitch were paying tribute to what he’d done for their lives as baseball fans by carrying the Mariners in ’95 and pitching a lot of memorable games for the team in his 10 years at the Kingdome. He gave us those memories, and now was coming back one last time to revitalize them by simply showing up on the mound: that’s all he had to do.