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The heartbreaking logic of sports dictates that for all but one team, a great and memorable season must end in painful defeat. The pain came last night for the 2025 Seattle Mariners, who were great, if not always good; lovable, if not always logical; and packed a decade’s worth of memories into a single beautiful, absurd, and very frustrating season.
They were this close to going where no Mariners team has gone before. There are so many ways it could have ended differently. So many what-ifs; so many roads not taken. A few more situational hits. A couple fewer defensive miscues. A better start or two from the vaunted rotation. A more considered deployment of the battered bullpen, especially in the 7th inning of what turned out to be the final game of their season.
In the end, there was Toronto Blue Jays outfielder George Springer, a longtime nemesis, crumbling all that speculation into cold reality, smashing that season from the present tense to the past.
But man, there will be memories. There will be Cal Raleigh transforming into a folk hero and Jorge Polanco redeeming himself, first over the course of the regular season and then into the postseason. There will be the injection of chaos that was Josh Naylor’s performance in the second half and the closure brought by Eugénio Suarez’s return to hit one of the biggest home runs in franchise history. There will be Julio, of course.
There will be all the times the season seemed over and the cartoonish ways that the Mariners salvaged it. Mustaches, an Etsy witch, a guy with a homemade DUMP HERE T-shirt sitting in exactly the right spot in the Detroit bleachers. A two-out single from Leo Rivas in his first postseason plate appearance and a completely necessary upset by a racing salmon mascot in the 15th inning of an elimination game. (We won’t speak of Humpy’s fate-tempting second victory.) Bryce Miller stepping up not once but twice after what seemed like a lost season to dominate Toronto with the Mariners’ hopes on the line.
Nothing brings this city together like Mariners baseball, and no Mariners team will ever bring the city together quite like this one. It hurts because we care. They are a franchise with a mythic history of almosts, and the 2025 season will join 1995 and 2001 on the almost pantheon. But maybe unlike those, instead of standing alone as an isolated achievement, this season will be the beginning of something. There is no tomorrow for the Mariners and Mariners fans. But hey, there’s always next year.
In the meantime, we commissioned Adam Villacin to create some illustrated cards that would capture the Mariners playoff run. Even if it was too short.