196. Seattle Mariners

 

The Seattle Mariners is a team I really appreciate and am thankful for. I am not a big baseball fan and never really have been. I always loved track and field and running just because of the raw emotion and simplicity of individual events. But baseball really is the national past time of America and I really am an American, so going to the Mariners’ stadium, while never a dream of mine, has become pure joy to me.

Of course, I live in the Northwest so Seattle has its pull on me whether I like it or not, and the Mariners, Seahawks, Sounders, Supersonics (alas, no more), and Storm, have been at the front of the sports page and I just followed them because of where I live. The first time I went to a Mariners’ game was in the spring of 2001 just after my youngest son had been admitted to Seattle Children’s Hospital awaiting a diagnosis for what turned out to be a mitochondrial disease. Because he was stable and it was a weekend, someone in the hospital had access to cheap, nosebleed section tickets, so my family, along with my brother-in-law hiked a zillion stairs carrying our sick three-year-old. We were too green to know about the elevators and all able bodied, so we did it. To be honest, we were all too distraught to remember the game except for the climb and the diversion from our fear. Three months later after a harrowing hospital stay that was the crisis of our lives, we again got tickets from pitcher Jamie Moyer to view the game from a suite. Needless to say, my wife and I were in tears in the seventh inning while singing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” because we were in tact and our boy was going to make it.

Since that time, we have tried to make a yearly trip to a Mariners game. This year we had returned after the COVID drought and we took friends and sat in a great section reserved for handicapped people and their families. The Mariners had a terrible opening and we were geared for disappointment until they hit a grand slam home run. In the end the Mariners beat Houston 11-8. I’m still not a huge baseball fan in general, but I LOVE the Seattle Mariners.