Game 162 will be wild — just not quite as wild as it could have been

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With three teams fighting for two Wild Card spots in the AL and two fighting for one in the NL, the final day of the season doesn’t look like it will be short on drama. Both leagues still hold the possibility of a tiebreaker, and that rained out Detroit-Cleveland game from Thursday could come to mean something after all. But as much excitement as today stands to offer, last night brought us tantalizingly close to having even more, and from a team who has already had a particularly exciting final month — the Seattle Mariners, eliminated from contention yesterday in an extra-innings loss.

The Mariners’ season looked all but mathematically over at the beginning of September, with playoff odds hovering below 5 percent and falling as the team kept losing. A hot spring had faded into a lackluster summer, meaning that hope for any sort of a meaningful fall was dim. And then came an offensive hot streak that propelled them to eight wins in a row, pushing the Mariners from essentially eliminated to viable Wild Card contenders. Even after the winning streak had snapped and the team began to look a bit more human, the hope stayed alive — never more so than last night, when a win against the Oakland A’s would have meant a meaningful Game 162 and a loss guaranteed yet another year without the playoffs. Down 7-4 in the seventh inning, it looked as if the Mariners were heading towards the latter. But then came a comeback, with rookie Ben Gamel driving in the tying run as the perfect unlikely hero to set up a storybook ending... which didn’t come true, as the Mariners took it to extras but couldn’t finish it there. For Seattle, the 9-8 loss in ten innings meant the end of their season and stretched their playoff drought to 15 years. And for baseball, it meant no more hope of a four-way tie for the AL wild card, a little less craziness for the season’s final day.