Dorktown’s Seattle Mariners series gets some love

What do Paste Magazine and the New York Times have in common? They both recommend Dorktown’s documentary on the Seattle Mariners as one of the must-watch videos of the year. Paste put The History of the Seattle Mariners on their top-25 documentaries of 2020, while Margaret Lyons of the Times described the series as “among the most imaginative, ambitious and distinctive shows I’ve ever seen”, and placed Part 1, ‘This is Not an Endorsement of Arson,’ on the Best TV Episodes of 2020.

It’s great to have Jon and Alex’s work recognized on this sort of level, even if I still half-suspect the whole thing was an elaborate joke performed to troll me, a Mariners fan, personally. The Dorktown team has a knack for off-beat, statistical storytelling, which comes across in the videos, but they also put an extraordinary amount of time into research, finding exactly the right anecdotes and exactly the right time to incorporate them. I don’t think I’m being hyperbolic when I say this series could not have been made by anyone else.

I wanted to note that those of you who watched and shared The History of the Seattle Mariners had a big part to play in big outlets like the Times noticing that it was in fact a project worth talking about. So here’s a big thank you to our audience. This couldn’t have happened without you.

If you haven’t watched the series yet — perhaps you find baseball boring, or you can’t believe that the Seattle Mariners could warrant four hours of anything — please give me the opportunity to convince you that it’s worth your time. The first part includes:

And that’s just the first part! If your attention has been piqued and you are now Mariner-curious, you can watch the full documentary below.

And if you watched it already, and have been turned into a Mariners fan, welcome! Also, I’m so sorry.