Secret Base reviews: Mariners fandom

When I was growing up, my baseball team stressed me out. Most summer evenings caught me lying in bed, listening to the Seattle Mariners on the radio, tossing a corporate-branded stress ball up and down. If I got it just right, the ball would barely graze the ceiling before dropping straight down into my waiting hand. Up-throw, down-catch. Up-throw, down-catch. So passed the halcyon days of my youth.

My supply of stress balls came from my father, who, thanks to his business trips and conferences, had a seemingly infinite stock of branded corporate crap. I never really figured out what it was he did, and I wasn’t particularly curious. All I know was that he went off to cities I didn’t care about and brought home random goodies. If I wanted a foam stress ball, I could pick between Microsoft or Lucent or AT&T or whatever. I’d proceed to wear it out over the course of a few months of fidgeting, but the time any one was ruined, two more would have taken its place in the stash.

It’s a little past 10pm on April 19th, 2003, and I’m listening to the Mariners on the radio. They’re in Anaheim, and they’re busy blowing a 6-4 lead in the bottom of the ninth inning. So far, All-Star closer Kaz Sasaki has managed to allow four singles in exchange for exactly one out. There are runners on first and second, and we are about to lose.

I am tossing a stress ball up and down, increasingly agitated.

A batter is out when: (2) A third strike is legally caught by the catcher;

This is the most important rule of baseball. The foul ball exception to strikeouts transforms the game, turning it into one that feasts on ratcheting tension. It means that high-pressure situations are, in fact, indefinitely extensible. Baseball’s fundamental moments are resolved in hyperbolic time. It’s a stressful game.

At any given time, most sports teams are somewhere between bad and hopeless, and once you’ve accepted that you root for a bad team, they can’t really do all that much to hurt you. Good teams, on the other hand, ride the tension between high expectations and frustrating reality. A bad baseball team might slowly drain any joy out of your white being, but only a good one can properly ruin your evening.

My family moved to Seattle in December 1996. I had never heard of the Mariners, who were at the beginning of their bizarre golden age. From their improbable run to the ALCS in 1995 through their 93-win 2003, the Mariners were a powerhouse. Stocked with Hall of Fame-caliber talent and a strong supporting cast, they made the playoffs four times, tying the MLB wins record in 2001.

They never won the World Series, or even made it to the World Series, but this was a team that won more often than it lost. It was a team, in other words, that could ruin one’s evening.

We lived in Redmond, Washington, which even back then meant Microsoft, which meant an evergreen sprawl of consumerist suburbia. Red cedar, lawn, red cedar, lawn, asphalt drive, shiny new Subaru Outback, basketball hoop, repeat.

It was hard, I think, for the children of this corporate tangle to understand just how privileged we were. The teched-out middle class, fabulists all, tell themselves the great lie that their lives are normal. Penetrating the facade is beyond the ken of most of its children. We had access to some of the best schools in the country, weekend ski trips, cable TV, PlayStations, more or less whatever we wanted. We were told that world was our oyster, which, indeed, it was.

When we were teenagers, we got braces.

At some point in late 2002 I had made an incredible discovery: a good stress ball was hidden in the heap of corporate dreck. It was still corporate dreck, of course, but instead of being made of the cheapest possible polyurethane, this ball was a rubber shell filled with sand. It was more fun to squeeze with, heavier, more durable, everything. I loved that stress ball.

Troy Glaus is at the plate. Glaus had had a down year in 2002, hitting ‘just’ .250/.352/.453, which is a pretty good indication that he’s not someone I wanted at the plate right then. But the situation is still salvageable. A ground ball to an infielder and the game will go to extras.

I toss my favorite stress ball at the ceiling. Troy Glaus fouls off a splitter. The ball lands in my outstretched hand.

Same. Same. Same. For baseball, time means nothing.

Same. Ball. Double steal? Double steal. Fuck.

My next throw is a little too hard, and bounces off the ceiling. While it’s in the air, Glaus hits a ground ball to third. It’s misplayed for an error, and the game-winning run comes home. Angels 7-6 Mariners.

I’m too angry to make the catch, which is unfortunate, because the ball hits me right in the face. The rubber shell tears open on my braces, and the entire contents are dumped right into my mouth. I spend the rest of the evening attempting to extract sand from between my teeth.

I think what strikes me about this moment is that it represents the by far the best and most fun stretch of baseball in franchise history.