Over twenty years of suffering up in Seattle is now over. The Seattle Mariners have broken the longest, current postseason droughts history with their 2-1 win over the Athletics last night, breaking the 21-year curse.
21 years of suffering, heartache, disappointment, sadness, and anger is finally over. This Seattle Mariners team has achieved what no other predecessor team in the past twenty years has been able to accomplish: reaching October playoff baseball.
I mean, what an accomplishment this is for manager Scott Servais, catcher Cal Raliegh (who hit the walk-off home run to clinch their playoff berth), and the entire Mariniers team and management staff as a whole. A whole generation of young Seattle Mariners fans have gone from the day they were born to last night without ever seeing their beloved team in the postseason.
Yet, now, because of this team, they will at last see their hometown Mariners face off against the best of the best in the MLB for the World Series.
I didn’t realize this, but the Mariners actually held the longest current playoff drought streak across the four major North American sports leagues (NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL) as their 21-years of postseason misery surpassed the next worst team, the Sacramento Kings of the NBA (16 seasons without a playoff appearance), by a full five years!
You’ve got to be a next level of bad to have your latest postseason appearance come before Tom Brady even won his first Super Bowl with the New England Patriots. Nonetheless, Mariners fans can now forget about their 21-year postseason drought, and even their horrific 4 postseason appearances in 45 years in the MLB stat for a while, as they now have a date with the either the Cleveland Guardians or the New York Yankees in a few weeks’ time.
If they face off against the Guardians, I’d give them a great chance of advancing to the AL Divisional Series also for the first time in 21 years as the Guardians may very well be the worst division leader in the MLB this year. The AL Central really is the NFC East of the NFL this season.
If they go up against the Yankees…well…I don’t see them making it out of a best of 3 with a win. Aaron Judge, Gerritt Cole, Giancarlo Stanton, Anthony Rizzo, DJ LeMahieu will walk all over the Mariniers if that series comes to pass.
Anyway, the Mariners still have a few games left to try to beat out the Oriels for the 4th Wild Card spot, while their fans have the rest of October and probably many months afterwards to celebrate their team making it to the playoffs for the first time in 21 years.
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