The Seattle Mariners have really got me down of late. I've been a fan of terrible sports teams most my life, so it's usually not that big a deal when my team blows it. It's part of the charm, I tell myself, and it makes it that much sweeter when they do come through. But this time is different -- it's really bumming me out -- and explaining why requires a bit of backstory.
The Mariners and I were both born in 1977, and I became a fan in the summer of '84 (Alvin Davis!). I loved some truly putrid squads as a child, such as the 1986 team that lost 95 games (Lefbvre Beliebvre!) and the 1990 team, who came in much hyped and then started the season 2-10, including a loss in the home opener, which I attended (I remember Rickey Henderson led-off the game with a home run), and it didn't get much better from there.
Then, in 1995 -- when I was legally an adult -- they had a great/lucky finish to the season and not only made the playoffs but won a series against the Yankees in dramatic fashion. They stayed pretty good for a few years, peaking in 2001 by setting a record for most wins in a season (116), but losing to said Yankees in the American League Championship Series (sad trombone).
They haven't been back to the playoffs since then, the longest drought in the "Big 4" of American sports (MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL). They haven't always been bad either. They've come close several times, but always the rug always gets pulled out at the last minute. For example, in 2014 in the thick of the race, they had a 2-1 lead in the fifth inning over the Blue Jays and their best pitcher, Felix Hernandez, on the mound. He proceeded to inexplicably give up seven runs and lose the game, and the M's missed the postseason by one game. In 2018, they had a huge lead in the standings at midseason, but the Oakland A's got super hot and passed them easily. They were decent last year, again narrowly missing the postseason, but they were bad in 2020 when the league temporarily expanded the number of playoff teams because of the weird Covid schedule. If they had done that in 2021 (or this year) they M's would have been in. But the timing didn't work -- it never works. It's like the universe is conspiring to keep Mariners fans unhappy.
So, this year they are legitimately good, and the season is super fun, and they build up a good lead in the standings to the point that with 20 games left they have a 99.8% chance to make the playoffs. There are only easy games left on the schedule. But then, because it's the Mariners, their two best players randomly get hurt, and suddenly they just suck. They struggle to score runs and can't even beat the bad teams. They have only won two of their last eight games, and with only 12 games left, although still heavy favorites, in my heart of hearts, I think they are going to blow it.
I usually follow their games on my phone in real-time, but I'm going to stop doing that now. It gives me more anxiety than doom-scrolling Twitter. I'll probably still check whether they won or lost, but I'm done with the soul-draining Game Day prompts: In play, out(s). Haniger grounds into double play. Crawford out at second, Haniger out at first.
Tonight I'll have something else to focus on anyway. We are taking the kids with S's sister to see Avatar in IMAX 3-D. S and I thought it was the new one when we went to get the tickets, before realizing it's just the rerelease. (The new one comes out in December.) We decided to go anyway, because the kids have never seen it, and S's sister still wanted to go. I'm lukewarm on the idea. I thought it was just okay the first time I saw it, and it's kinda pricey, and I don't know if Lil' S2 will be able to sit through the entire thing without getting antsy. I'd just as soon do something else as a family, but I don't really have any suggestions.
In other bad news -- real bad news, not sports bad news -- I had a distressing conversation with a friend a few days ago. I hadn't heard from him in a minute, and he told me that a few weeks ago, he had two seizures in succession and had to spend a week in the hospital. I asked him what happened, and he told me that since the start of the pandemic, his drinking had crept up to the point he was having four or five drinks every night and had been for several years. He knew it had gotten to be too much, so he stopped drinking for a few days, and it was such a shock to his system that it sent him into withdrawal seizures.
Super scary, but he seems to be doing okay now, thankfully. He said his body still feels a bit weird -- his ab and leg muscles failed to the point he couldn't even get out of bed for a few days -- but he can now do normal daily activities and even exercise a bit. He also said he's done drinking for a very long time, probably forever, which is a very good thing.
All this made me think on a few things. For one, it underscored what a pernicious drug alcohol can be, even if you think you've got it under control. My friend was not a drunk in the usual sense. He wasn't going out to bars and blacking out and making a fool of himself. He wasn't even doing anything that affected his life in an ostensibly negative way. He just gradually, seemingly benignly, increased his alcohol intake each night to the point his body developed a dangerous dependency on it. I suspect this type of thing could happen to many people I know. The big joke during the pandemic lockdown among my friends was how everybody started drinking more to cope with the weird combination of stress and boredom we were all feeling. But it wasn't really a joke.
And that's the other thing. I don't think this happens if not for the pandemic. It's impossible to prove, obviously, but that's my feeling. The lockdown was awful, and it's why I was a pretty staunch advocate of reopening everything pretty early on in the whole ordeal. There are no solutions in life, just tradeoffs.
Well, at least when something like this happens, it underscores how frivolous it is to worry about something like baseball. But still, Mariners, don't go breaking my heart.
Until next time...
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