It is a life of pain to be a Seattle Mariners fan. Among the five teams to have never won a World Series, the Mariners are the only team to have never even made it to the championship. Most of the time, it is not even close: In this century, the Mariners have only made it to the playoffs four times. There is a feeling among Mariners fans that the team will do one of two things in a season: They will either start strong but crash and fall out of the running, or get off to a rocky start, get it together near the end, but barely miss the playoffs.
At first, the 2025 season seemed just slightly above average. From May through August, the M’s and Houston Astros fought back and forth for first place in the American League (AL) West. Then, in September, something happened: The M’s stopped losing. From Sept. 6 to 16, Seattle went on a 10-game winning streak and stormed back into first place; they then swept the Astros. On Sept. 23, the M’s clinched the playoffs. The next day, they secured the AL West division title for the first time since 2001, when the team set the record for the most regular-season wins with 116.
In my opinion—and I am no sports analyst—the M’s division title was driven by a couple of things. Switch-hitting catcher Cal Raleigh, or “Big Dumper,” is the most popular symbol of the 2025 Mariners. He hit 60 home runs in the regular season, breaking Mickey Mantle’s record for most home runs by a switch hitter (54) and Ken Griffey Jr.’s record for most home runs by a Mariner (56). But the whole team came together beautifully over the summer. They acquired first baseman Josh Naylor and third baseman Eugenio Suárez from the Arizona Diamondbacks in July. The consistently high-performing left fielder Randy Arozarena and center fielder Julio Rodríguez were joined by right fielder Victor Robles when he returned from injury and a short suspension in early September. Starting pitchers continued to give quality outings, especially Bryan Woo and Logan Gilbert. And utility man Jorge Polanco just kept hitting the ball. By mid-September, the M’s were a complete team without any real weak spots.
This was also the year that I returned to baseball. I was an avid player from age six to 14, in addition to soccer. In seventh and eighth grade, I started taking the sport extremely seriously, training year-round and taking multiple pitching clinics. Throwing a good pitch, laying out for a ball in center field or stealing second base brought me a surge of pure joy. Writing this now, I can still feel that sensation’s faded memory.
When COVID-19 hit, my eighth-grade season was canceled less than a month before it was scheduled to start. I had already been practicing with the team for months, improving my game, getting excited to get back on the field. In quarantine, I would go up to the elementary school near my house almost every day and throw a ball against a concrete wall for hours.
At the same time, I discovered other things I loved doing. I read voraciously, something I had adored as a kid but had fallen out of. I began baking almost daily. I started playing the drums and guitar. When baseball started back up in Summer 2020, something had changed. At practices and games, I thought about other things I could have been doing. My teammates’ misogynistic, homophobic comments and hyper-masculine posturing, which had always chafed, made me begin to hate even sitting in the dugout. Before the fall season began for my first year of high school, I quit.
When I stopped playing sports, I also stopped following them. My dad and brother kept following the Mariners—and many other sports—but I went completely cold turkey. For my entire high school career, I had basically no idea what was happening in Major League Baseball (MLB).
At lunch last spring, my friend Caroline checked the Boston Red Sox’s score on her phone and started talking about the Sox’s season. On a whim, I downloaded the MLB app and signed up for notifications on Mariners’ scores. I had not considered following baseball again until that moment, but it seemed fun. Perhaps I was a different enough person after five years that I could enjoy baseball again.
For the rest of the school year, I casually followed the M’s. I learned a couple of the players’ names and the league’s basic makeup. Over the summer, I started watching every game’s highlights and talking baseball with my brother, dad and grandmother. My love for baseball, dormant for five years, roared back.
In July, my family attended a Mariners home game—we live in Portland, Oregon. I came up the concrete steps at the stadium entrance and stood in the clamor and darkness of the concourse, looking out over the diamond. It was a brilliant green, glowing in the afternoon sunlight. I felt in that moment that this green diamond before me was something special, that it somehow represented the love of baseball I was rediscovering.
The M’s played a wonderful, exciting season. But once again, when the going got tough, the Mariners Marinered. They lost in the final game of the AL Championship Series to the Toronto Blue Jays. They remained the only team to have never seen the World Series.
My love for baseball and the M’s will continue. I started following the team again when they were just having another decent season, and was lucky that my first trip back was so spectacular. Next spring, when baseball starts up again, I will be back. If I just stick around, eventually they have to get a title. Right?