Pregame Sleepless in Seattle

It’s safe to say no one is sleeping easy nowadays with the world coming apart at the seams. We live in a dangerous world on the threshold of WWIII in Eastern Europe and Western Asia, fueled by a toxic national partisanship that has gripped the country since I was a kid. Even so, managing sleep cycles was never really a problem for me before the Twin Towers fell, six or seven never-ending wars ago. You know, before U.S. cities turned into Kent State dry runs, international law was more than a concept, and Cal Raleigh was drafted by the Seattle Mariners.

Luckily, for decades, baseball has always been my shelter from these storms. Compartmentalizing my own or the species’ demise each fall with an MLB off-ramp, first with Oakland’s Swinging A’s, and for what now seem like eons, the M’s, has been an essential pastime. And now, with another cognitively-challenged POTUS within arm’s reach of a nuclear football, bedtime edibles are becoming more and more tempting. If it wasn’t for the fact that our new rescued Border Collie nudges me awake in the middle of the night for a possible poop run, drifting off on a hemp cloud is tempting.

But then again, my Seattle Mariners — the only major league baseball team to have never appeared in the World Series — are in the American League Championship playoffs! Even so, drifting off to sleep will be just as difficult with a Cal Raleigh-led roster as it was in 1995 with Ken Griffey Jr and in 2001, after 116 wins, when hope ran out during similar runs.

Pre-game REM sleep this week will probably be at a premium, ever since Wednesday afternoon. The Mariners blew a lead to lose Game 4, forcing a dreaded elimination game with the Detroit Tigers, with this year’s likely Cy Young Award-winning pitcher Tarik Skubal on the mound. The M’s have beaten him three times this year, but baseball is a numbers game. Batting averages, on-base-percentages, slugging and a minutia of others that I couldn’t begin to explain, but what are the odds the Tiger’s ace loses his fourth start? Even in T-Mobile Park in front of 48,000 screaming fans.

Before we choked in Detroit, longtime M’s writer Nathan Bishop wrote:

Once the starters are out it’s a battle of attrition to the finish. Seattle’s bullpen is better than Detroit’s. Their lineup is significantly better than Detroit’s. Of course it’s still baseball. It’s the very dumbest game that has ever been devised and we are hell’s own damned for attaching our emotions to it. A loss on any given day is possible simply by the nature of the sport.

Nonetheless, wins and losses in the playoffs are pivotal, especially after the 24-year drought the M’s faithful endured. How long will it be before the Mariners get another shot at the World Series? Will we live that long?

Mariners statistician Alex Mayer did give hopeful fans every reason to hang tough until the last swing in Game 5:

Cal Raleigh this season became the second player in MLB history to hit exactly 60 home runs in a season. Babe Ruth, in 1927, was the first.

Both Raleigh and Ruth hit their 61st homer of the season, then, in a playoff game. Both of those 61st home runs came on October 7, in their final at bat, in a game in which their team scored eight runs and won.

And The Babe’s Yankees won the World Series that year, so get some sleep.

Addendum:

Tonight, the Seattle Mariners clinched a trip to Toronto and the American League Championship Series, defeating the Detroit Tigers 3-2 in a brutal 15-inning duel. Jorge Polanco laced a walk-off single with the bases loaded in the 15th, after pinch-hitting utilityman Leo Rivas tied the game in the seventh. Over 47,000 exhausted, playoff-starved fans at T-Mobile Park saw Seattle secure a trip to play the AL Eastern Division-winning Toronto Blue Jays for a shot at the World Series—their first since star centerfielder Julio Rodriguez was a toddler.

First pitch – Sunday, 5:08 Pacific.

My prediction — Mariners in 6.