Mike Vorel: Enough nostalgia. The Mariners are making new memories.

Mike Vorel, The Seattle Times on Oct 11, 2025

Published in Baseball

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TORONTO — “The Double” doesn’t need another tribute. It doesn’t need to be a talking point on TV. It doesn’t need its grainy replay rolled yet again, annual nostalgia in place of something new.

The Seattle Mariners’ most memorable moment needs more company.

This team is making up for lost time.

Because, in the three decades since Edgar Martinez lashed an indelible double down the left field line, there’s been a whole lot of losing. There have been five playoff appearances, 10 managers and enough empty Octobers to last a lifetime. There’ve been rebuilds and step-backs, prospects and promises, Seattle siren songs. There have been anniversaries, but not enough else.

You don’t need me to tell you that. Those seasons left scars.

On Oct. 8, 1995, Martinez’s two-RBI double sent the Mariners to the ALCS and saved baseball in Seattle.

On Oct. 10, 2025, the Mariners made a new memory.

It just took a little time.

It took five games, though it probably shouldn’t have. It took two (more) wins against Cy Young stalwart Tarik Skubal. It took four hours and 58 minutes Friday, a 15-inning exercise in extreme anxiety. It took seven pitchers, and three starters, to tame the Tigers. It took a game-tying seventh inning single by Leo Rivas, the birthday boy, who spent much of his season at Triple-A Tacoma. It took Humpy’s first “Salmon Run” win, after 162 tries. It took a 110.2 mph line drive from Jorge Polanco to shatter three decades of shared suffering.

It took everything, from everyone, yourself included.

Heck, it took me three days to finish writing this. To be transparent, I started Wednesday, when it looked like the Mariners would coast into an ALCS collision with the Toronto Blue Jays. It looked like that to Tigers fans, too, who booed their team after exiting the fourth inning in a 3-0 hole. Three decades after “The Double,” Seattle seemed set to celebrate something new.

Instead, Detroit ignited, scoring nine unanswered runs to extend the series. After six months of tiny, stressful steps, the Mariners teetered on a tightrope, facing a familiar fall (and foe).

Then: Friday. Five clutch innings from George Kirby. Josh Naylor’s stolen base. Rivas and Polanco’s lethal liners. Fifteen agonizing innings of endless escapes. Humpy’s heroics. A sold-out T-Mobile Park that tried to lift the roof off and rocket into space.

Next: Toronto. It just continues.

“It’s really a special group, and just their resiliency, their fight, coming back, bouncing back, all the things that they do on a consistent basis endears everybody to the fans,” Mariners manager Dan Wilson said Wednesday. “And I think the personalities that we have, the way they have fun playing the game, those are things that really shine through on a daily basis, and I think the fans can appreciate that.”

So, don’t tell me this season is only a success if the Mariners reach the franchise’s first World Series, or it’s only a success if they win the whole bleeping thing. Don’t tell me this sentence would be ruined by anything other than an exclamation point.

This season is a success because of the tidal wave of moments three decades overdue. Polanco’s dual dingers against Skubal in a gritty Game 2. “The Big Dumper” and the Home Run Derby, which lasted all season long. The catch that finally killed the Houston Astros. The Etsy witch, whoever that is. The “Dump No. 61 here” guy, Jameson Turner, who better be making more teal shirts. The mustaches, real and fake, may they forever flourish. The coldblooded closer, Andres Munoz, and his beloved cat Matilda. The lyrics to Kid Cudi’s “Mr. Rager,” shouted by ballplayers in ski goggles, soaked in Champagne.

This season is a success, and you should celebrate.

But there’s room for more moments. More memories.

More evidence that the Mariners might not be cursed.

What if this franchise is batting in the 15th inning, metaphorically, ready to finally break through? To reward the fans who never wavered? To send Polanco to the plate?

“What you guys have in here is special. What you guys keep doing is special. It’s powerful,” Wilson told his team in the clubhouse Friday, with Champagne ready to pop. “You’ve changed this team, you’ve changed this organization and you’ve changed that city.”

It’s impossible to argue otherwise.

Still, I don’t know how the Mariners will rebound from a weeklong marathon. I don’t know how a depleted pitching staff will stitch together wins. I don’t know how much Bryan Woo can help, after the M’s ace missed the ALDS with pectoral tightness. I don’t know if sluggers Randy Arozarena, Julio Rodríguez and Eugenio Suárez will escape their simultaneous slumps.

I don’t know if the Mariners are better than the Blue Jays.

I do know “The Double” has company, and there may be more to come.

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