“There was rain.”
That is the first thing my parents remember about the day I was born. It was May 2001, and while rain fell outside the hospital room, thirty minutes west the Seattle Mariners were playing baseball. By the time a little Eric entered the world, they were already in the eighth inning, on their way to a 12–4 loss to the Boston Red Sox. For almost any other team in Mariner history, it would have been an unremarkable defeat. For the 2001 Mariners, however, it was a rarity. They would lose only 46 games all year, and that eight-run defeat would tie for the second-largest losing margin of their entire regular season.
The other 116 games were different. In 2001, the worst team in MLB history, the Seattle Mariners, tied the Major League record for wins. For one summer, the M’s fielded a team that seemed almost inevitable.
Yet on the exact day I was born, they got blown out. Then in the playoffs that year, they lost their first playoff series to the Yankee’s. Looking back, perhaps it was an omen.
Since I was born, all I’ve known is the quiet ache that follows every Mariners season: the familiar moment when the dream slips away, again. For twenty-plus years, I’ve waited for something I’ve never witnessed. Every season begins with a spark, a young core, a new acquisition, a promise that this time the baseball Gods might finally let Seattle taste the World Series. And every season ends the same way: watching another team celebrate under the bright October lights while the Mariners pack up their lockers in silence.
This year was no different. Once again, the Mariners reached for the summit, stretched out a hand toward baseball immortality… and came up inches short against the Blue Jays. Leading the entire series, until it mattered most in Game 7. Once again, the Mariner’s tripped at the final step.
I’m 24 years old, and I have never seen the Seattle Mariners play in a World Series, let alone win one. It is not an understatement to say that the Mariners are the worst MLB franchise, and in contention for worst franchise in all of American sports. My entire existence as a baseball fan has been defined by a franchise that seems cursed to never win, forever knocking on a door that will not open. In fact, most years they aren’t even knocking on the door, they are in the garbage bin.
It took us 48 years to be within 1 game of the World Series, it may take another 48 before we reach our first World Series. But until then, the wait continues. And just like the last 47 years, the 2025 Mariners find themselves, once again, on the outside looking in.