The signing I dismissed in March gave us the clear clean single that won the night and the series.

In the middle of the 14th inning at Mariners Park last night, we redid the 7th inning stretch. We all stood—most of us were standing anyway—and sang “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” again, while fans danced, and mugged for the cameras, and kept making noise. This is what you do when games go on forever. You reprise things.

Which is why, in the middle of the 15th inning, they gave us a reprise of the Salmon Run. It’s the Mariners late-entry into the whole “Racing Sausages” thing, begun in Milwaukee, I guess, during the 2000 season, and continued in D.C. with presidents like Lincoln and Washington racing each other, and in other stadiums to various degrees of product placement and plagiarism: Marlins do roosters, Braves “Home Depot” tools, Cleveland Sugardale Hot Dogs. It’s generally human beings wearing goofy vertical costumes, running along the warning track and foul ground to see who can win a foot race. Or a fin race.

The Salmon Run, at least, makes sense for Seattle, and they’ve created characters of a kind to cheer on: King (the dominant elder), Sockeye (the grunge kid), and Silver (the tech nerd). Then there’s Humpy, the sad, slow little fish who wears a life preserver and who—like Martin Short’s male synchronized swimmer—might not be “the strongest swimmer.” Or runner. He’s the only one of the four who’s never won a race, just like the Seattle Mariners are the only one of the 30 MLB franchises who have never won a pennant. That’s why, as the M’s made their great run in September, I expected the Powers-that-Be would let Humpy finally win one. But no. I went to Game 1 of the ALDS last Saturday and he was still 0-fer. And in the sixth inning or eighth inning or whenever they did the Salmon Run the first time, they didn’t let him win, either. He didn’t come close. 

Poor Humpy.

But in the middle of the 15th inning, Humpy finally broke the tape and won the Salmon Run.

And in the bottom of the 15th inning, the Mariners finally broke through with a 3-2 victory that sent them to the ALCS.

Baseball fans, certainly Tigers fans, might say the Mariners won because manager A.J. Hinch pulled starter Tarik Skubal after six innings and 99 pitches, and rookie Troy Melton after only one inning and 17 pitches, and in the 15th, running out of options, went with Tommy Kahnle, who’d had a so-so season (4.43 ERA, 1.30 WHIP), and a shaky postseason (3.86 ERA, 3.00 WHIP), and last night seemed immediately hittable. At least No. 9 hitter J.P. Crawford laced a single—our first hit since Victor Robles leadoff double in the bottom of the 10th. Yeah, in the interim, we kept getting baserunners, six in all, but via walks or HBP. We had men in scoring position time and again, often with nobody out, but nobody could bring anyone in.

“My kingdom for a clean hit!” I said to Tim at some point amid the madness. 

That’s what Crawford’s was: a clean, f’ing hit. And then Randy Arozarena was hit by a pitch and we had the big boys coming up. Cal lined one to deep center that moved Crawford to third and (when the throw went awry) Arozarena to second. And as soon as that happened you’re like, “Well, they’ll intentionally walk Julio.” Which they did, bringing up Jorge Polanco with the bases juiced and one out. It went to 2-1 before he fouled one off, and the confidence I was feeling waned slightly. If he K’ed, Eugenio Suarez would be up, and he’d looked lost for the series, going 2-21 with 9 Ks and 1 BB. But the next pitch was a ball. 3-2.

“Would you take a bases-loaded walk to get to the LCS?” I asked Tim.

“I’d take it, but…” he said, and then scrunched his face.

A second later, Polanco, whose signing I dismissed in March, made the question moot, giving us that clean, clear single that right fielder (and Game 5 unstoppable force) Kerry Carpenter didn’t even bother to field, letting it bounce all the way to the wall, as J.P. Crawford ran down, paused as if genuflecting before home plate, and then jumped on it with all his might for the victory.

So, you could argue, we finally won this game, the longest winner-take-all postseason game in baseball history, because Hinch went with Kahnle, Kahnle wasn’t sharp, and we got some sharp singles. That’s what the baseball world will tell you.

But fans at the park immediately knew better. WE WON IT BECAUSE OF HUMPY! HUMPY FINALLY WON SO WE FINALLY WON!!!!

Hell, it even made The Seattle Times:

 I’m with them.

* * *

It was almost eight hours from the time I left home to when I returned to it, hoarse and happy, but I was oddly happy throughout the game. I wasn’t my usual curmudgeonly self. Maybe I’d just made the decision that it was all gravy anyway, and that if we couldn’t beat the Tigers behind Tarik Skubal for the fourth time this season in four tries, well, it was just the law of averages. It helped that in Section 327 we were surrounded by good fans, strangers we high-fived throughout, and that the Mariners sound system wasn’t on 11 like it was for Game 1, and that, early on, we kinda-sorta got to Skubal. In the first, Cal Raleigh kept lacing majestic foul balls that nearly skimmed the underside of the roof (we were a closed-roof game), before he singled to left. And in the second, Josh Naylor, a leftie(!), poked a double into the left-field corner, stole third when no one was looking, and came home on a good sac fly to center by Mitch Garver. 1-0 M’s.

See? It’s not so hard to score against Skubal!

That turned out to be our last baserunner against him. After the sac, he struck out the next seven guys, all swinging, until Naylor (again!), lined one to center for the first out in the fifth. Then: K, fly out, K, pop out, K. That last K was bottom 6, against 60-homer man Cal Raleigh, and Skubal exulted coming off the mound.

“I think he’s done,” I said to Tim.

“He is at 99 pitches,” Tim said peering at his scorecard. “I’d leave him in if I were Hinch, but happy to have him out for me.”

“Yeah,” a guy behind us said, motioning. “Everyone is congratulating him in the dugout. He’s done.”

By this point we were down 2-1. Kerry Carpenter, whom Baseball Reference says is a 28-year-old, 19th-round draft pick out of Virginia Polytechnic Institute, and who has never hit .300, or launched 30 homers or driven in 100 (or even 75) in his four journeyman seasons in the Majors, last night seemed the Devil incarnate to Mariners fans—an unstoppable force, ultimately going 4-5 with two walks. And in the top of the sixth, he hit a 2-run homer off of the suddenly very hittable Gabe Speier to put the Tigers on top.

But Skubal was out! Kyle Finnegan, a trade deadline acquisition from the Nats, was in. He’d done great for Detroit—18 innings, 3-0, 1.50 ERA, 0.722 WHIP—and great against Cleveland in the postseason, but so-so against us. He wasn’t bad here. Julio flied out, Polanco walked, Suarez lined out, Nayor (again!) singled. That’s when Hinch and Mariners manager Dan Wilson decided to play dueling magicians: What card you got? This card? Or is it THIS card? With the lefty Skubal replaced by the righty Finnegan, Dan sent the lefty Dominic Canzone to bat for righty Mitch Garver. Hinch, taking no chances, called for lefty Tyler Holton, at which point Dan burned his Canzone card (a rare .300 hitter in baseball today) for switch hitter Leo Rivas, a 28-year-old with not even 200 plate appearances in the Majors. By the way: Rivas is 28 on the dot. Yesterday, Oct. 10, Double-10 Day to the Chinese, was his birthday. And after taking a strike, he gave himself and all of Seattle a present by lacing a single to left to tie the game.

We barely had time to celebrate, or take in the runners in scoring position, before Victor Robles grounded to short. But now we had life. Skubal was out, the game was tied, we could do this.

We could. It just took forever.

It’s odd participating in a live event that others are experiencing via a medium like television. I began to get texts from friends. “You at the game? It’s an instant classic.” Really? This? It’s so frustrating! It’s the blue-balls of postseason games. Nobody can score!

• Bottom 10, Victor Robles with a leadoff double. We didn’t even move him over.
• Top 11, Carpenter with a leadoff single and went to second on a passed ball. Nobody out. But he was stranded.
• Top 12: two leadoff singles, a sac bunt, and then a grounder to third but a perfect throw home by Suarez to nail the runner. That was exciting.
• Bottom 12: walk, HBP, fly out, GDP.
• Bottom 13: walk, walk, K, GDP.
• Top 14: one-out double by catcher Dillon Dingler, K, popout.
• Bottom 14: two-out walk to Robles, caught stealing.

I thought we were boring the world, but friends, sportswriters, headlines, were all calling it a nail-biter, a thriller, an instant classic. Sarah Langs, the young stats historian guru, posted this:

And I was at both, I responded.

Later, she posted this:

Ditto.

* * *

It’s sacrilege to say, still basking in the glow, but in the 12th or 13th inning I thought “Neither of these teams can beat Toronto.” That’s probably wrong. You get hot at the right time, as Toronto did against New York this week, or as the Mariners did for the month of September, anything can happen. We just need that again.

As the extras continued, I also thought the obvious: “Blue Jays fans are certain happy anyway.” Pitching staffs were being depleted left and right. Tigers threw eight pitchers out there, we threw seven, including starters Logan Gilbert (10th and 11th), and Luis Castillo (14th and 15th). So who’s left? Bryce Miller, who was injured this year, and not the same afterwards. And maybe hopefully Bryan Woo, our ace, who has been lost to us since mid-September. If we get him back, and he’s good, anything can happen.

So for the first time since 2016, the ALCS is both Astro- and Yankee-free, and this time it’s a match-up between the two 1977 expansion teams. How about that? The Toronto Blue Jays have two pennants, two World Series championships, but haven’t been back since ’93. The Seattle Mariners? The only franchise to never go. We’ve never even made a Game 7 of the ALCS. But as Humpy showed us last night, anything can happen. “Might as well win the whole fucking thing,” Cal Raleigh said after the Mariners won the AL West title in September. He said it again last night as the fans stucked around and cheered some more.

Keep saying it, Cal.