We have Cal at home
Today is a special day.
Today is a joy.
I am basking in the glow of an evening loving and celebrating two of my favorite people in the world, for whom today will be the continuation and formal acknowledgement of love worth cherishing and celebrating. Surrounded by those I adore, some of whom have already made the same brave leap, the smile pinned on my face is a hammock I will spend all day lounging in. My mind is a floodplain of tributaries, a convergence of joys from every corner of my memory carving a valley of happiness in the folds of my brain. I see my friends. The people I love. The moments I’ve etched in the journal I keep closest to my heart. If sorrow is easily compounded by sitting at the bottom of a hill sloughing despair, it’s only just to feel the many sources of happiness cascade upon me as well.
Watching Cal Raleigh crack two more home runs yesterday evening in ZAM’s recap (as I was forced by my day job to listen on the radio in transit), the hammock swung again across my face. I had grinned hearing Gary Hill and Rick Rizzs announce the first inning’s blast, and cackled at the go-ahead eventual game-winner. We’re no strangers to the standout season amidst a team’s disappointment here. But this team is nothing more, nor less, than a coin flip. And if one of the sides has Cal Raleigh’s grinning face on it, you can imagine what the tail side resembles.
Amidst the streams and rivers of my happiness today are two stories written in the pages of this website. The first is from Zach as well, on one of the brightest days in Seattle Mariners history, the Boxing Day of the Julio Rodríguez contract extension. The knowledge that the player everything centered around, the star who would led the M’s out of the desert and into the sweet, clear waters of the playoffs - and a series win there at that - would shepherd a generation of Mariners fans was a sweet security I still treasure.
The second is from Kate. For any who are newer to this site, fandom, or the sport, it is emblematic in my mind of why we write. In a time where it’s never been easier to let something else speak in your voice, I believe hearing the voice of others and using your own is one of the most worthwhile ways to spend our time. To this day, I cannot read this piece without weeping. It is the distillation of what fandom means to me - unified around a sport I love and enjoy, a team I can delight in and gnash my teeth on, with people I know and love and those I’ve barely met. A common thread of humanity that can begin stitching a shared tapestry with strangers online and in person alike. Félix making a stand for his home. Our home. My home.
When Cal Raleigh, and Julio before him, signed their extensions it was, like all job contracts, about money, security, and respect. But those honesties do not spoil the greater sense of security they provide me. I’ve just moved into my 15th different home in Seattle in my lifetime. T-Mobile Park, née Safeco Field, has stood over nearly all of them. It is a space I treasure for what it offers in entertainment, yes, but it is a bastion of security to myself and so many others for whom “home” could not be a consistent physical space. And home is, by necessity as aforementioned most meaningfully the people who make a space worth loving.
It is the security to know I can invest in Julio, his ups and downs, and see him grow in our shared home that he has chosen too. It is decorating that home with moment after moment of time with my beloved people, cheering and groaning, debating and digesting. And now, with extension in hand and a somewhat hilarious rush of sponsorships, Cal is constructing a mosaic in our home, one glimmering round-tripper tile at a time. A security and certainty, that behind the dish for the next half decade, Seattle can boast that at home they have the best there is, and he chose us too.
I cannot subscribe, I fear, to the common refrain that Mariners fandom is suffering and misery. I understand it, and do not expect nor need anyone to deny it for themselves. Disappointments and heartbreak will come again, and I will have time for sadness then. But on a day like yesterday? On a day like today? I am standing on the mountaintop. I can see the tributaries as they flow, moment after moment of happiness, down into this mighty river of joy, and out into a delta of future possibilities. I can see my home.