21 questions, and they’re about all of us in a 12-3 Mariners win

Do you see what I see?

I am fascinated by your internal voice. You, who could read this, who could watch the Seattle Mariners romp over the Detroit Tigers 12-3 a night after one of the most frustrating losses of the season. Your mind’s chatter compels me. If the conceit is played out, forgive me. Baseball features the same starting location each day and it concludes in largely the same few fashions, but the journey would madden Jon Bois (more) attempting to find a true repetition in MLB’s hundreds of seasons.

But I’m desperate to know the answer. Do you see things the way I do? When you say you love baseball, do you feel the warmth in your heart I do watching a play unfurl, or the season entire? When your passion waxes and wanes as it naturally does, in constant cycle, are you assured that you know yourself? Or do you fret at the change, peeled open to reveal something you’re not sure you recognize, much less trust and believe in? Do you marvel at the stories of those in their second century of life, extolling always the virtue of consistency, habituality, even in the face of what we consider health? Do you love watching the Mariners like I do?

Did the Yankees crush your spirit? Stretched thin over blades and torpedo bats, I felt my fervor flag. Game after game further back of Houston, it seemed unjust to gain nothing from their chaotic reentry into the atmosphere. I chose this game to recap on Monday, expecting hardship but not yet reeling from disgusted recognition. DId you say you’d check out? When Donovan Solano, who is too close to one of those marveling interviews for my comfort, tripled off Tarik Skubal in a flirtation with a possible inside-the-park home run, did you wish he’d gone for it just to feel something unknown?

Did you see a story you’d faithfully constructed for your own protection leave you open for infliction all the same when All-Star Zach McKinstry, seemingly retired by Luis Castillo’s dutiful effort, instead knotted the game with a RBI single in the bottom of the 4th? Did a smile collide with your unprepared face as you watched J.P. Crawford outdo every lefty hitter to take the field against reigning Cy Young Tarik Skubal, first wearing a pitch, then walking, then slicing a RBI single with two outs to score Solano in the 5th?

If we’re in concert in our minds then you may have pumped your fist next. When Julio Rodriguez, on the day he denied himself the All-Star appearance he’d earned and saw his worthy teammate Randy Arozarena rewarded in his stead, you may have fallen for that most human of habits. Seeing pattern, poetry, even virtue in a moment of brilliance, Rodriguez crushing the first big fly of the season off Skubal’s extraordinary changeup (albeit extraordinarily poorly located in this circumstance).

Still, a lead never feels looser than the day after the closer lets us down. As it hewed back to a 4-3 game in the 6th, did you clench your jaw, pace about, even curse yourself for tuning back in for another game you KNOW they’ll blow? This was not my mind, at least not the last of it, but the tension fills the spaces in between my joints. I am never short on lactic acid.

It seems a miracle to shoo Skubal after five, keeping him from recording an out in the sixth for the first time since the season’s first outing against the Dodgers. Do we, like Gary Hill, take outsized pride and satisfaction in this victory within the larger battle? Do you espy the antics of Adolis Garcia and wonder if maybe, for the first time since June 8th (hat tip to Connor), the Mariners could win and the Astros could lose?

Does his demeanor delight you as it does me? The man whose nom de guerre is an adjective for his hits as much as it is his posterior. Cal Raleigh, with his 37th. Cal Raleigh with his 38th.

Do you hear me laugh in your mind, if not your ears outright? Do you remember that miserable, self-pitying writer at this evening’s outset? Is he recognizable to you? Are you? I think of Suzy Eddie Izzard, lamenting the dilution of the term “awesome” decades ago, as a term once intended for the indescribable majesty of our existence, now commercialized for the advertising of hot dogs. If, as she suggests, spacewalking astronauts attempt to describe what they see to us when they gaze back at our globe, describing something akin to a hot dog in its awe, do you wonder whether new words are needed to describe the beauty of the Earth and Cal Raleigh’s season in the same breath?

I don’t know what we feel and see the same. I will never stop wondering, stuck somewhere between a college freshman and a personal Zen of uncertainty. But I loved this game, and I love this game. That it can bring me such glee a day removed from bitter rage. This win was one of the season’s best, a sensational sorbet to free our senses from the residue of an offending evening eating offal. It’s a single win. I feel brand new. Do you want to watch the highlights again?