I’ve been a baseball fan my whole life. As a baby-boomer kid raised in the 1950s and 1960s, I played the game on school playgrounds and sandlots, in Little League and in High School, and I loved every minute of it (except curve balls). During those days, when it was World Series time in the fall, our teachers, the good ones anyway, would allow TVs in the classroom, so we could watch our heroes playing the game we loved for the championship of the Major Leagues. Since then, to me the World Series has represented the ultimate of the sport, where the legends of the game etched their legacies in history, giving kids like me a chance to dream the dream—that one day WE could be the legend. Alas, for lack of the necessary skill, talent, opportunity and sheer persistence required just to make it to the Big Leagues, much less become a star, very few could make the dream a reality. At some point most of us, confronting the realities of existence, charted different paths for our lives, but that didn’t mean we lost our passion for the game we love.

Understanding this about me, along with the fact that I’ve lived in Seattle most of my life, you could guess that I’d be a huge Seattle Mariners fan, and if you did you’d be right. Since the team’s inception I’ve lived and died (mostly died) with their fates, hoping against hope that one October the team would take us on that magical ride to the Fall Classic, and maybe even win it. I’ve long felt that should be the goal for any Major League team, but especially for the Mariners, the only team in MLB to have NEVER made it to a World Series, much less win it. Across the team’s 49 campaigns they have made it to the playoffs, before this season, just 5 times, and to the American League Championship Series (one step removed from the World Series) just 3 times. All 3 of those ALCS seasons (1995, 2000, 2001) took place a generation ago when Mariners legend Lou Piniella managed the team. Lou left after the 2002 season, which inaugurated a 20 season stretch of playoff futility here in Seattle unrivaled in the sport, making the Mariners a national byword for losing.  

But then things began to change. Since the Covid season of 2020, under the leadership of Jerry Dipoto, Scott Servais, and now Dan Wilson, the team has been getting better, parlaying great draft choices, player development, astute trades and free agent acquisitions into a team with a great pitching staff that at last made the playoffs in 2022, and had winning seasons in 2023 and 2024. And then came this 2025 campaign. Before the season Dipoto signed the team’s power hitting and Platinum Glove winning catcher, Cal Raleigh, to a new 6-year, $105 million deal. Reportedly, before signing Cal wanted assurances that the team was on board with getting to and winning a World Series; that if the players were putting it on the line, the front office would too, and would do what it takes to make that happen. 

Apparently, as he did sign the contract, the Big Dumper was satisfied that was the case, and the Mariners launched themselves into the 2025 season. Before it was over the season would take us fans on a ride we’ll never forget, one that culminated, at long last, in eclipsing the Houston Astros for the AL West Title and advancing to the American League Championship Series (ALCS) for the first time in 24 years. Along the way, in the American League Divisional Series against the Detroit Tigers, the Mariners played one of the most remarkable, and the longest, series clinching playoff games in Major League history—a Game 5, 15 inning classic, won by Seattle 3-2; advancing them to the ALCS for the first time in 24 years.

Dubbed by long time Mariners broadcaster, Rick Rizzs, as “The Battle in Seattle,” this book is the story of that game. MA