The M's 3rd and final act.

I really finally felt out of my depth as a baseball analyst tonight, and that's not easy for me to say, since I've loved the game for most of my life, but that's how the M's have made me feel. I've written all year about how you have to think about the season in very Saturnine terms and how it plays out over a classic three act structure, and predicted the Mariners to be exciting throughout the year, even though many of my cohorts were down on them. It could be that I just have a sort of knee jerk reaction to defend the underdog, and after 13 playoff-less years it's about time, but it's more than that. The city really hasn't given much of a fuck about these guys all year, although the middle age Gen X'ers like me want to think that the M's are the same guys as the late Nineties, but that was another era, and nothing remains of it, not even the manager. These are new guys and I like that about them, but I really thought they ran out of gas last week, and yet I may be realizing that I've just been so out of 3rd act baseball, that I forgot what it felt like, but I'm remembering. The truth is there's only a week but there's 8 games, and more than likely the M's will lose a few of them, but so will their nearest competitor, and it's a cluster-fuck, too deep for anyone to make sense of, since the Royals and the Tigers are competing for the pennant of their division, and a wild card spot simultaneously, but ignore this for a moment, just to suspend disbelief. I really thought the M's were just going to cave a week ago and play %.500 baseball, which just wouldn't cut it, but I might've been wrong; likewise, I was thinking their competitors (the A's, Royals, and Tigers (?)), were just going to be better, and this may have been wrong too. I'm sorry but I forgot the great drama of a third act, perhaps the weakness in my own art, since all three acts have a purpose, even if the second act kind of defines the success of the season, but the 3rd act leaves us with a memory; to barely make it to the 3rd act for a baseball team, makes for a mediocre season, but to make it to the third act, and then fold, is a tragedy, but not a mediocrity, just something more frustrating. This is where the Mariners are at, and I forgot how frustrating and exciting it is for a sports fan, and people really lose themselves in this, more than music, they really take winning and losing seriously, for baseball is a metaphor of life, the national pastime, where we reflect on our days, through a game, that is both long and short like life.

The M's are only a 1/2 game out from a wildcard spot, and they could still make it, with a little luck, both for them, and against their opponents, but all of the teams in contention could say that. They bounced back the last couple of days, from a real malaise, that I was wondering if they were going to come out of, so now it's anyone's wild card; not quite a pennant, but almost as good, in the millennial parlance. I should probably just shut up until the season ends, because tonight's 10-5 win against the Astros in Minute Maid park was just too much, like a love that refuses to die.