J.P. Crawford’s walk-off home run ignites T-Mobile Park as the Mariners beat the Rangers 4-2
Sleep will come eventually, but in the meantime we can just play that swing on a loop
Last night, I rode the light rail home amidst a crowd of jubilant Sounders fans and a few gleeful Mariners fan stragglers. A guy sits next to me, positively bedecked in Hall of Fame paraphernalia. A Hall of Fame Class of 2025 shirt, a Hall of Fame Class of 2025 hat, a Hall of Fame Class of 2025 water bottle with a specific Ichiro sticker affixed to the outside. He’s watching the postgame presser (yeah, sorry, if you sit next to me I am going to snoop a little) and later, after we disembark at the same stop, he will disappear into the night with Shannon Drayer’s postgame show floating aloud on the breeze.
Two kids sat behind me, not more than 13 or so. They are abuzz with baseball chatter. They exclaim about Ichiro, how he just became a Hall of Famer and how “awesome” it must have been to be in Cooperstown (can confirm). One pipes up that if Cal Raleigh keeps having seasons like his current one, he could also be a Hall of Famer one day. The other argues that he can keep powering on with his offense, but it will be Raleigh’s continued defense at catcher that could really seal the deal. They devolve into a debate about framing (is this what it would have been like to sit in front of masthead members and 20+ year besties Grant Bronsdon and John Trupin when they were in middle school?). One of them stumbles in remembering a stat, and the other graciously says “It’s okay! We were just at a soccer game, your brain’s been in soccer mode, but I’m just so stoked about baseball!”
And really, who could blame them? Especially not when the Mariners followed that 6-0 Good Vibes shutout with this.
I don’t want to take anything away from J.P. Crawford, who hit his first-ever walk-off home run. Nor do I want to diminish Logan Gilbert’s start, which was a little bit reminiscent of his 2021-22 seasons where he sometimes struggled to dominantly put batters away but ultimately put up a serviceable 6 innings, 3 earned runs, 7 Ks and 0 walks. Or the bullpen’s lights-out dispatching of the Rangers’ offense, with Gabe Speier, Matt Brash and Eduard Bazardo (who now has a perfect 5-0 record) combining to give up just one hit in three innings of work. And it’s so important to give flowers, in particular, to the lefties in the lineup today. Josh Naylor had an RBI double off of lefty-destroyer Hoby Milner, Dominic Canzone singled to leadoff the ninth after Dan Wilson bravely left him in to face LHP Robert Garcia, and, of course, there was Crawford’s lefty-on-lefty walk-off homer. To say nothing of Cole Young, who had two walks, including an RBI and what may have been the best at-bat of his rookie career.
But if there was any night when the crowd at T-Mobile Park could have willed this win into existence, it was tonight. The 40k+ were locked in from the get-go, the stadium packed and loud like it was a stretch game in late September. It was a warm and slightly windy Seattle night, and the Mariners made hard contact all game with minimal results to show for it until the ninth. For all that it was frustrating to watch Jorge Polanco and Eugenio Suárez rip balls just foul and crush pitches only to have them die at the warning track, the Mariners faithful did not relent. By going all in at the deadline - and bringing back a former favorite to boot - Seattle has revitalized the fanbase, injecting us all with that rarest of things: Hope.
When J.P. stepped to the plate, it was to that rhythmic “J! P! J! P! J! P!”, the crowd leaning on the “J” like Crawford would that 2-0 inside fastball. Could the collective exhalations have disturbed the marine layer just enough to clear the way? Could the radical magic of 40,000 people united in one suspended moment have buoyed the ball a little extra off of J.P.’s bat? Could the unfettered roar and unison rise have diverted the wind, shifting the air up and out?
Probably not. But damn if games like this don’t make you believe.