The entire Seattle Mariners roster lined the dugout, rapt with respect and admiration. Hitters and pitchers, rookies and veterans alike, engrossed in each and every word uttered by an all-time great.
The date was Aug. 9, and Ichiro Suzuki was having his No. 51 retired by the Mariners in an extravagant pregame ceremony just two weeks after the iconic outfielder was enshrined in Cooperstown. On a serene Saturday afternoon in Seattle, Suzuki addressed the adoring T-Mobile Park crowd with a 15-minute speech in his second language, detailing his journey from Japan to Seattle that fundamentally changed Major League Baseball forever.
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He spoke of his love for the Pacific Northwest region that has since become his home and his appreciation for those in the organization who helped propel his legendary career stateside. He reminisced about his first major-league season in 2001, a singular campaign loaded with individual accolades and an MLB-record 116 team wins. He acknowledged the presence and importance of two fellow Mariners Hall of Famers, Dan Wilson and Edgar Martinez, who were his teammates on that 2001 team and now serve as the team’s manager and director of hitting strategy.
Finally, he turned his attention to the dugout filled with his beloved franchise’s current players.
“At the time, I thought winning was easy, and I took our success for granted,” Ichiro said, reflecting back on his memorable rookie season. “But as Edgar and Dan know, winning is tough.”
Martinez and Wilson were front-and-center for the golden era of Mariners baseball, when the franchise qualified for the postseason four times in six years from 1995 to 2001. But Ichiro’s first taste of playoff baseball in Seattle turned out to be his last. With that in mind, he offered an admonition to the 2025 Mariners.
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“Please do not take your talent for granted,” he said. “You have a great team and a great opportunity in front of you. I understand there is pressure to win, but the thing about winning is, it is always tough and never comes without pressure. Accept the pressure, and figure out how you can perform at your best under pressure.
“Although I can no longer help you guys with a hit or a laser-beam throw, my will and desire is always there for you. I come to the field every day because I want to help you be prepared for the moment. I am confident that you can seize the moment.”
Over the following 47 days, the Mariners embraced that mantra masterfully. They closed the gap with the Astros, the team they’ve been chasing for a half-decade. They endured a fallow skid that jeopardized their chances and instilled doubt in a fan base overly familiar with disappointment. Then they accepted the pressure, embraced the stakes and found a way to perform at their best, winning 16 of 17 games — a rocket-ship ride to the top of the standings. And on Wednesday against the Rockies, they secured the AL West crown that had eluded them for nearly a quarter-century.
Moment seized.
The 2022 Mariners ended the playoff drought. The 2025 Mariners have legitimate aspirations of winning it all. (Stefan Milic/Yahoo Sports)
For a while, dreaming of division titles felt too fanciful for a franchise that hadn’t reached the postseason since 2001. But the boundaries of what’s possible for the Mariners expanded three years ago, when the club ended that wretched playoff drought and reinvigorated the belief in a franchise that had been irrelevant for so long.
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That September, the clinch came courtesy of a second-year catcher named Cal Raleigh, whose pinch-hit, walk-off home run secured a long-awaited place for Seattle in October. It was Raleigh’s 26th home run of the season, the most by any catcher that year and an impressive total for a 25-year-old who was never considered an elite prospect. More broadly, it was a swing that ushered in a new era of Mariners baseball and cemented Raleigh as a fan favorite.
Little did we know.
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Over the next two years, Raleigh established himself as one of the best all-around catchers in the sport, continuing to lead backstops in home runs and earning the 2024 Platinum Glove Award as the best defender in the American League. In the days leading up to the 2025 season, Raleigh and the Mariners agreed to a six-year, $105 million extension, signaling the organization’s belief in the switch-hitting catcher as a franchise pillar. In the news conference announcing the deal, Raleigh got visibly emotional while thanking his parents for the sacrifices they made to allow him to pursue his big-league dreams and their willingness to support him as he put down roots in a city thousands of miles away from their home in North Carolina.
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Fast-forward six months, and Raleigh again got choked up while talking into a microphone about his family. But this time, his audience had grown exponentially. Raleigh stood on the field Wednesday after hitting his 59th and 60th home runs of the season in a 9-2 victory over Colorado to clinch the AL West title. A deafening roar of “MVP” chants interrupted his words as the catcher tried to convey what all of this has meant to him.
All summer, as Raleigh rewrote the record books, enhanced his national profile with a Home Run Derby title and powered Seattle to new heights, he humbly answered the same genre of question over and over. But only here, at this moment, did it appear to truly register with Raleigh what he and the Mariners had accomplished.
“I don’t know what to say,” Raleigh stammered, with parents Todd and Stephanie in the stands among a sea of their son’s biggest fans. “I’m so happy. I love this team. I love this city. I love my parents — thank you for being here.”
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In reaching 60 home runs — with four regular-season games remaining to perhaps tie or pass Aaron Judge’s American League record of 62 — Raleigh has ascended into a tier of greatness far beyond anyone’s wildest imaginations, including his own. But for all he has achieved individually, Raleigh made sure in that moment to redirect the focus back to the team he is leading into October.
“I think most people heard what I said last night,” Raleigh said in reference to his spontaneous rally cry during Tuesday’s celebration of the team clinching a postseason berth. “Might as well go win the whole f***ing thing.”
Raleigh’s explicit and entertaining sentiment will likely endure as a memorable moment from this week’s celebrations in Seattle. But it also speaks to a new standard that Raleigh has helped set. In 2022, the Mariners entered October with as much a sense of relief to have ended the drought as a realistic ambition to win it all. A dramatic series victory over Toronto in the wild-card round offered an enthralling glimpse of postseason success, but a decisive and devastating sweep in the ALDS at the hands of the rival Astros — who won the division by a whopping 16 games — provided a sobering reminder of how far the Mariners still had to climb to be taken seriously.
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Things are different now. This year, it was the Astros — debilitated by injuries but still featuring a substantial amount of star-level talent and winning experience — who squandered a division lead, punctuated by getting swept at home by Seattle to all but seal their fate as runner-ups. Meanwhile, in a wild season without a clear-cut favorite to reach the Fall Classic, particularly in the American League, Seattle has started firing on all cylinders at exactly the right time.
Having an MVP candidate in Raleigh has certainly helped, but this is far from a one-man show. Raleigh is one of nine holdovers from the 2022 team. There’s also dynamic center fielder Julio Rodriguez, who has once again caught fire in the second half and is on track to finish top-10 in AL MVP voting for the third time in his four major-league seasons. There’s shortstop J.P. Crawford, the longest-tenured Mariner and the lone active player remaining from the 2019 team that lost 94 games.
There’s third baseman Eugenio Suarez, the king of good vibes and a prolific slugger who was reunited with Seattle this summer after spending a year-and-a-half with the D-backs. Andres Muñoz and Matt Brash are still in place as headlining pieces of the bullpen. And in the rotation, there are homegrown stalwarts Logan Gilbert and George Kirby, plus a veteran staple in Luis Castillo, whose arrival via blockbuster trade at the 2022 deadline signaled the emphatic opening of Seattle’s competitive window.
Of course, the 2025 team has also been fueled by several newer names. Bryan Woo and Bryce Miller have joined the starting staff as the latest homegrown hurlers, with Woo in particular emerging as a bona fide frontline arm.
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Seattle’s front office, led by Jerry Dipoto and Justin Hollander, has continued to be aggressive at the past two trade deadlines, dealing from a deep farm system to add proven performers such as Randy Arozarena and Josh Naylor, who have helped supercharge a lineup that looked a lot feebler not all that long ago. There have been unexpected bounce-backs (Jorge Polanco), quiet breakouts (Dominic Canzone), unsung bullpen heroes (Gabe Speier, Eduard Bazardo), lovable role players (Victor Robles, Leo Rivas) and so many more who have made meaningful contributions.
All together, this is a club with legitimate championship aspirations backed by a roster that unquestionably looks the part of a World Series contender.
In many ways, the 2025 Mariners have already seized the moment, with a magical season punctuated by the franchise’s first division title in 24 years. But as the only franchise in Major League Baseball that has never even appeared in the World Series, the greatest opportunity — the one Ichiro so eloquently described in August — is still in front of them.
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