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You made it. We made it. They made it. Well, Stefen Romero didn't make it, but most of those other guys did! And now it's time to drink beers at noon and wave some yellow flags around, to dress up in team-branded costumes like we were eight again and watch game highlights on our phones and wake up to recaps every morning, to make up new nicknames for new Mariners and watch that Dave Niehaus video and tear up a little bit. You know which one.
It's time to slack off at work and spend time with Dave, Mike, Rick, and Aaron. It's time to try out those Dungeness Crab Legs at Safeco and listen to Shannon Drayer on the radio and goof around in the Gamethreads, but not too much because you had better be reisizing those images. It's time to walk fifteen miles up 1st Avenue South after finding free parking and time to yell at your computer because your out-of-market MLB.tv account is frozen or playing that god awful Red Sox paint commercial nine times every break.
It's time to grow grey hairs while riding the Fernando Rodney Express, to wonder why the Mariners can't beat the White Sox and hope that Lloyd throws another hat at an umpire by June. Time to open up about nineteen tabs on your laptop while reading why the Mariners just lost and time to tweet lineup complaints to Ryan Divish, even though there's actually very little to complain about for once.
But mostly it's time to listen to this song and watch a team that you would actually play as in a videogame. It's "time" for baseball every year this month, but now it's actually time for something else. It's time to feel hope, to feel vindicated for going to Safeco on that Tuesday night to watch Eric Thames and Trayvon Robinson play baseball. It's time to temper excitement and battle through injuries and feel a strange glow deep within our bones that we haven't felt since those kids who are just now getting their driving permits were born.
And if it isn't time to "win" yet--the last thing we need is to jinx this whole thing before it even starts--then it's time to just have fun watching a bunch of chumps hit little hand-stitched balls with wooden sticks and then run around for a while. We've been doing it for around 200 years, so there's no reason to stop now.
Game info
- Mariners vs Angels, 1:10 PM PST
- TV: ROOT, Radio: 710 ESPN, Online: mlb.tv
- Make sure to check out Jake's series preview for all the math stuff I don't know how to give you here, and if you're having trouble emerging from your Northwest-green tinted cloud of nihilism, then stop by Colin's hype piece to make yourself realize it's a new day.