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Bronx Fury: 20 Years of Futility and Fortune as a Mariners Fan in New York

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Sunday, the Mariners vie for their 89th all-time win at Yankee Stadium. After being swept by the Yankees at home in devastating fashion this May, and after splitting the first two games in New York, the Mariners have a .435 winning percentage in head-to-head matchups over the course of 38 and a half seasons. Sure, over that time rosters have turned over more times than Yuniesky Betancourt on a 3-1 fastball, but the narrative remains the same.

Sunday, the Mariners will try to win what can only be described as the most important series in a string of most important series that in turn make up the organization's most critical stretch of baseball in a season that has been cause for massive hope and crushing disappointment. This All-Star Break felt like that scene in the Gladiator where the newly trained combatants are waiting in the tunnel before the doors open to send them streaming into the arena. It will either be a hard-won road to glory or a bloody demise. For the latter, there are two options: quick or slow; neither of them good. That these doors swung open to reveal the grassy confines of Yankee Stadium only heightens the second half's do-or-die quality.

* * *

I've spent the majority of my life as a Mariner fan in or around New York City. As a result, Mariner games at Yankee Stadium always feel like they mean more. I've seen the M's play in Cleveland, Chicago, Arizona, and Seattle, but New York is where it begins and ends. There, elusive victories taste all the sweeter and losses smart like a kick in the shins delivered by Frank Sinatra from beyond the grave. After 20 years cheering on the Mariners in the Bronx, I'm amazed I can still walk upright.

It began well. I swear it did. A blowout victory over the Yankees in June 1995 was enough to convince this 6-year-old that the Mariners were clearly the superior team and deserving of a life-long commitment to following their fortunes. And commit I did. One of the few marvelous things about the Mariners in the 1990s was that their star power was such that they truly did enter the consciousness of the global youth. When I tell people on the East Coast that I'm a Mariners fan, they don't look at me like I'm crazy. They know why. Ken Griffey Jr. Alex Rodriguez. Randy Johnson. Edgar. "I also used to be such a big Mariners fan," they confide. "That team was loaded!"

But as people grow up, childhood loyalties bred of video games and candy bars fade. Most do, that is. Not all.

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(L) A rendering of MLB team logos, c. 1998. (R) Ken Griffey Jr. smashing his way victory at the 1998 Home Run Derby.

My family and I went to games almost every spring when the Mariners came to town. My sister held out as a Yankee fan for a while, but soon was converted. I won't go into what happened in 2000 and 2001, other than to say I was there to see Arthur Rhodes get hammered both times. I didn't go back for years. The next Mariner game I caught on the East Coast was in Boston at the end of 2003—a last losing hiccup for what was already a fading dynasty, try as I might to see it any other way.

After that, the darkness and disillusionment of the mid 2000s. I never stopped paying attention through it all—utterly convinced that we were one turn away from regaining the magic; the MOJO. Jose Lopez, Jeremy Reed, Clint Nageotte, and a familiar cast of others made up the core of a franchise dynasty I'd built on MVP Baseball 2005 and played to championships all the way to 2018. Whatever it took to keep the dream alive. At a sports summer camp in New Jersey without Internet access, I bought a New York Times to check the box score for Felix's first start against the Tigers. He took the loss, but it was promising.* The sun shone golden on the trees that August day as another year slipped by.

It's now 2007. The September night is cool, not yet crisp. A flagging Mariners team has sputtered into New York riding a nine game losing streak that seems to have all but snuffed any late-summer hopes of playoff contention. But then Felix Felix'd and they take the first game, pulling within a game of the Yankee's wildcard lead. This is where it turns the corner. This is where things change. New call-ups Jeff Clement and Wlad Balentien are in the dugout, ready to inject some youthful pop to the stretch run. I tell myself many things. My family and I sit near the Mariners dugout. This is primetime. Twelve Yankee runs later, I have witnessed the Major League debut of both Clement and Balentien, but little else. I take solace in telling myself I have seen the future. Turns out those guys are a pretty good approximation of what the future holds. I am an idiot. But so are most people when they head off to college.

Four years and one failed Statistics course later, I graduate. Not listed on my final transcript is credit for sitting through three crushing defeats on Chicago's South Side in as many years. U.S. Cellular Field does a drop-dead impression of Yankee Stadium.

Flex Fister

"Flex Fister" at White Sox - April 24, 2010

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"Flex Felix" at White Sox - June 7, 2011. Eyes closed to potential roster problems.

It's 2011. I am back in New York, newly employed, and the Mariners are mired in a 15 game losing streak. Not exactly uncharted territory. It's a rainy, dismal Monday night—the sort that seeps through your shoes and into your soul; weather befitting a trek to the Bronx to watch Jason Vargas and the Mariners attempt to snap the skid against Yankee starter and erstwhile Mariner ace Freddy Garcia. They don't. Dustin Ackley bats third.

It's 2012. A bright Saturday in May. The day begins in Green Bay Airport getting hassled by overzealous security for camera equipment on the heels of a work trip. Two flights later, it ends along the left field line at Yankee Stadium, watching Hector Noesi get hassled for 5 runs on the way to a 6-2 loss. Dustin Ackley leads off.

It's two and a half months later. The Yankees are visiting Seattle. I am searching for a parking spot near my apartment in Queens having just dropped my girlfriend at the airport to fly back to Chicago where she is still at school and I'm not. If rooting for a baseball team on the other side of a continent tries one's soul, so does long distance dating. Avoid mixing, if you can, unless you're into an emotional speedball of elation, angst, and late bed times. I find a spot and park. I see my phone. A message from Mom. "Ichiro traded to the Yankees?" The world sways. Three days later, we break up; or "take a step back." That's like getting sent back to the minors to work on your mechanics. At least it's July and the Mariners are playing meaningful base-- oh, right, they're not.

Then, three weeks later, Felix tosses his perfecto. I am in my office in Manhattan. I've crept out to the supply elevator hallway to whip out my phone to watch the final two innings of what seemed like an eventuality since reading the box score from Felix's debut. I watch as Felix laces a called strike three. He is king of the world; of Seattle; of Tampa Bay; of New York as well. He is untouchable. I am but his loyal emissary. Vivat Felix. Vivat rex.

It's 2014. I've slunk back up to Yankee Stadium to see Robinson Cano's Bronx Mariners debut. In the school yard fight that is Mariner fandom in New York, the Cano acquisition feels like someone finally has our back. The game-time temperature is 46 degrees and I've very wisely not worn socks, having purchased a ticket spur of the moment from StubHub and printed it at my office hours before. $8 feels like the highest price I'd pay to see the Mariners get licked by the Yankees on a cold night in late April.

I like sitting above home plate in the upper deck. From that vantage point you can survey the game in all its intricacy. The poor man's press box. The blustery winds and a lackluster 2-0 Mariner deficit drive me from the upper deck and down to the concourse after four innings. But then, they post a four spot. Chris Young seems to be rolling. It feels like the Mariners have dragged their season back on track.

It felt a very Mariner fate to be condemned to watch the next five innings in the cold from the third base concourse. But at least I could bounce around in excitement as they pulled to a 6-3 victory. I can't remember the last time I saw a Mariner win in the Bronx. I hope it wasn't 1995.

* * *

Yankee Stadium is the Coliseum—where the glory years went to die amidst the cacophony of elevated trains and recordings of Frank Sinatra belting out "New York, New York" as smug, self-satisfied Yankee fans trail out to the BMWs and Land Rovers they paid $25 to park. If Yankee Stadium is the Coliseum, the Mariners are the retiarius—the nautical-themed gladiator, armed with a trident and net. It follows that the Yankees would be the murmillo—the hulking, stocky death machine often matched against the lightly-armored retiarius.

A typical depiction from history runs analogous to the teams' matchups over time:

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The original bleacher creatures. (Pollice Verso, by Jean-Leon Gerome, 1872)

Not pictured is the alternate conclusion: a lumbering mass of gladiator muscle bogged down under the retiarius' weighted net. Baseball is a game, not bloodsport. But like the gladiatorial games, it's about the romance of narrative and the endurance it takes to follow it. Luckily, the retiarius was lightly armored and could move nimbly, even as his murmillo opponent slowed and tired. Mariners fans have the endurance to see this through, whatever the outcome. This is but one game amidst a litany of Mariner-Yankee games. History is a construct. Baseball is timeless.

The sun is out. Felix is on the hill. Ready the nets and tridents.

*Fernando Rodney got the save for the Tigers in Felix's debut.