The Seattle Mariners return to the playoffs after a 21-year drought.
The Seattle Mariners will be playing in major league baseball’s postseason for the first time since 2001. With a walk-off home run on Friday night, the team clinched its position in the championship tournament. Their appearance as a wild card team ends the longest active playoff drought in men’s professional sports.
Of course, baseball being what it is, this is only the sixth longest MLB playoff drought of all time.
Two decades is an eternity in sports and life and a city. Seattle is different than it was in 2001. The luster has worn off what were brand new stadiums. The seats look out on a taller skyline. And a more people are around to enjoy the game. Let’s look back for a moment.
The Seattle Mariners’ last playoff appearance took place in a new stadium and city on the verge of change. After opening Safeco Field halfway through 1999, the team found success in 2000, and made the playoffs as a Wild Card team. After defeating the Chicago White Sox in the division series, the Mariners lost to the ever detestable New York Yankees. In the off season, the Mariners lost shortstop and admitted steroid user Alex Rodriguez.
Nonetheless, the 2001 Seattle Mariners won more games than any other team in MLB history other than the 1906 Chicago Cubs. But then six games in September were postponed due to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and an early round playoff win against the Cleveland Indians let way to another loss to the Yankees, this time a team of verve and destiny who would eventually lose to Arizona.
A changed town
That’s the legend of 2001 in Seattle. Since then, reality on the ground has been interesting. Sports have been great, but for baseball and basketball. The neighborhoods have changed. The city has grown. The tempo is not what it was at the turn of the millennium.
Since 2001, Seattle has added more than 150,000 people, growing by almost 25%. The metro region has added just under a million at about the same rate. Those arriving are working differently. Amazon and Microsoft passed Boeing as the state’s largest employers in 2019. Boeing has not been headquartered in the Evergreen State since 2001 when it moved to Chicago. It’s been long enough, in fact, that the fickle airplane manufacturer is moving its headquarters again, this time closer to federal regulators in Arlington, Virginia.
