There's No Place Like Home
Mariners legend Edgar Martinez, legend-in-the-making Cal Raleigh, and two moments that literally and figuratively saved baseball in the Pacific Northwest
Note: if this is your first time reading The Enni Way, start here to understand my summer of going (strategically) insane about baseball.
April 11 - Rangers @ Mariners (W, 5-3)
I’m a Seattle sports fan by lineage, not proximity. When I was four years old, my family moved out of Washington and began criss-crossing the country as my dad climbed the corporate ladder. Summers were always in the pacific northwest: Dave Niehaus’s voice floating over blue water, the crinkle of newspapers folding back to do the crossword, the smell of a fresh deck of cards.
I came back to attend the University of Washington for four years and one football season. After graduation, I pursued writing and reporting in Washington, D.C. And I’ve now been in L.A. for a decade. One thing that living away from Seattle for most of my life has taught me is to truly appreciate the experience of home team. I love walking to baggage claim at SeaTac and spotting deep blue Seahawks jerseys and gold-and-purple UW coffee cups.
I was in Seattle interviewing fellow members of my fantasy football league. It’s given me the chance to catch up with men who grew up with my dad, and have cared about me for my entire life. But every conversation was shadowed by grief; our shared sorrow that Dad has somehow been gone for nearly twenty years. On a Friday, I didn’t have an interview, and the Mariners were giving free corduroy hats to the first 10,000 fans. I forced my mom into the car and we were off. After a pit stop at Uwajimaya for packs of Mario-themed chocolates and crab-flavored crackers, we lined up outside the stadium and grabbed our hats. Happily, we did not need T-Mobile park’s retractable roof that day; it was brisk but sunny, a spring day to be cherished in the Pacific Northwest. Mom and I walked the concourse together with a final destination in mind: Edgar’s.
Edgar’s is a standing-room only bar area above left field. Its namesake, Edgar Martinez, was a third-baseman turned designated hitter who played for the Mariners for 18 years. In 1982, Edgar was a twenty-year-old semiprofessional player living with his grandparents in Puerto Rico. He already felt washed out—most Latin prospects sign contracts with clubs as teenagers. But at the urging of his coach, he went to a Mariners tryout. He was coming off a night shift at a factory; years later he told the Seattle Times he was “so tired I couldn’t swing the bat.” But the Ms saw something. They signed him, beginning a long, winding journey to the majors. After five years toiling in the farm system, Edgar made his major league debut in 1987. But he yoyoed in and out of Triple A, not solidifying himself as a starter until 1990, at 27 years old.
Five years later, Edgar was part of a Seattle team that was playing for its very existence. They were coming off a season cut short by a strike,1 and a tragic accident at the Kingdome, their home stadium, made it clear they needed a new place to play. The Mariners CEO gave the people of Seattle an ultimatum: begin construction on a new field by 1996, or the team is gone. But the Mariners had been terrible for their entire existence—like, they averaged just 68 wins a year, a .432 winning percentage since their first season in 1977. Why would fans vote to spend taxpayer money on a bunch of losers? They didn’t; on September 29, 1995 the referendum to raise sales tax to fund a new stadium failed by 1,082 votes.
But something magical was happening on the field. The Mariners were trailing the Angels by 13 games in early August when a new energy seized the team: Refuse to Lose. They went 19-8 in September, finally beating the Angels 9-1 in a wildcard game to secure their first-ever trip to the postseason. The Ms faced the Yankees in the American League Division Series, which came down to the final game. Down 5-4 in the bottom of the 11th inning, Edgar ripped what is now referred to as “The Double,” a scorcher into the left-field corner that scored Joey Cora from third and lightning-fast Ken Griffey Jr. from first base.
If you’ve ever heard the phrase “My oh my” associated with the Mariners, the clip above is your answer. Even this picture of the team dogpiling Griffey after his headfirst slide into home makes me cry:
That swing got the team to their first American League Championship Series, still the furthest they’ve ever gone in the postseason. The Pacific Northwest was so swept up in baseball fever, the governor called a special legislative session to hammer out a new stadium deal. Edgar literally saved baseball.
In 2004, he retired as one of only 18 major league players to have a career .300 batting average, .400 on-base percentage, and .500 slugging percentage. He’s in the Hall of Fame, and the Mariners have retired his number and given him this perch above the bullpen.
Mom and I settled along the banister with our canned cocktails and watched warm-ups, admiring the generous genetics that earned our catcher, Cal Raleigh, his nickname: Big Dumper.2 Cal is a 28-year-old switch hitter from North Carolina who debuted with the Mariners in 2021. He’s got a baby face with a perpetually worried expression. And yes, he has powerful glutes. After struggling to secure his spot, Cal went into the 2022 season and hit 25 home runs, the most a Seattle catcher has ever hit in a single season. For the final six weeks of the season, he played through torn ligaments in the thumb of his glove hand.
And on the last day in September, the Ms playoffs hopes were on the line. Cal was called on to pinch hit in the bottom of the ninth of a tie game… and cranked a walk-off home run that ended “The Drought”—the longest stretch without a playoff appearance in all four major U.S. sports. The Mariners went back to the playoffs for the first time in 21 years.
For the following two seasons, Cal continued setting the example for a team that struggled to score. In 2024, the Ms were last in the majors in batting average. To get the offense back on track, the team turned to their hometown legend: Edgar. They named him the hitting coach and for the last leg of the 2024 season Edgar taught players about the power of visualization and belief. After Edgar stepped in, they ranked fourth in OPS (.764) and runs per game (5.09), and 15th in strikeout rate (23.7%).
So far in 2025, Edgar’s approach has put the Mariners at the top of their division. As of the day I’m publishing this newsletter, Cal has hit as many home runs as Yankees tank Aaron Judge, just two shy of league leader Shohei Ohtani. “I don’t know how to describe it, (but) when talking to [Edgar] you feel this kind of like ease (that) comes over you,” Cal said. “You have this belief in yourself because he believes. I think he believes in a lot of us more than we believe ourselves sometimes.”
As Mom and I looked on, Cal Raleigh hit a game-winning home run. It was the 96th homer in his career, breaking the record of most-ever for an Ms catcher. In the stadium that night, the same jolt of communal excitement that had so moved me at the Giants game hit in a different way. I stood and screamed when Cal’s hit arced into the stands, completely uninhibited because I wasn’t alone. My scream melted into the shouting, cheering, laughing, ebullient joy of the tens of thousands of fans around me. Together we sang our congratulations as Cal trotted the bases and fireworks laced the dusk-pink sky. Your excellence is an act of service! we seemed to be telling him. You did that for us!
On the drive back I bickered with my mom about going too slow in the carpool lane. But the Mariners won. My existential fear of being a curse to the boys was lifted. I was home.
⚾ 🔱
🗣️ I’ve got to be real with you, I am listening non-stop to Hey, Randy! a behind-the-paywall Comedy Bang Bang offshoot podcast featuring Tim Baltz (hear Zan and I talk to Tim about the NBA on a recent On the Bleachers), Lily Sullivan, Mary Sohn, Dan Lippert, and Brett Morris. This is a very niche recommendation.
🎥 And I’m watching The Kingmaker, a documentary about Imelda Marcos, wife to one Filipino dictator and mother to a second. Spoiler for upcoming episodes of Scamfluencers!
The strike, which nearly ended major league baseball as we know it, was ended by now-Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. She granted the MLB Players Association injunction preventing MLB owners from fielding teams of non-union replacement players, effectively ending the strike… and arguably saving baseball! 👑
Nickname courtesy of his then-teammate, Jarred Kelenic. Cal’s learned to love it; his mom has learned to tolerate it.
Wow goosebumps reading this