Commentary: Another huge series, Mariners - please, don't let us down

While I can’t speak for everyone – I cannot express this sentiment more clearly to the M’s: Please. Sweep the Blue Jays the next three nights. From the bottom of our ill-fated, bruised, beaten and broken baseball hearts: Once, just once! - do us a solid and win three games at home in front of your fans when it counts the most.

I don’t need to tell you that the start of this weekend was a disaster, salvaged by a big win on Sunday. You know it. I know it. Mariners fans everywhere know it, because we’ve seen this story before. I can’t remember a homestand in the last decade with major playoff implications in August or September where this franchise hasn’t let us down. It’s been the Mariners M.O.: Give us a glimpse - a sliver of hope - and then crush it, stomp on it, remind us that the postseason might never come again.



I hope you understand where I’m coming from here: We're just two games out of the AL Wild Card with 13 games left. And if you isolate this season alone, it’s been a fairly unexpected success. Relevance in mid-to-late September with a new manager and new GM is very commendable – it really is!

But big picture, this season sits at the end of the longest current playoff drought in Major League Baseball with a fanbase that’s been through the ringer a thousand times. Whenever the M's have been close, they've faded down the stretch.

So please, continue Sunday’s momentum the next three nights, and get back in this race - or to me at least, file yourselves in the same category of disappointment of the last 15 years.

Listen, I’m not in the clubhouse giving the speeches. I’m not Ken Griffey Junior, imploring you to "keep fighting." I’m simply a fan desperately begging this Mariners team to be different. Don’t be another mirage that teases us with glory, with potential, with hope, only to fall flat when we need you the most. Be that team we saw on Sunday - not the one we watched the first two nights, because that’s the team we know too well.

To the current players: I know you’re not responsible for the ills of yesteryear and the 13 before that.

But after everything your fans have been through at Safeco Field, why not be the team that we talk about as the one that finally broke through?

Why not find that magic again, sweep the Blue Jays the next three nights, and then go make history?

After all, the fans will be there to help raise you up. So please, just - please! - don’t let us all down.