Mariners, A’s live and die together in final game of 2024 season

Every out-of-contention game 162 is different but ends up the same place

When my dad was dying, I asked everyone I thought might know what to expect, only to be given, over and over again, this wholly unsatisfying answer: it looks different for everyone. There are markers that most, or some, or many go through, but no one could draw me what I really wanted: a detailed map, with clearly demarcated stops, to the end.

As part of most baseball teams’ opening day festivities, fans are handed a glossy 162-stop plan to the end to stick on the fridge or filing cabinet; whatever happens beyond that depends on if your team believes in the afterlife of the postseason or not. For decades, with one shining exception, the Mariners have shown themselves to be atheists in that arena.

Not that there wasn’t the smallest chance, last year and then again this year, odds no surgeon would operate on but fans could cling to nonetheless. The Mariners reshuffled their rotation with eyes towards a possible Wild Card berth, setting up Logan Gilbert to make one last start in a season where he went 9-12 despite hitting personal bests in innings pitched, strikeouts, and earning his first All-Star selection. [One note on that best in innings pitched: Gilbert ended the season with the most innings pitched among any starter in baseball, the first time ever a Mariners pitcher has achieved that feat.]

Gilbert, playing for pride, came out of the gates roaring on a day where he and Cal Raleigh had decided to have a little fun with their final start of the season together as batterymates.

“I asked Cal all year if I could do the PitchCom, because he doesn’t like it when we shake him off,” said a grinning Gilbert postgame. “So he actually wanted me to all year, because he wanted me to give up a hit on something I called and then kind of rub it in my face. So I’m actually glad that I threw pretty well today, because...I was going to hear it afterwards if it didn’t go well.”

How well did Logan throw? He carried a perfect game into the sixth inning, and hit a new personal best for velocity on his fastball on his seventh pitch of the game, a 100.3 fastball that Brent Rooker whiffed through for the first of Logan’s seven strikeouts of the game.

Excuse me, that’s actually SANDWICH cheese. Hate it when people don’t know the lore.

But that record wouldn’t stand long, because nine pitches later, Gilbert bested his own best with more triple-digit heat:

“I know I get a lot of time off, so I was just gonna leave it all out there. I felt like I at least owed that to the fans,” said Logan.

“And I know I’m gonna be wishing on a random day in December or January that I was at T-Mobile pitching against whoever.”

On the final day of the season, the workaholic Gilbert found a way to earn himself a longer outing than usual, pitching into the sixth inning by virtue of the perfect game he was carrying. He almost made it to the seventh but with two outs, Nick Allen got on a curveball and laced it into left field for the A’s first hit of the day, gaining himself an enemy for life in staffer/Logan Gilbert fan club president Zach Mason. Nick Allen might be the one professional athlete I think a baseball writer could take on, so watch your six, Nick. Gilbert departed after that to a roar of enthusiasm from the fans and a standing ovation before Eduard Bazardo—who staff writer Connor would like you to know ends the season as the Mariners’ FIP leader, minimum 10 IP—threw exactly two pitches to end the inning.

“I probably couldn’t actually put into words what it means,” said Gilbert about the reception as he walked off the field. “I’m trying to lay it all on the line for the team and for the fans, so it’s nice that they show their appreciation, and hopefully they know how much I appreciate it too.”

“It’s was pretty overwhelming, honestly. That’s the kind of moment that I wish I could just hit pause on and take it in for a while, because it goes so quick and means so much.”

Logan might have come out firing, but the rest of the offense was slower to get going against Oakland starter Mitch Spence. Cal Raleigh finally came through in the fourth to break up Spence’s no-no, smacking an 0-2 cutter into right field for the team’s first hit. Randy Arozarena followed with a double that just missed being a home run, striking the yellow line at the top of the padded wall to put runners on at second and third for Luke Raley, who struck out, leaving it up to Justin Turner to try to get some two-out run production.

There’s a reason Luke Raley and Cal Raleigh—two of the hardest workers on the team—both spoke passionately about wanting Justin Turner back. Turner watched Spence throw two pitches, a cutter and a slider, well outside, and then in a favorable 2-0 count, pounced on a slider that hung into the middle of the plate:

These are the kinds of at-bats the Mariners were missing all season, it feels like. Luke Raley said yesterday that he believes if Justin Turner had started the season a Mariner, they would be in the playoffs now, and in imagining a season of clutch moments filled not by frantic hacking but by solid, professional at-bats like this one, it’s hard to argue with his point.

The Mariners added on another quartet of runs in the fifth when J.P. Crawford led off with a base hit; he was brought around by Victor Robles, who smoked a double down the left field line, because you just can’t keep Victor Robles quiet for long. Julio followed with a sharply-hit single that zipped past a diving Tyler Soderstrom to score Robles easily, and then Cal Raleigh decided it’s never too late to make a little history:

That quieted the A’s fans in attendance, hoping for one last win for the Oakland Athletics as they have been known, but they came back alive in the seventh, when Gabe Speier ran into some bad batted-ball luck and threw a wild pitch that moved two runners into scoring position; they’d both then score on a two-out double, as the righty A’s hitters were wearing out that left-field line against Speier. A raucous “Let’s go Oakland” chant arose in the crowd. Speier extricated himself from trouble by striking out pinch-hitter Max Schuemann, and the Mariners and Oakland fans reunited once again in their love of baseball/hatred of billionaires.

It feels both unfair and absolutely correct that Mariners fans, mourning the end of their own season, were asked by the gods of schedule-making and distance to scooch on over and make room for A’s fans mourning the death of their franchise. But Mariners fans, united in a spirit of futility with the A’s fans, were boundlessly gracious. You’d think that grief would make you small, and sometimes it does (see above re: no reliable map about death), but sometimes it opens doors to rooms you didn’t even know were part of the floor plan. They say hurt people hurt people, but sometimes hurting people heal people.

Gregory Santos had the eighth, pitching his second of what is essentially rehab outings after missing most of this season with a variety of mysterious injuries. Santos looked, for this inning, like the high-leverage back-end bullpen piece the team thought they were getting back when the 2024 season was a dream on paper, getting two quick weak-contact flyouts and then striking out Rooker on three pitches to draw the shades on this incarnation of the Oakland Athletics.

At this point, I would like to point out that some parts of a death are nonsensical. Ghostly figures from the ether arise, phantoms from the past, things within and without that just make no sense on our earthly plane. When he was preparing to depart this mortal coil, my comatose father drove an invisible car and stirred an invisible drink when we put on his favorite jazz albums; he was somewhere beautiful and just out of reach. Cheetah Time is one of those beautiful, nonsensical times. As far as historians have uncovered, Cheetah Time dates back to 2011, when Sir Mix-a-Lot first appeared on Mariners Vision and intoned: “it’s Cheetah Time.” From then on, people have annually dressed up in cheetah print and danced at the end of every home game. If the Coliseum is the Last Dive Bar, Safeco/T-Mobile has made a good argument to be the unpermitted, equally cigarette-fug-laden dance club in the back. The source material for Cheetah Time is murky, and likely lost to history. It is important to stress that, unlike other beloved ballpark traditions, Cheetah time is very niche. It’s strictly an oral tradition; there is no Cheetah Time promotion, and no reward for it other than Time spent as Cheetah. Which, in the end, is just as much a reward as anything else in this life.

In the ninth inning, Oakland made a rally against rookie Troy Taylor, the 2024 April Everett AquaSox being asked to close out the 2024 September big-league season for the Mariners. The A’s rallied against the rookie to plate another two runs on a Darell Hernaiz double, making the score 6-4. With two outs and Hernaiz on, Max Scheuemann once again stepped to the plate as the tying run, as the Oakland fans—like those who witness terminal lucidity in a loved one, a final moment of clarity that can occur before death—rose to their feet, willing one more win before the curtains closed entirely, one last stop on the map someone else drew, leading to a destination none of them wanted to go.

Schuemann struck out. The Moose struggled to unravel the celebration flag before running it across the field one last time. Scheumann stared back for a moment, and gave a bone-shuddering sigh as he approached the dugout, the final Oakland A. Through the haze of celebration fireworks Victor Robles solemnly dumped a bucket of bubblegum over history-maker Cal Raleigh’s head. Players came to say a final farewell and toss baubles into the crowd. The Let’s go Oakland cheers swelled for a long moment, then ebbed, then stopped.

It goes so quick. It means so much.