When the Mariners make you crazy
We're only a week into the season, and I'm already micromanaging at-bats and celebrating a two-run homer on a Thursday game in Chicago as if it's a long-awaited triumph. I need help. Soon.
I won’t go so far as to say that being a Mariners fan these past 21 years will make you crazy, but I’ve certainly felt that way through the first week of the season.
Reading way too much into individual results. Putting every at-bat of the Mariners young outfielders under a microscope. Agonizing over a collective output of two hits in a Monday game against a Minnesota team that started Dylan Bundy. Seven days into this season and I already lost all sense of proportion to the point that I found myself feeling that Thursday’s afternoon finale to the season’s first road swing was a potentially pivotal moment.
So when Jarred Kelenic lasered that ball down the right field line in the second inning, pinging it off the foul pole for a two-run homer, I stood up, extended two clenched fists and shouted “Finally!” like an absolute and utter rube.
Maybe this is just what happens when the playoff drought of your favorite team is months away from being old enough to drink legally. You live in such constant fear that the can’t-miss prospects will bust in the big leagues that you exaggerate both their failures and their successes. You are so paranoid about another hope-laden season turning cadaverous that you micromanage the results.
At this point, being a Mariners fan isn’t altogether different from having an underlying psychological condition, and I say that as someone who does in fact have an underlying psychological condition. I’m constantly telling myself I need to stay patient, to not overreact, to watch how things play out with teams. I’m doing everything but breathing into a bag and we’re only one week into the season. And when Logan Gilbert looks as good as he has through these first two starts, hell, I’m ready to write his name in pen at the top of the rotation for the next 10 years and proclaim him as a cornerstone.