But suddenly, it was infused with life, energy and joyful noise. The Kingdome - a multipurpose facility better suited for football - had spent the previous 18 baseball seasons building a reputation for small crowds and unfavorable sightlines. It was that simple.”Īnother simple equation: As the wins piled up, attendance picked up. “But once we got closer to the Angels, they were coming down, and we were going up. “Seattle had never made the playoffs,” second baseman Joey Cora told MLB.com in 2020. And in Lou Piniella, the M’s had a skipper with World Series-winning pedigree. Alex Rodriguez was getting his feet wet as a rookie. Designated hitter Edgar Martinez, first baseman Tino Martinez, right fielder Jay Buhner and third baseman Mike Blowers provided big power. Randy Johnson was on his way to his first of five Cy Young Awards. was 25 years old and already in his sixth All-Star season. On the promising side was the baseball itself. When dawn broke on that date, the state of the Mariners franchise was simultaneously promising and precarious. 18, 1995, for that, we can say with the benefit of hindsight, is a day as important as any in the story of how the Mariners secured their first division title and, eventually, their second stadium. Let’s go back, specifically, to Monday, Sept. ![]() It was a run made possible, in part, by a quirk in the MLB postseason format that ceased to exist in 2009, and by a tiebreaker system that ceased to exist here in '22. With the Mariners and their fans swept up in their first playoff run in forever, this is a fun time to look back on the club’s first playoff run. Well, because, in a weird way, Carolyn Taylor is the reason the Seattle Mariners still exist. So why does this random New Jersey woman have in her possession a watch celebrating the team’s 1995 division title? And as of that year, she had never even been to Seattle. WEST CHAMPIONS.”Ĭarolyn Taylor was not a member of the 1995 AL West champion Mariners. And just like that, after all those years of quiet confinement, the second hand clicked back to life and began to rotate around the dial’s decoration:Ī Seattle Mariners logo, adorned with a banner declaring the team the “1995 A.L. She retrieved it from the drawer and ran out to a Walgreens to get a new battery for it. Taylor instantly remembered the watch she had stashed way for safekeeping. She said she’d need one when she landed.” “She called from the airport when she realized she wear one. ![]() “ had left her watch at home,” Taylor recalls. But one February day earlier this year, her sister, Laurie Holmes, called with a request while en route from Chicago. Yet much like its owner, it came through when called upon.Ĭarolyn Taylor had received the watch as a gift way back in 1995 and had not worn it in quite a while. The two-tone Bulova watch sat untouched in a dresser drawer in Metuchen, N.J., for many years.
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