The Willingness To Do It Again
A season can end in heartbreak but still bring us back
We were deep in daydreaming before the ball left Eduard Bazardo’s hand.
Up 3 to 1 with just eight outs to go to our team’s first-ever World Series berth, my son and I leaned forward on the couch, not saying much but thinking the same things. What it would feel like sitting at a World Series game at T-Mobile Park. The sound of a raucous Seattle crowd, under the lights, breathing in the cool northwestern autumn air and sharing in the moment as a community. Just as we had visualized for so many years with neither of us ever fully saying it out loud.
Bazardo was brought into the game to quell a budding Blue Jays rally, just as he had done so many times that season. We would have preferred to see Andrés Muñoz. He came set, and the ball left his hand, darting towards George Springer at the plate.
It looked like a slider, but not the kind that starts over the plate before furiously sliding away from a right-handed batter, deceiving them into a lackluster-looking swing. Instead, this one looked like it was starting inside, meaning its movement would bring it right into Springer’s wheelhouse. There’s a split second in moments like that where anticipation and dread exist together, and you don’t get to choose which one wins.
Springer swung hard, and the contact was clean. Solid in a way that told you everything you needed to know before the ball had even started its climb into the Canadian sky.
The camera shifted to left field as our eyes watched Randy Arozarena take just a few steps back, and then abruptly stop, knowing no dive, sprint, or leap would stop this ball short of its final destination. “Roza” just stopped and watched it just as my son and I did.
That’s when it was all over. The ball carried, the crowd rose to its feet, and just like that, the score flipped. 3-1 Mariners became 4 to 3 Blue Jays in a single swing of the bat. Everything we had been holding onto together, trying not to say it out loud, was gone before either of us could even react.
My son and I didn’t look at each other and barely said a word, short of a quiet expletive or two dripping out of me. The broadcast kept going, describing the postseason magic of the moment as the noise from the Rogers Centre nearly drowned out their commentary. But in our family room, it didn’t feel like magic. It felt heavy, drowning, as if something had shifted in a way that meant it was never going to shift back.
Sure, it was only the bottom of the seventh. The Mariners still had six outs to go, with some of their strongest hitters coming up to the plate staring at a one-run deficit. All the things you point out to show that the game isn’t over just yet.
But in this case, it just didn’t feel that way.
When the Mariners came up in the top of the ninth, it felt like the inning ended quickly. A strikeout from Leo Rivas. Dominic Canzone would come in to pinch hit and promptly strike out. And finally, Julio Rodriguez, a favorite of my son, taking one final cut at a slider darting away from the plate, precisely the type we had wanted to see from Bazardo back in the seventh. Strike three. The Blue Jays were heading to the World Series. Our Mariners were headed home.
The buildup of the past month of baseball ended abruptly. There was no more drama left to unfold. The realization that this journey was complete slowly started to sink in.
I looked over at my boy. His head was turned slightly away, not fully hidden, but just enough to keep whatever expressions were coming over his face to himself. Trying to hold it together. Trying to take a second to collect himself before letting anything show.
It didn’t take long for everything to settle in. The tears weren’t overwhelming. They were anything but a sob. But nonetheless, they came slowly, like he was trying to decide if this game we loved was meaningful enough to call for tears. I saw them build in his eyes before they fell, and inside myself, perhaps partially from the moment itself, but likely more from seeing his own reaction to it, I felt the same thing rising in myself.
No words were necessary. We just sat there for a second, both of us taking it all in, and then we leaned into each other as I tried to deliver the type of hug you only get from Dad.
As parents, we often feel a need to soften pain or hurt. To remind our kids that, when a team they love comes up short in a big moment, it’s “just a game.” That there will be other seasons, other chances. And while these statements are obviously true, their essence simply can’t be fully internalized in that moment.
In that moment, it was anything but “just a game” to him. And honestly, it was for me, too.
It was something we had followed together every day, starting back in late March and stretching through the spring with the hope that comes with the changing seasons. Through the excitement of summer vacation and into the new school year. And this season, it had stayed with us into autumn as the leaves turned, but our attention did not. It was something he had invested himself in deeply without being told he had to. It was ours in a way that didn’t need to be explained, or perhaps even fully understood.
And this was the cost of caring that much. The quiet, with no words suiting the moment. The tears. The feeling of something coming to a hard stop long before you were ready for it to do so.
We didn’t talk much about it in the immediate aftermath. Not that night at least. For that night and the few days to come, it just sat there between us, becoming something we both understood without either of us having to revisit it.
And within a few days, we began asking about the next season. Who would be pitching on opening day, and what moves they might make in the offseason. Was the momentum and energy of 2025 enough to build on in 2026 and finally bring our Mariners to the big dance.
Despite the pain of one ending, the prospect of a new beginning brought the same energy. The same belief. The same sense of possibility. Like nothing about that horrible ending had scared him away from this game at all.
When Opening Day arrived this past March, we walked into T-Mobile Park together, carrying all of that with us. The loss from last year, the disappointment it brought, and the what-ifs that hadn’t gone anywhere.
But it wasn’t the only thing. We also carried the willingness to do it all again.