Billy Mac remembers being in the broadcast booth in 2019 when Félix Hernández pitched his final game for the Seattle Mariners. Hernández, a Cy Young Award winner and six-time All-Star who also played a perfect game, broke out in the big leagues with the team in 2005. But throughout his 15-year career in the Pacific Northwest, he was often the only bright spot for a franchise that at one time had a 21-year playoff drought (a streak that finally fell in 2022). From his first All-Star season in 2009 to his last in 2015, Hernández boasted an impressive 2.83 ERA, winning 104 games and losing just 65. Yet he never pitched in the postseason. But for Mac, a fact like that is all too familiar for the team he’s been rooted in for decades — a team that was founded in 1977 and remains the only active MLB franchise that has never reached a World Series.
“Few careers have been less enjoyed than that of Félix Hernández,” Mac told the Guardian, avoiding using the word wasted. That night in the booth, Mac said he took a photo of the team’s broadcast crew as Hernández left the mound. “They all stood up,” he says. “You don’t see a standing ovation in a radio booth – it was a really special moment.”
For New Orleans-born Mac, who moved to the Seattle area in the 1970s with his wife, the Grammy-nominated 1960s pop star Merrilee Rush, he always dreamed of living in a city with professional baseball. As soon as the M’s landed in the area, he purchased season tickets from the stands. A musician himself, Mac says he has sung the National Anthem before Mariners games more than 60 times and has since written a book for the team’s Hall of Fame broadcaster, the late Dave Niehauswhich was also the target of this Macklemore song. Over the years, Mac and Niehaus became friends, bonding over their love of the game. Mac still follows the team, always listening to the news featured announcer, Rick Rizzs, on the radio. But he can’t shake the fact that the Mariners continue to disappoint their fans.
“For too long we have had a succession of ownership groups whose understanding of the game was not enough to create a winning organization,” he says diplomatically. In 2016, John W Stanton led a group that purchased the team from Nintendo of America.
Mac, like many in town, romanticizes the good years the team has had, since the 1995 playoffs, when Ken Griffey Jr, Edgar Martínez, Randy Johnson and company defeated rival Yankees in dramatic fashion, until 2001, when the team set an MLB record with 116 wins with MVP Ichiro Suzuki. As for this year’s squad, there is renewed hope. And even though the team is first in the AL West, with the rival Houston Astros quickly rising, Mac can’t shake the idea that the owners aren’t there to win.
“Sometimes I worry that our property is more interested in a $9 box of chocolate grasshoppers than putting a winning team on the field,” says Mac. “Am I happy that they’re over .500 now? Absolutely. Do I want to see them play the best they can? Yes. But if you look at the lineup, I think there are three guys over .235. You won’t win from this.”
If you ask other Mariners fans their opinion of the team, you’ll quickly find out that Mac isn’t alone in his feelings. In Seattle, those who follow the M’s are almost always passionate and hopeful. And yet they also share Mac’s pause on ownership. Robb Benson of Seattle, a longtime rock musician in the city that also sang the National Anthem before a game in 2022, he has been a fan since his father took him to the stadium at the age of five during the Mariners’ inaugural season. “It’s like there was a curse on the Red Sox and then the Cubs and now it’s our turn,” Benson says. “I can only hope we get to the World Series in my lifetime.” He adds: “I’m torn between optimism and pessimism – ownership has been very frustrating.”
Janine Chiorazzi, an elementary school art teacher in Seattle, says she became a fan of the team eight years ago, after her son’s grandfather died. “He was my son’s ‘sports’ guy,” she says. “When he passed away, I took over the role. At least for baseball. Still, his enthusiasm is tempered. “I think management is motivated by profit [not winning],” she says.
Cedric Walker, who works by day as an engineer at Amazon and is a musician at night, says going to Mariners games in the 1990s with his mother “are some of my best memories growing up.” But, she adds, “I’d be lying if I said it didn’t affect me. [that the Mariners haven’t made the World Series].” He says that when he wears a Mariners uniform, he feels like other baseball fans “feel sorry for me.” Still, he’s hooked on this year’s cast, which he says is “exciting and fun to watch. These guys really believe in themselves and it’s been good to see them together over the years.” But, he tells the Guardian: “As for management, it’s a kind of love-hate relationship.”
Whenever a team loses, it can be easy to blame ownership. They may seem like an obvious target, yet out of reach. But when it comes to the Mariners, decades of losses and few positives point to an inescapable truth. To a large extent, owners have not been adequate stewards – despite a recent sense of urgency. On the opening day of this season, the team finished with a losing season in 30 of 47 years and the franchise maintained a 3,514-3,873 record in that span. Despite this, fans continue to have hope. One of the common positives, along with (now fighting) center fielder Julio Rodriguez and others like Raleigh or shortstop JP Crawford, is the team’s manager, Scott Servais, a former catcher who was hired to lead the M’s in 2016.
“If there’s an All-Star in this entire organization, it’s Scott Servais,” offers Mac. “I think he’s a tremendous manager who really made the most of what he was given to work with. And I really hope they can get through this with him. [But] this is an organization that allows [three-time Manager of the Year] Lou Piniella is leaving because they refused to honor his requests for a left-handed bat in the season following his incredible 2001 campaign.
Servais, who came in second in the 2021 Manager of the Year voting, has led the team to success lately, even competing in the 2022 playoffs, the team’s first in more than two decades. The M’s missed the postseason by just one game last year, but if things continue as they are this season, the Mariners look like they could make the playoffs again. In the end, though, what’s clear is that Seattle loves its baseball team — the Mariners are in the most watched half of this year. But what seems less clear is whether the Mariners love Seattle. Certainly many in and around the organization do. But does ownership, which is arguably the most important aspect of any sports franchise? Until the team can break its streak of World Series absences, that will remain up for debate.
“It was Bobby Knight who said the will to win is a lot of rubbish? It is the desire to prepare to win that separates you. Until this franchise shows that it is prepared to do whatever it takes…” Mac pauses to compose himself, “To return to Scott Servais – if the passion for excellence that Scott Servais embodies, were to be replicated throughout the organization, then this could be an amazing franchise.
