A Brief History of How the West Was Won

The Seattle Mariners are the 2025 American League West Division Champions!

Cal Raleigh hit his 59th and 60th home runs of the season last night!!

People like to say that if you don't win it all in baseball, the regular season was for nothing. I've never believed that. Maybe I've never believed that because I'm a Mariners fan and that would be a miserable way to go through season after season. But it's a miserable way to approach baseball even if you're a fan of a team that consistently plays in the postseason. The regular season is baseball. The postseason is fun and exciting, but it's not why we love the marathon of a season.

To win the division title in the regular season? That really means something. That's special. It hasn't happened often for the Mariners, as you well know! To celebrate, a few fun facts for you:       

• Every division title has been won at home; twice at the Kingdome, twice at Safeco Field/T-Mobile park
• Until this year, every time they’ve clinched has been against the Angels.
• 2001 is the only year they’ve clinched because the second place team lost; every other title has come on a Mariners win
• 2001 is the only year the final out was not a strikeout
• Dan Wilson has been involved in all four! Three times as a player, this year as a manager
• An oft-repeated Fun Fact (I suppose the funness of this fact is in the eye of the beholder) is that the Mariners now have more playoff appearances (6) than ruptured testicles (5; Mike Parrott, Josías Manzanillo (2), Adrián Beltré, and Mitch Haniger). But they still have more ruptured testicles than division titles.
• This is the first time they've won the division since the Astros moved over from the National League and the division expanded to five teams
• It's the first time the first-round bye is in effect, and there's a good chance they get that!

Now, let's indulge in some feel-good Mariners history (for once!). Here's a brief history of the Mariners winning division championships.

October 2, 1995: Everybody Scores and 19 Long Years of Frustration Are Over!

The 1995 season is the victim of a volley of nostalgia. There's a feeling among a significant number of Mariners fans that they want to stop hearing about it. I certainly understand. Particularly if you aren't old enough to remember it (and that includes people well into their 30s!), it's a highlight reel that wears thin when there's little else to replace it.

The 1995 nostalgia loses the magic of what it was like when it happened. And it was magic; the most pure baseball magic I'll ever experience. September and October 1995 had the Northwest entwined in Mariners fever. As the end of September approached, the Kingdome was full every night. Fans were on their feet and screaming every 2-strike pitch, every out recorded by the defense, every time a Mariners batter reached base. You could feel it through the television. It vibrated in the air. It was all the more poignant after the final 6 weeks of the 1994 season, the entire postseason, and nearly the first month of 1995 were canceled due to a strike. The recoil from the hostile fan feelings over the strike to the magic and the ecstasy of the playoff hunt amplified the magic as much as the Kingdome roof amplified the fan noise.

You know the story; in early August the Mariners were 13 games behind the California Angels in the American League West. On September 26th they had a 3-game lead. Though the Angels had blown their large lead, they weren't done yet. In the final 5 games of the season the Mariners went 2-3. The Angels were 5-0. The season ended in a tie.

The Mariners hosted a one-game playoff, the "seventh game of an 144 game series" as Mariners play-by-play broadcaster Dave Niehaus described it in his radio broadcast. It began quietly with Randy Johnson facing Mark Langston, the pitcher who had been traded to Montreal to acquire Randy in 1989. The Mariners struck first when Vince Coleman drove in Dan Wilson in the bottom of the fifth inning.

Two innings later, in the bottom of the seventh, Vince Coleman lined out to Tim Salmon in short right field. Third baseman Mike Blowers held at third. The bases were loaded with two outs and Luis Sojo was coming to the plate.

You know what happens next:

The videos online have the ESPN commentary, but it's impossible to watch that and not hear Rick Rizzs' call:

Here's the pitch. swing and a ground ball up the first base line and it sneaks on by Snow! Down the right field line into the bullpen. Here comes Blowers! Here comes Tino! Here comes Joey! The throw to the plate cut off, the relay by Langston gets on by Allanson. Cora scores! Here comes Sojo! He scores!

EVERYBODY SCORES!

A couple innings later:

19 long years of frustration were over.

My friends, it was really was just indescribable.

September 23, 1997: Home runs, Randy Johnson, and...yeah...Heathcliff Slocumb Combine for the Mariners' First Normal Division Title

Whereas the 1995 Mariners have an outsized amount of nostalgia attached to them, the 1997 Mariners have all but disappeared from popular memory.

In some ways, it makes sense. The season ended with a 4-game Division Series against the Baltimore Orioles that was as forgettable as it was the polar opposite of the regular season. The team was plagued by bullpen meltdowns and the attempt to address that problem--two demoralizing deadline trades (José Cruz Jr. to the Blue Jays for Mike Timlin and Paul Spoljaric; and Jason Varitek and Derek Lowe to the Red Sox for Heathcliff Slocumb)--did not help. And in 1997, for the first time, the Mariners had a heavy weight of expectation.

Unlike in 1995, when the comeback against the Angels and the magic were completely unexpected, in 1997, baseball pundits across the board picked them to win the division; many to win the World Series. They had Randy Johnson, Jamie Moyer, and the newly-acquired Jeff Fassero in the starting rotation. And the offense was drawing comparisons to some of the great offensive teams in history, a murders row in Seattle.

The offense lived up to the billing, becoming the most prodigious home run hitting team in history with 264 (6 teams have since surpassed this, but the record stood until 2018). The Mariners won 90 games for the first time in franchise history, and on a Tuesday night in Seattle, they won the West, as was foretold.

It was a fairly forgettable game, a chill and composed affair compared to the division winner in 1995. They faced the Angels again, but they were now the Anaheim Angels and had undergone a full rebranding from the 1995 version. The Mariners scored all of their runs in the bottom of the second inning. Joey Cora led off with a single. With one out, Ken Griffey Jr. also singled. Edgar Martinez advanced the runners to second and third with a ground out. Alex Rodriguez followed with a single that scored Cora, a run from a barrage of singles that was very much not the hallmark of the 1997 Mariners.

Then, Jay Buhner came to the plate and sent a home run deep down the left field line, scoring 3 more runs.

It was all the Mariner needed. Randy Johnson put in 8 innings of work, allowing 3 Angels runs and striking out 11.

Heathcliff Slocumb came in to close it out. He allowed a leadoff single and a two-out wild pitch. But he pulled it together and earned his 27 save of the season, striking out Jack Howell swinging.

It felt like the good old days because it was.

September 19, 2001: A Delayed, Somber Celebration

2001's division title was both unexpected and a foregone conclusion. Before the season began, baseball prognosticators noted the departure of Alex Rodriguez to the Mariners' western rival Texas Rangers and said, there is no way this team is winning anything. People were generally skeptical that Ichiro, in his rookie season at age 27, would be able to hit much in the American major leagues. Certainly no one anticipated an MVP-caliber season from Bret Boone. And who could have predicted career years for Mariners up and down the lineup, and in and out of the bullpen?

The season began and the Mariners jumped right out the gate winning games. Then, they just kept winning and winning and winning. By the All-Star Break (which wasn't much of a break for the Mariners because it was in Seattle and they had eight representatives) the west was as good as history.

On a Monday night, September 10th in Anaheim, the Mariners beat the Angels. Charles Gipson, a forever fan favorite, made a diving, flipping catch to end the ballgame:

The Mariners' Magic Number was 2. They could clinch the next day with a win and an Oakland loss.

Even if there was no doubt the division title would be won, we all still went to bed on Monday night, excited for it to be official. Anticipating a fun moment, a culmination, a celebration of the magical summer we'd just experienced.

We all woke up to a world that was completely different than it had been when we went to sleep. Major League Baseball was postponed for a week, the real world staking its precedence. As the games resumed, the entire feeling of the season had changed along with everything else.

The Mariners lowered their Magic Number to 1 on September 18th, the first game back. The schedule resumed as originally scheduled, so the Mariners were beginning a series in Seattle against the Angels. The question hung in the air. How do you celebrate a season like the 2001 Mariners played at a time when real life felt so heavy?

On September 19th, the Mariners won the division quietly and without fuss when the Oakland Athletics lost to the Texas Rangers in the fourth inning of the Mariners game against the Angels.

They were some handshakes and hugs, a few back slaps, in the dugout when the A's game was final. The Mariners quietly scored 5 runs to the Angels' none. Kazuhiro Sasaki closed it out and Bret Boone caught a quiet pop up from José Nieves.

Instead of rushing into a joyous celebratory mass of players and coaches, the Mariners lined up for the traditional post game self-congratulations. They hugged and shook hands. This game was emphatically different from all the others, but it was tempered.

At the end of the line, the Mariners' video coordinator Carl Hamilton stood with a large American flag. Stan Javier took the flag, waved it at the crowd in the stands. Everyone gathered around the flag behind the pitchers mound and everyone took a knee. A long moment of silence was held.

Then, Mark McLemore took the flag and led the team on a parade around the field. Players took turns waving the flag, waving at fans, everyone absorbing a little joy at a time when joy felt distant.

* * * * *

And here we are in 2025. With a Mariners team that has the magic and the comeback of 1995, the power and expectations of 1997, and the real world pressing in like it did in 2001.

But this team is its own story. There are fans who are full adults who weren't even alive the last time the Mariners won the division. There are many more who were too young to remember.

This doesn't happen very often for the Mariners, and this could be the beginning of a fun little run of years where it does happen. Or this could be all we get. It doesn't really matter either way.

Because we get to have fun right now. We get to enjoy this today, and into the first week of October. If we're lucky, even longer.

This, winning the division, capping a season with a banner in the outfield, this is the stuff right here.