So, there’s this YouTube video. The aesthetics are thoroughly nineties–tape wobble, wavy audio, digital date in the bottom corner. The Kingdome interior is immediately recognizable, even if you were only twelve the last time you saw it in person. It’s the one game playoff for the AL West title. But the video only contains the final two pitches, followed by more than ten minutes of the fans storming the field, scooping up dirt from the infield, spilling out onto Occidental Avenue and into Pioneer Square.

Randy needs one more strike. The video offers a peek of the scoreboard. Johnson has rampaged his way into the ninth inning with 11 strikeouts and two hits. After allowing a home run to start the inning, he gets a flyout and a ground out. He’s breathing fire and showing no signs of trepidation or fatigue. He is one strike away from finishing the season as league leader in total strikeouts, ERA, and a record-setting 12.3 strikeouts per nine innings. He will win the first of five career Cy Young awards. One more strike and the Seattle Mariners are division champions. The crowd knows the significance of the moment.

And then it all stops.

The tape pauses. Some remnant of the analog process, some human fingerprint on the digitized artifact. The camera isn’t pointed at the scoreboard or the field below. It’s pointed back into the crowd, the frame overflowing with fans: arms folded, arms raised, mouths pinched, mouths hollering through cupped hands. A man in a suit and ballcap leans forward on his arms, someone dangles a homemade sign. Only two men in the frame remain seated, stubborn. They won’t trust hope but they’re willing to hear it out. The pause is only fifteen seconds into the video, but it’s perfectly timed. A grand fermata above a whole rest, an infinite intake of breath before everything changes. 

The camera sweeps back to Randy as he begins his windup. His lanky frame extends halfway to home plate. It’s a moment familiar to Mariners fans: the umpire makes an emphatic strike three call, Dan Wilson leaps and tears off his mask. On the radio broadcast, Dave Niehaus proclaims with all of his effortless magic, “Randy looks to the sky that is covered by the dome and bedlam.”

This video is different. It’s not a highlight, it’s a moment. Tim Salmon remains in the batter’s box for a second, slumped like a sigh. The Mariners’ dugout empties. Fireworks burst just beneath the dome’s storied ceiling tiles. Fans are already flooding onto the field, blowing past bewildered security guards and overmatched ushers. The fans have claimed the field itself because wearing a hat and high-fiving strangers isn’t enough.

From the field level, the dome arcs above, dingy through the lingering firework smoke. Fans flit around the infield, hollering to no one in particular, but most people shuffle slowly, dazed and bewildered by all of it. In the middle of the mound, a security guard stands atop the rubber, while all around him hands hurry to fill pockets and backpacks and fanny packs with loose dirt. The dirt near home plate is compact and coming off in clumps. Security doesn’t try to stop anyone. They understand. 

***

The regular season is over and for the first time in their history, the Mariners still have games on the schedule. Out on the concourse–those ramps like rolling waves–the camera peers down on the jubilant crowd on Occidental Avenue. A fan charges into frame in the way the cheerful-drunk are often drawn to the cameras and conversations of strangers. His voice is hoarse, a gruff jumble of syllables. “Eighteen years of losing, one year of winning,” he shouts. What’s left to say?

***

As the state House majority leader in 1967, Slade Gorton was instrumental in passing the bill to build the Kingdome. As Washington’s Attorney General, he helmed the lawsuit over the sale of the Seattle Pilots that resulted in the American League granting the city an expansion team. As a US senator, he used his connections to broker the sale of the team to Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi in 1992, keeping baseball in Seattle. He will later stand beside Dave Niehaus and Ken Griffey, Jr. at the groundbreaking ceremony for what will be Safeco Field. He knows the significance of this moment.

There’s a throng on the corner, shoulder to shoulder, grinning and electric despite the teeth of the October wind. The camera has happened upon a slapdash television interview. Amid the unseasonable abundance of Mariners hats dotting the heads in the crowd, there’s a local reporter attempting to interview Gorton, who looks dignified in a crisp white shirt under a beige Harrington jacket. He looks completely drained–he looks elated, too, but undeniably exhausted. The crowd is too loud for the interview, jostling Gorton and the reporter. He’s unbothered. If anything, it’s relief on his face. When a young man thrusts a ball of pilfered dirt between Gorton and the camera, the senator doesn’t flinch, he only smiles.

It’s clear whose team has just won, and the senator understands. “It was a great day, today,” he says.

***

In a boisterous bar, the camera captures joy. It captures a ticket stub held with pride–proof that it happened and can’t unhappen. Back outside, the streets are emptier, the fall sky dimmer. Some jackass in Pioneer Square shouts, “Yankees!” A woman wearing a blazer over a dress sees the camera, calls out, “We’re number one, baby!”

The video ends outside some downtown memorabilia shop. The camera peers through the window at a framed photo of Ken Griffey Jr. It’s locked up, out of reach, separated and protected and for sale. That’s the natural state of the game, the natural state of everything. You want something, you gotta pay for it. But for a while, on a bright October afternoon, on a day no one planned or could have anticipated, the team is ours. The Griffey photo hangs behind the glass, sterile and out of reach. But the Kingdome dirt is still beneath our fingernails.