Major League Baseball stands confidently within the pantheon of our purest celebrations of the human condition. It would be hypocritical to demand its presence in the face of undue human cost. Paradoxically, MLB does not matter, in the same way that no organized sport centered around adults wearing pajamas playing a game meant for children can ever matter. We accepted this pair of contradictory premises when the 2020 MLB season was delayed in March, and we’ll accept them again if (or when) the looming 60-game sprint is shut down. We can, and likely should, go without.

However, baseball’s frivolousness is exactly why its absence should be mourned. We were already living in one of the loneliest moments of human history prior to the shuttering of society due to COVID-19, tethered to luminescent screens that beamed the majority of our daily human interaction into our eyes as we shuffled between cramped living spaces and jobs that don’t pay nearly enough. For many of us, the communal gatherings at a friend’s place, a bar, or the ballpark itself provided one of our few remaining respites from hellworld. In a life where a single missed paycheck can spell ruin, being robbed the simple pleasure of collectively experiencing something as pointlessly stupid as Dylan Moore throwing to no one at home plate seems insignificant, but takes a heavy toll.

We’ll be greeted by empty ballparks when the first pitch is thrown on July 23^rd, a cavernous reminder of the ongoing sacrifice we’ve made through social distancing. Baseball will hold mass without a congregation, singing summer’s psalms and preaching the good word of America’s Pastime to the faithful locked away in isolation. The game itself will return, and it will serve its role from the Before Times as a welcomed and all too necessary daily distraction, but the game itself was never the point. It is merely the rock upon which this church was built; essential and foundational, but never the whole Truth.

We, as Mariners fans, have understood this for a long time. We have held witness to some truly atrocious, season-long displays that fly in the face of reason and decency (looking at you, 2010). We have been asked repeatedly to leave, and yet still we’ve returned, year after year, to gather and watch this cosmic oddity give it another go. We would’ve left long ago if they were all that mattered.

It’s this loss of communion that I’ve found myself mourning the most as we approach the abbreviated season. We’re denied access to our temple at the corner of Edgar & Dave and that hurts, regardless of how grossly prevalent its namesake’s branding has invaded that sacred space. I miss the walk down Occidental towards the stadium, the inescapable scent of garlic fries, and even the sardine can that is the Pen. But more than anything else I miss all of you and the shared experience of taking in a ballgame together. I hope this writing finds you safe, secure, and healthy, and I can’t wait to exchange a sign of peace with you again on the other side of these lonely times.