Baseball already feels inexplicably far away. It feels far away because, in order to imagine it going forward, words like “vaccine” and “recurrence” have to be weighed and measured first. It feels far away because sixty meaningless games played in front of empty stands stopped feeling like “Baseball” a long time ago. Eventually, perhaps especially in Seattle, it all just sort of felt like practice. Sure, other teams came to town with a goal in mind, something to aim at. There were even away series where the hosts seemed genuinely interested and committed to the outcome of each game. For the Mariners, though, it all just sort of felt like practice. If anything, this season, the Seattle Mariners were incredibly poor at Baseball Practice.

That isn’t to say that the season wasn’t enjoyable. In fact, removing the concept of stakes from a season that shouldn’t have existed perhaps made it even moreso. It was wonderful to watch Taijuan Walker and Kendall Graveman pitch with competence, showing glimpses of a future beyond the eight or so starts that they each made. Kyle Lewis just hit and hit, and seems to have survived the season with a clean bill of health despite his increased workload in centerfield. The late-season cameo by Kelenic has us all wondering what an outfield anchored by those two could actually mean. 

There’s another reason for hope, in that there was a lack of hopelessness. J.P. Crawford and Shed Long could very well represent a league-average middle of the infield in the future. Sheffield looked mostly capable at this level, like we’d hoped last season. Some of the pieces were good enough. There’s a reason for celebrating. The other stuff — the record, the carousel in the bullpen, the offensive misery relative to the rest of the league — save all that for another day. It doesn’t really matter at all. It was never meant to.

For now, we wait. We hope. We do so when contemplating words like “vaccine” and “recurrence”. We hope for something that isn’t really about Baseball at all. It certainly has nothing to do with the Mariners. It’s all we really ever had — hope.

Maybe the tide really is changing.