I sat alone in my car, watching it on my phone. When Cal Raleigh bent his knees like a supplicant at church, and then golfed the ball towards the foul line I was trapped in a time loop of memory inside my Hyundai. In that dark parking lot I thought all the way back to my grandfather and his baseball room full of memorabilia from 80 years of baseball love stretching across one World War and two coastlines. I thought of him passing that love down to my father, who spent a decade on the road traveling across the country as I played the game. I thought of my son, who for 13 and a half years viewed baseball as nothing more than something that kept me from spending time with him.

I thought of how none of this should have ever been this hard. Fans are not supposed to have to carry the weight we have carried for this franchise for so long. We have been embarrassed, a laughingstock, forgotten, and marginalized both nationally and locally by this team. It has been a long, long, long road. And while that journey is not over, a journey ended when Raleigh’s flyball banged off the Hit It Here Cafe. We never have to walk this particular road again. We’re off to lands unseen.

I experienced all these thoughts and feelings – generations of legacy and love, failure and frustration – in the time it took for that ball to go from bat to window. Coming back to reality I got a text from my son, who over a single summer has been transformed into one of the biggest baseball fans I know. He was watching too, on his phone, oblivious to the high school football game he was at (and supposed to be playing in the marching band).

“Dad Dumper did it! The Mariners are going to the playoffs!!!!”

He’s got so much of me in him, and both he and I are increasingly believing that that may just be ok. Maybe even that it’s good.

Four generations, 21 years, 162 games, all tied together in a single moment. I would not change a damn thing.