Dear Hendrix,
I did a bad thing. I knew it was a bad thing, but I’m not sorry for it.
It happened last October. I was watching playoff baseball—the Seattle Mariners against the Toronto Blue Jays—and someone on Toronto got hit by a fastball. (I think it was a fastball.) It clocked him right in the knee. Hard. And I laughed. Probably even harder.
My friends watching the game with me, normal humans with a conscience, didn’t think it was very funny. Only the 12-year-old boy on the couch nodded in agreement. He knew. Screw the Jays! And their players! I was a bad example to this innocent soul.
That’s right, Henny. I’m 36 years old and, as of just a few months ago, I’m officially a die-hard, laugh-when-the-other-team-gets-hit-in-the-knee-with-a-fastball, Mariners fan.
Growing up in my house in the ’90s, sports were always on, but they were never my cup of herbal tea. I remember watching Ken Griffey Jr. on my grandmother’s little throwback black-and-white TV in the kitchen, thinking, “He’s cute!” That’s about as much of a game review you could get out of me.
Until now.
It was impossible not to get caught up in Mariner fever last year as the team went all the way to the brink of the World Series—game seven of the American League Championship. But more than that—and I don’t know if I’m channeling my inner-grandmother here—but I love how the game just sounds.
Listening to baseball, especially on the radio, is like listening to classical music—it’s got a buzz and crackle like an old vinyl album. It’s calm in a world that is less than calm.
I also love how every pitch of a game matters. Any team can come back from any deficit. That seems fair to me. There’s nothing quite like eating garlic fries and talking shit in the stands of a baseball stadium while your team is loading the bases. Gives you a great chance to talk trash!
But here’s the bad news: the Seattle Mariners are the only team in the MLB not to make it to the World Series. Ever. Since the team was founded in 1977. (It almost happened last year, but no.) The Mariners hate it. I hate it. Everyone in Seattle hates it. But that’s part of loving sports in Seattle—we’re almost always the underdogs.
Now here’s the good news, Henny: That losing streak ends this year. The team is good, and we’ve got a seat on the bandwagon! We’re headed (if this letter doesn’t jinx it) for the championship this year! (Is that the way to say it? I’m still new at this.)
Our best player, Cal “Big Dumper” Raleigh, is the catcher and a power hitter, and he’s so good that he should have won the AL MVP last season. He hit the most home runs in the league (60 in the regular season!), but someone from the freaking New York Stankees got it.
Whatever.
I’ve learned that the rest of our team is amazing, too. Julio Rodríguez (we call him J Rod) is a star fielder, shortstop J.P. Crawford is cool as ice, and our pitchers—Kirby, Gilbert, Woo!—are the best in the world. I think so, anyway. I’m still learning! But you don’t have to know how pretzels are made in order to love them, right? And that’s how I feel about the Mariners.
The Ms also have one of the best ballparks in the league. This is based on my sample of one. (I have not been to other ballparks.) But… T-Mobile Park has great food—they started serving French fries in a literal Washington State ferry this season—and I like watching the pitchers warm up in that place by the stairs. Your father tells me it’s the “bullpen.” All I know is that hearing the light rail train roll by at sunset from a seat in the outfield is my kind of Tuesday night.
It’s like staring at a timeless, peaceful painting.
But my favorite part of the season, as I mentioned, Henny, is listening to the games on the radio at home with you. That old timer play-by-play announcer, Rick Rizzs, is just classic. His vocal timbre and that background crackle are like ASMR on steroids. Your father and I have put you to sleep dozens of nights with the game on low. Our ears lean in as you drift away to hear if Cal hit another bomb over the outfield wall.
Yes, Dear Henny. That cacophony you’ll hear some nights this summer is me going nuts for the Ms (or maybe laughing uncontrollably at an opponent’s injury). And that other sound you’ll hear will be the city bursting in chaotic joy or collectively groaning, depending on whether WE make it to the World Series come October (yes, we).
Oh, there’s one more important piece of information you should know about baseball. Every player gets to have a walk-up song, a song that’s played throughout the arena as they step up to bat. I don’t know everyone on the team’s song yet, but I do know what mine would be: Public Enemy’s “Public Enemy No. 1.”
A fucking classic!
What’s yours?
Eva Walker is a writer, a KEXP DJ, one-half of the rock duo the Black Tones, and mom to her baby girl, Hendrix. She also cowrote the book The Sound of Seattle: 101 Songs That Shaped a City, which was released in 2024. Every month for The Stranger, she writes a letter to Hendrix to share wisdom learned from her experiences—and her mistakes. Read all installments here.
