I Wish, I Wish, I Hope

I am not a baseball fan.

But I am a fan of myths, miracles and fantasies.

In 1995 I had recently moved back to Seattle after having been born there and leaving for what I thought was to be the rest of my life 43 years later.

Ironically - irony only obvious to me and my wife - we had moved to Seattle from Spokane.

In the interim I had lived for my childhood to drinking-age-hood in Portland.

In that time, I had been elsewhere two times: once to San Francisco and once to Vancouver.

Then I started moving to and living in a lot of places: San Antonio, San Angelo, Clovis, Saigon, Omaha, Fukuoka, back to Portland, Atlanta, Jefferson City, Boca Raton, Upper Saddle River, Spokane and Seattle again.

In the now probably terminal Seattle era of my life, in the last 20 or so years I have lived for 2 or so years in Paris.

How odd. 

In Spokane we had bought a 25 foot Searay cuddy cabin that we kept on Coeur d'Alene. 

In Seattle we kept it on Lake Union.

I mention those details of my life because they are forever linked to the Seattle Mariners.

The boat had an entertainment center including AM radio and for no known reason I had started listening to Mariners games.

In the Autumn of 1995, I spent most weekends on the boat.

I listened to Mariners games.

In Early September they were down 19 games.

Then something happened. 

They started, and kept, winning.

It was magic.

Refuse to Lose.

Some names I never would have otherwise known became - then, and still are, now - heroes to me: Lou Pinella paramount among them.

Seattle just swept Houston to take a three-game lead in the AL West.

Maybe Joey Cora's tears are finally going to be redeemed.

We'll see.

Mariners fans are used to head fakes.

But if they were to make it to the World Series, this year, I have a hope.

That hope is that at every game will be, Lou, Ichiro, Ken Jr., Ken Sr., Joey Cora, Jay Buhner, and Edgar.

I know I don't know enough to promulgate such a list, so I must have forgotten many, but that's the best I can do.

And, oh, Dan Wilson; but that's an automatic; he has replaced Lou.