by: Aniruddh Nambudiri

It’s 10:25 pm. I just reached home. I walked the mile back home from the station. Promotions Director Owen Cadwell just finished his show and I managed to catch him on the way out as I shut down everything. I now have the precision down with the stick we use to turn the projector on with the remote just not working so it did not take long to wrap up everything. I am soaking wet from the rain but everything in my bag seems to be okay. In all of this, the Mariners season is over and I watched the game as everyone from the Monday Night Football crew left as the innings went on. All that was left was just me and the team that gives me more joy than almost anything in the world having nothing else for the year. 

I always get the question and the weird looks when I tell people I am a Mariners fan. Heck it happened today as I pestered our poor Sports Director Vince Hesprich to turn on the game in a corner for me. I get it though. Why would someone from halfway across the world choose to support the only active MLB team to never make the World Series? The short answer is the four hour documentary on the team by Jon Bois and Secret Base along with me realizing I recognized people like Ichiro with my prior knowledge of Japanese baseball. 

The long answer is that I come from a city of complete and absolute losers. A big city that is not even the biggest in its own state so no one west of the Greenwich Meridian has even heard of it. We are the city infamous for being thrown a pity franchise in every upstart new sports league and then when a bigger and more attractive investor comes to the table, we are the first cut. We even have cases of owners in our city just starting anew in different cities in the same league. The common thread in all of our teams though, is that we truly and utterly suck. 

Our first T20 cricket franchise having owners arrested and never finishing above last and only existing for three years, two of which they did not even play in the city because we were waiting for a stadium to be made by the previously mentioned owner. We then were given a franchise in the same T20 league after two other teams got busted for match fixing and removed from the league for two years out of pity. We caught lightning in a bottle in that second year and made it all the way to the finals, only to lose on the last ball of the game by a single run. That was the last ball a cricket franchise in Pune played. The team was disbanded as it was supposed to be temporary but when the league expanded, Gujarat (the location of the other replacement team) got themselves a new franchise, Pune did not and instead had to see the owners of their two year magic franchise form a new team on the other side of the country. That new franchise in Lucknow has reached the playoffs twice in four seasons. 

Then there is soccer where we had four soccer teams in two leagues. DSK Shivajians and Pune FC who played in the I League and were old school fronts with well established academies, Bharat FC as a new franchise in the I League with heavy financial backing by some of the richest in the city and finally, FC Pune City who played in the new Indian Super League, a franchise league like MLS with major name former players in the league. In 2015, we had four. By the end of 2018, soccer was dead in the city. DSK died as a result of unpaid wages, Pune FC died in financial problems and Bharat FC was so bad, the owners pulled them after one full season. Mind you, these three all happened within about a year and a half of each other. FC Pune City was the shining light then. They picked up all their academies and sure they were never good, but they were ours. 2018-19 then happened and everything was lost. Players were not paid, the owners wanted out of the city and then the killshot. FC Pune City were found trying to buy a player still on contract with another Super League team and were sanctioned harshly with fines and transfer window bans. These restrictions, however, did not stick if the owners disbanded and moved the team. So the owners disbanded and moved the team. They won a Super League title two seasons after Pune last saw a major sports franchise. 

This all happened as a kid to me and trust me I tried to get into other sports. I was really into soccer for a while and would stay up for games but that all fell to me when I found baseball. If I am being honest, in my final time as a fan of soccer, I was just looking for an out. The kid in me that stayed and watched his teams get completely blown to shreds but still loved them for who they are was there still. The kid who when everyone was on the field wanting to be MS Dhoni or Ronaldo, wanted to be Ashok Dinda or Jackichand Singh. Then I watched the story of the Mariners. 

I remember seeing that first stretch and feeling weirdly seen. Seeing a team so bad but surviving. Having a fanbase that loved them the same way we loved our teams. Having heroes that the league never knew but we knew and loved. If you say the name Rahul Sharma to a Pune cricket fan, it changes them. Those legendary players who were great for you but the moment they left, they became icons of the game. In all of it, the fact that they won the fight and were able to keep their team. That meant something to me. I never got to keep mine. I have never had the feeling of rooting for the same team from childhood to now because I outlived them by nearly decades at this point. I needed a home. Maybe this was it. 

I circled opening day and realized games were late at night in India. It did not matter honestly, I needed to see if I found a home. I started watching on and off and started enjoying myself. Players I liked, stories of the past, just reading and watching old games with any time I claimed I would be studying. I was in. I debated around a few teams but by August, I decided I would be a Mariners fan. 2022 was my first full year and I fell in love with Julio and Cal and all the pitchers and I found my new Pune. My new love. My new team. That home run off Acevedo made me nearly wake up the whole house and I heard a lot about it by my mom later. 

This season was special for me. Getting to spend my first full summer in the US, I actually got to see Mariners baseball at normal times and enjoy my team with everyone else. I got to actually talk baseball and react to my team in public and you have no idea how happy that makes me. The Mariners were presented to me in the pandemic and now it is at the period as far away from it as possible for me. Getting to sit in a room with other people whilst watching my team on TV. I have not had that feeling since I was a kid and I got it again. I am living my sports fan life again. So yeah, when I say I am not massively affected anymore by major losses, it’s because I have a new timeline in my time as a sports fan. The kid who begged for jerseys of the worst cricket team of all time, is now me currently writing this as I look for jerseys of the worst teams of Mariners past. 

Of course I am sad, it’s really hard not to be. This was really seeming like our year with all the hype and a historic season by my favorite player of all time. A man who gave me maybe my greatest sports memory outside of India winning the 2011 Cricket World Cup. Pardon me though when I say, I am still as happy as I can be. My first summer in the United States and I got to watch my team win more than they ever have and make me happy with a sports team I support again. 

The Mariners lost today and all I want to say is thanks to them. No loss can ever take away what they mean to me and no amount of heartbreak in a sports sense can undo what positives they have brought to my life. One day I will get to be in T Mobile Park and watch my team play, something I never thought I would ever be able to do again.