It was very sad, he thought. The things men carried inside. The things men did or felt they had to do.
-Tim O’Brien, “The Things They Carried”
There is a powerful Tim O’Brien short story, part of a larger
eponymous collection, called “The Things They Carried,” which catalogues the physical weight of the individual items a group of soldiers in Vietnam carried, as a way to interrogate the mental weight of what their assignment demanded they carry.
Baseball is a far cry from the foxholes of war—part of the reason people are consuming sports content especially fervently right now, I think, as an escape from The Horrors—but just as the soldiers in O’Brien’s short story are forever changed by the psychological weight of the things they now carry, so too are the 2025 Mariners altered by the weight of promise fallen short. I was personally taken aback, at a post-season media event held in late October, at how fresh the wounds still felt: I was expecting the team officials in attendance (Jerry Dipoto, Justin Hollander, Dan Wilson) to still be feeling the sting of disappointment but overwhelmingly proud of how far the team came, farther than any other Mariners team ever had. Instead, it was clear the bones of heartbreak hadn’t quite knitted: eyes were wet, mouths were tight, and the hurt hung over the room palpably.
Three months later, that pain hasn’t dissipated, but it has calcified, hardened into a sharp point of purpose. This past weekend, the Mariners held the first Fan Fest the team has sponsored since 2019, and while the overarching theme of the weekend was a joyous riot of excitement, from players and personnel alike there was a distinct sense of a job not done and an acute awareness of the task ahead.
Cal Raleigh, now a (mostly) year-round Seattle resident, was in attendance both days, thrilling fans wherever the should-have-been MVP showed up. He brought fans to their knees as a surprise guest in the photo opp area, oversaw a gender reveal, and generally sent whoever was in his vicinity into transports of delight. But while enjoying the outpouring of love and support, Cal was contemplative about the year that was, focused on the year that will come.
“Obviously last year was great. I’m glad we got to celebrate that, it was definitely a special season,” he said. “But at the same time, you have to be able to turn the page and look forward to a new year and understand that what we’re trying to accomplish here is win a World Series and setting the standard, the bar, the expectations super-high, because that’s where we want to be.
I think everybody’s going to be excited going into camp. It’s going to be hard work, though. It’s not going to be easy. New years bring new challenges.“
From all the Mariners in attendance this weekend, the message was clear: job not finished. But there’s also an understanding of the weight of expectations, the bar that’s now been set. George Kirby delivered his expectations for this upcoming season in typical unflinching Kirby style.
“I feel like I can speak for a lot of the guys, getting to where we did,” said Kirby. “I feel like that’s the floor for us this year. And anything else just kind of doesn’t cut it. So being able to get a taste of that, and then losing and seeing Toronto go on to celebrate all that stuff puts a fire in your stomach.”
Getting so close, but falling just short: the confusing cocktail of should-be pride mixed with with the sharp metallic tang of disappointment. Josh Naylor expressed a similar sentiment, although with a typical Naylor pragmatic twist.
“Yeah, obviously the loss was not easy to take. It sucked, especially knowing that we had them,” said Naylor. “But it is what it is, and it wasn’t meant for us to win it. God has really weird plans for people, and I trust Him. So I’m just gonna go out there every day and try to win ballgames. But having that experience and getting that close, I hope it fuels everyone in the off-season to come back stronger: a little bit bigger, a little bit better, a little bit smarter. It has for me. I’m trying to grow every single day in the off-season, trying to get 1% better in some sort of area. Obviously not every day can be sunshine and roses, but you can pick a little area to grow in.”
If the expectations are heavier than they’ve ever been, there’s a comfort in the fact that those expectations are now matched by experience. Kirby spoke about finding “learning lessons” from specific situations in postseason games and using that as a focus for training, physically and mentally, during the off-season. Emerson Hancock took a broader view on how that post-season experience might shape the course of an entire season.
“I think ultimately it makes you better, the whole experience of being in the postseason, understanding what’s at stake, the pressure, it makes you better,” said Hancock. “It stings. It’s hard. You know, you get to right there and you’re just almost—but it makes you want to get back there even more. And I think the people that were a part of that, now know that we go through the 162 game schedule like, all right: we grind through it, we know what’s at the end of this thing. We know what we want to play for and what we want to do.”
But for all the looking forward, players were also open about the fact that this is the kind of pain that doesn’t ever really go away. It becomes part of your story, part of your elemental self, something that can be managed and transformed into something productive, but can never truly be eliminated.
“That’s something that you carry with you, an experience that you had” said Julio Rodríguez, reflecting on the loss. “That’s something that I will carry with me, the experience that I had in those games, and I feel like it has helped me to become a better player. And bring a little adjusted mentality for this new year.”
The weight of the loss is still palpable when Cal Raleigh reflects on the season: despite the new heights he’s reached in his career, going from a catcher who never made a prospect top 10 list to a household name and narrowly missing out on an MVP award, all his personal accomplishments are wrapped up in a season where the team fell short.
“It was hard,” said Raleigh, sighing heavily. “Part of me is like, I don’t know if you ever really move on. You’re going to be feeling that one for a long time. And it doesn’t matter if you eventually go on to win it or not, you’re still going to look back and be like, that season, it felt like we had a real chance, a real shot. So I think part of me will always feel that.
But at the same time you can’t dwell on it. You have to understand that chapter is closed, and we’re opening a new one. It’s going to be a lot of fun this year, and also very challenging. We’re going to have to do some things and make sure that we’re improving and staying on top of things, and not just being satisfied with where we’re at.“
Maybe no Mariner knows more about closing the book on a painful chapter than skipper Dan Wilson, who understands both the disappointment that is baked into the sport of baseball and the particular experience of a Mariners team falling short. But that experience puts him in a unique position in order to be able to lead this club into a year heady with expectations.
“I think every time you’re eliminated, it’s disappointing. I mean, this one was maybe extra disappointing, because we were so close, but at the same time, I think it’s part of being an athlete, it’s part of being a baseball player. We talk about baseball being that game of failure, and you have to move on in a lot of ways. So yes, it becomes part of your story,” said Wilson. “I think our guys do a really good job of taking that and making it a motivator rather than something that slows them down. And I don’t anticipate that being any different. These guys are determined, as we all are, to get back there and get all the way to where we want to go to, which is that World Series championship.”
For Wilson and his team, the trick will be taking the things they’ve carried over the off-season – the disappointment, the hurt, the desire – and crystallizing that into purpose in 2026.
“Postseason baseball is different. When you experience it, you want to do everything you can to get back there,” said Wilson. “I think that’s where this fire came from with these guys. They want to get back there. They want to be a part of postseason baseball for the foreseeable future. And that’s what Mariner baseball is going to be about.”
“When you get a taste of it, there’s nothing like it.”
