As the Mariners have approached the merciful conclusion of the 2026 season, I’ve been thinking about a scene from War & Peace. Early on, Prince Andrei is seeking fulfillment through glory on the battlefield. Amid the staggering violence in the Battle of Austerlitz, he sees a bannerman fall. As General Kutuzov’s troops break and flee, Prince Andrei leaps down from his horse to pick up the banner and charge the advancing French Army. Immediately, he is struck down. As he lies on his back, near death,
he considers the sky. “How is it I haven’t seen this lofty sky before? And how happy I am that I’ve finally come to know it. Yes! everything is empty, everything is a deception, except this infinite sky. There is nothing, nothing except that. But there is not even that, there is nothing except silence, tranquility. And thank God!”
Ah, the 2026 Mariners. Despite today’s dynamite Logan Gilbert outing and one last RBI double from Randy Arozarena, they finish the season at 76-86. Ten games under .500 with a -58 run differential: Seattle follows up coming within 8 outs of the World Series with a wet fart of a season. It’s enough to make nihilists of us all.
Where even to begin? Julio’s concussion? Brendan Donovan’s? It’s a team that had more concussions than All-Stars. We could look at the elite prospects more-or-less falling on their faces: Colt Emerson, who played through an undisclosed injury, or Kade Anderson, who followed up his historic campaign in AA with a first five games of what you’d generously call “adjustment period.” Things broke literally, like Cal and J.P. with their extended injuries, and things broke figuratively, like Refsnyder and Ward’s disaster classes. Jay Buhner invaded Rick Rizzs’s last broadcast for three innings to talk about which yardwork tools he owns. Hancock yelling at Pereda. Woo yelling at Dan. Luis slamming his glove in protest of the piggyback debacle. And all in a season where the Astros won the division at .500, one of the most winnable races in history.
Nothing matters. So goes being a fan of the Seattle Mariners. Nothing matters. And thank God!
And yet. As resonant as Prince Andrei’s words are for me today, so too are Pierre’s. Seven years and a thousand pages after Austerlitz, Pierre finds himself captive. His world becomes fuzzy from the exhaustion and starvation. But in a dream, he finds the redemption he’s spent the whole book grasping for. “To love life is to love God. The hardest and most blissful thing is to love this life in one’s suffering, in the guiltlessness of suffering.”
There is joy hidden in the wreckage.
How much joy was there in watching Emerson Hancock’s breakout season, bringing his career back from the brink? In seeing Lazaro Montes and Michael Arroyo tantalize us with their burgeoning talent? In Cole Young hitting a home run in his first series at his childhood PNC Park? In J.P. concluding what may be his final trip around the bases by waving to the woman he married and the daughter born during his time as a Mariner?
This lifeless year still gave us Hancock’s 14-strikeout game, Cal’s three-homer game, a new franchise record for margin of victory.
Just today, Logan Gilbert reached 200 strikeouts in a season for the second time in his career. Coming into the game with 197, he wasted no time, striking out the first three batters of the game. When Vaughn Grissom challenged the milestone strike, Logan paused off the mound, a bemused expression on his face. But as the graphic showed the ball tracking in toward the strike zone, the bemusement turned into a grin, and finally into as big a smile as I’ve seen on his face. With eight strikeouts and having retired the first 12 batters, Logan surrendered a walk to open the fifth and was pulled for Eduard Bazardo. Yes, with Logan having a no-hitter going and in electric form, Dan Wilson lifted him from the game. As I write about all this joy in the wreckage, do not forget the wreckage.
Still, we teared up at J.P. Crawford walking off the field for what may be the final time and giving a bear hug to Perry Hill before going to the locker room, presumably so he could cry too.
There’s meaning too in knowing that no matter how bad the team is, it can still bring people together. In two of our writers, who met through the game and fell in love. In seeing a new fandom bloom in someone who decided to love baseball, in this awful season, because she cared about me and I cared about baseball.
And Rick, through whose eyes we saw the game. His narration is how we found all that meaning. Happy totals, goodbye baseball, holy smokes, everybody scores.
Rick Rizzs’s kind, engaging, authoritative voice broadcast 41 Mariners seasons, including every one of the seasons that made me fall in love with the game. His voice connects me to that kid, to a child-like love of the game, and to the primary experience of falling for the game back then: my dad. He’s been gone for 20 years, but hearing Rick never—never—fails to take me back to watching with my dad. Back when Rick took over TV in the fifth inning, and it meant I was going to stay up late, but it was summer and that was OK. Or driving home with him from somewhere after the game had started, Rick on the radio. What Rick Rizzs does is a magic trick. Just to hear his voice is to bring my dad back to life.
For spending decades of his life helping us all find the meaning within anything a Mariners season offered us, Rick gets the season’s final Sun Hat Award. I cannot think of a more notable individual contribution than that.
It’s a shame that the Mariners saw Rick off with this listless loser of a season. He deserved better. We all did. We can and should demand that the organization fix it, and there will be plenty of time to argue about how they should do that. But whether they pull it off or not, we will make new memories and find new meaning.
Tolstoy’s Pierre insists that “As long as there’s life, there’s happiness. There’s much, much still to come.” And there will be baseball again and another chance to find joy amid the suffering, even within the suffering. We’ll endure the coming labor discord, but there will be another Opening Day. We’ll see Julio smile, and we’ll smile too, even knowing—better than most fans—how wrong it can all go, how painful it can be, but that even though it doesn’t matter, of course it matters.
So all of us will grieve this season and all its losses. But we’ll still try again. Because we also know that this game has beauty and meaning even for the losers. In baseball, everybody scores.
