Billy Mac still remembers being in the commentary booth in 2019 when Félix Hernández pitched his final game for the Seattle Mariners. Hernández, a Cy Young Award winner and six-time All-Star who also threw a perfect game, made his major league debut with the team in 2005. But over the course of his 15-year career in the Pacific Northwest, he was often the lone bright spot for a franchise that, at one point, was on a 21-year playoff drought (a streak that finally ended in 2022). From his first All-Star season in 2009 to his last in 2015, Hernández boasted an impressive 2.83 ERA, winning 104 games and losing just 65. However, he never pitched in a postseason game. But for Mac, that’s all too familiar for the team he’s supported for decades — a team founded in 1977 that remains the only active MLB franchise never to reach a World Series.
“There have been few careers less exploited than that of Félix Hernández,” Mac tells the Guardian, avoiding the word wasted. That night, Mac says he snapped a photo of the broadcast team as Hernández left the mound. “They all stood up,” he says. “You don’t see a standing ovation in a radio booth — it was a really special moment.”
For Mac, who was born in New Orleans and moved to the Seattle area in the 1970s with his wife, Grammy-nominated 1960s pop star Merrilee Rush, he always dreamed of living in a city with a professional baseball team. When the M’s first came to the region, he bought season tickets in the cheap seats. Also a musician, Mac says he sang the national anthem before Mariners games more than 60 times and has since written a book about the team’s famed announcer, the late Dave Niehaus, who was also the subject of a Macklemore song. Over the years, Mac and Niehaus became friends, bonding over their love of the game. Mac still follows the team, often listening to current star announcer Rick Rizzs on the radio. But he can’t shake the fact that the Mariners continue to disappoint their fans.
“We’ve long had a succession of ownership groups whose understanding of the game wasn’t enough to create a winning organization,” he says diplomatically. In 2016, John W Stanton led a group that purchased the team from Nintendo of America.
Mac, like many in town, romanticizes the team’s good times, from the 1995 playoffs when Ken Griffey Jr., Edgar Martínez, Randy Johnson and company defeated the rival Yankees in dramatic fashion, to 2001 when the team set an MLB record with 116 wins under MVP Ichiro Suzuki. As for this year’s team, there’s renewed hope. And even though the team is first in the AL West, with the rival Houston Astros quickly rising, Mac can’t shake the idea that the owners aren’t interested in winning.
“Sometimes I worry that our owners are more interested in a $9 chocolate box of grasshoppers than putting a winning team on the field,” Mac says. “Am I happy that they’re over .500 now? Absolutely. Do I want to see them play their best? Yes. But if you look at the lineup, I think there are three guys who are hitting over .235. You’re not going to win with that.”
If you ask other Mariners fans their thoughts on the team, you’ll quickly learn that Mac isn’t alone in his sentiments. In Seattle, those who follow the M’s are almost always passionate and hopeful. Yet they also share Mac’s pause about the ownership. Seattle’s Robb Benson, a longtime rock musician in the city who even sang the national anthem before a game in 2022, has been a fan since his father took him to the ballpark as a child during the Mariners’ inaugural season. “It’s like the Red Sox were cursed, and then the Cubs were cursed, and now it’s our turn,” Benson says. “I can only hope to see our team get to the World Series in my lifetime.” He adds, “I’m torn between optimism and pessimism — the ownership has been very frustrating.”
Janine Chiorazzi, an elementary school art teacher in Seattle, says she became a fan of the team eight years ago, after her son’s grandfather died. “He was my son’s sports fan,” he says. “When he passed away, I took over that role. At least for baseball.” His enthusiasm is tempered, though. “I think management is driven by profit [not winning],” he says.
Cedric Walker, who works as an engineer for Amazon by day and is a musician by night, says going to Mariners games in the ’90s with his mom “is one of my best childhood memories.” But, he adds, “I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t bother me [that the Mariners never made the World Series].” He says that when he wears his team gear out and about, he feels like other baseball fans “feel sorry for me.” Still, he’s passionate about this year’s team, which he says is “exciting and fun to watch. These guys really believe in themselves, and it’s been great to watch them grow together over the years.”