PEORIA, Ariz. — I must admit, the task of writing a Mariners column for our season preview section is a little trickier this year.
For at least the past decade, I've always had the underlying theme of the team's ever-growing postseason drought to fall back on. Last year's headline for my preview column declared, "This is the year the Mariners' playoff drought ends. No, really." (Yes, this is me taking a victory lap.) The point is, no matter what the main focus of the column was in any given year — new blood on the team, new philosophy from the front office — it always played against the backdrop of playoff futility that hung over the franchise.
As we all know, that angle flew out the window at the precise moment Cal Raleigh's playoff-clinching home run off Oakland's Domingo Acevedo on Sept. 30 flew near the window of the Hit It Here Café.
