I bet you get straight A’s and s**t huh?

Man this is baseball. You gotta stop thinking so much!

Relax and enjoy it, man. (20th Century Fox)

Remember a month and a half ago? Wasn’t it awesome?  The fans were on fire. Rick Rizzszzzs couldn’t stop telling us “these guys never… ever… give up.” Everybody had the Mariners firmly ensconced in the wildcard game against the Yankees. We had them lining up pitching through the last weeks of September so our ace  (who the hell’s our ace, I mean they’re all so damn good) goes up against Severino, shuts down Judge and Stanton, strikes out the side half a dozen times en  route to a 1-0 extra inning game for the ages… and then… and then…

Lord help us, Sports Illustrated (shown here in the playininthedirt.com executive reading lounge ) got in on the action. This was just two weeks ago. Two weeks, when the epic panicked collapse was already well under way.

Bar graphs, and a man all happy joyjoy at the top of his game. 

S.I. led off with Jerry Dipoto in his office (same place where he called Theo Epstein to make a deal for that big German dude) in front of a library that, portentiously, includes The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F***.

Was that overthinking? All that planning and assuming and buying flights to New York City for that magical return to the playoffs?

Overthinking? No way. It was faith.

Then we got our dreams and hopes and fickle bandwagon faith sucked out and squashed by six solid weeks of surprisingly shitty baseball.

So why all the overthinking now? Suddenly this team sucked all along and has no shot?

We wonder…

Did their luck run out? In spite of Rick Rizzs spewing about them never giving up, how long can a team with a negative run differential carry a .600+ record? Great character? You’d like to think so.

Or maybe the karmic pendulum is swinging back at them and it’s like the one in that Poe story, with the razor blade on it and it’s going to slice our fellas in half if they can’t get the rats to chew through the rope and set them free.

So maybe that’s it. Or was it the annoying loss of focus when all the players instead of thinking about about winning ball games decided to go all-out to promote #SendSegura?

Felix’s ego, DiPoto’s new contract, Cano’s suspension. Maybe just the unending years of failure to find a reliable power hitter at first base.

Did they just go all George Bailey over a season way too good to be true?

Then again, why does any of this matter?

Come on, man. This is baseball. If you’re a fan, be a damn fan. Root for your team, let your heart get broken now and then. Or maybe 18 years in a row. But be a fan anyway, cheer for these young fools playing their hearts out for you. Sure go ahead be critical, laugh at the bush league announcers, make fun of Mike Blowers lowering his standards for “he barreled it up.” Dude actually dropped that one on a weak popout to center field the other night.

But don’t ever forget that brilliant cloudless day when Dave Niehaus told us these are the times we remember when the rain and the snow and the cold box us in for five months waiting for baseball to come back to us. And he wasn’t talking about 100-win seasons or playoffs or championship rings.

These guys seem like they’re still having fun:

“Hey Edgar, this doesn’t suck, does it?”
“I dunno Ichi, I kinda miss the ol’ Ross Eversoles…”