Last week, I sent two condolence cards and a “congratulations on your new baby” card. This afternoon, while distracted by a flock of teenage goslings, half-grown and ugly as all get out, I tripped over the corpse of what used to be some sort of creature. Life doesn’t need to dabble in subtleties, it beats you over the head repeatedly, hollering “What is the point?” in alternatingly thoughtful and abrasive tones.
As I was once again turning over the well-worn Meaning of Life stone, Cole Young opened the game with a leadoff home run and for two innings that one run mattered significantly as Bryan Woo sat down the first six Orioles he faced. Shortly after Aaron Goldsmith mooed in the bottom of the third, that one run mattered even more, as it kept the Mariners tied with the O’s after Colton Cowser’s solo shot. Soon though, Young’s swooping scoop of a home run felt inconsequential at best as Baltimore showcased one of the Big Innings that has been their trademark this season, piling on six runs just about every way you can – singles, a wild pitch, a double, another home run.
Before all that, though, there was a 3-2 pitch to Gunnar Henderson. Coby Mayo had flown out after Cowser, and while Jackson Holliday and Taylor Ward had hit back-to-back singles, Henderson has had a miserable season at the plate. Hope beat its bedraggled little wings and Woo pumped a 98.7 MPH four-seamer right on the inside edge of the plate. It matched a 3-2 pitch he threw to Cody Bellinger on July 10, 2025 as the fastest pitch he’s ever thrown. Bellinger rolled over on the offering, grounding into a double play; Henderson fouled it off. Ball four was an easy take, and within seconds that career-high velocity didn’t matter at all.
In the top of the fourth, Randy Arozarena walked, which was nice but anticlimactic amidst a five-run deficit. But then Luke Raley homered, and Dom Canzone homered, and this time when Colt Emerson walked it was invigorating. Young, en route to a three-hit night, singled, Julio Rodríguez singled, and the Mariners were suddenly only trailing by one.
When it comes to meaning, baseball is a chorus of perpetual dissonance. For those of us outside, the wins and the losses do not technically matter; our careers, our finances, our relationships don’t change in response to victory or defeat. But I don’t think any of us would be here, reading these ramblings, if baseball was meaningless to us. In fact, my career, my finances, my relationships are all fundamentally altered because of this game. Not by the Mariners’ record, fortunately, but in the way that I have chosen to care about it, to jam its stake into the ground and let my life grow up and intertwine with it. In our massive, yawning abyss of a world, there is such beauty and freedom and silliness in choosing to structure some of life’s meaning around this game.
At some point around the sixth inning, lightning split the sky and rain started to soak the field. Maybe, after all this, none of it would actually matter, at least for today? But the rain abated, the Mariners could not score anymore, and they leave Baltimore with a series split. Just one of many games that matters because it happened, and also not at all.
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