"The Seattle Mariners are eminently lovable, profoundly human, and stunningly, outrageously weird. You may not buy this yet, but believe us when we say it; there is no more fascinating team across the entire history of American sports."
— Jon Bois
The History of the Seattle Mariners is a documentary series made by Jon Bois and Alex Rubenstein of SB Nation (now Secret Base) about the history of the Seattle Mariners of Major League Baseball from its founding to 2019, the last season before the documentary was first published. Utilizing the statistics and charts that Jon Bois is famous for, it recounts the many bizarre stories of the Seattle Mariners, as well as the greats of the game that came out of the city in spite of it. It eventually becomes a commentary on the nature of being a fan of a long suffering team, especially the Mariners, who, in the timeframe of the documentary, never even made it to a World Series, the only team in that time to fail to do so.
Originally, the documentary was released in six parts; in chronological order, they are:
- This is not an endorsement of arson
: The turbulent founding of Major League Baseball in Seattle, and the first, miserable decade of the Mariners. - Ken Griffey, Jr. and his quest to save the Mariners: Ken Griffey Jr. arrives, and immediately becomes a superstar, but the Mariners' continue to not find success, and their existence (at least in Seattle) is put in jeopardy.
- The Battle for Seattle: The 1995 ALDS arrives, and the survival of the Mariners is at stake; lose, and the Mariners may die for good.
- The Seattle Mariners build a death star: The Mariners, saved, attempt to build a championship roster, but things go awry.
- The Age of Ichiro: Ichiro Suzuki's electrifying talents help bring the Mariners to a historically great season, but he couldn't pull them to a World Series.
- The Seattle Mariners enter the great beyond: In spite of star pitcher Félix Hernández giving everything he had, perhaps literally, to drag the Mariners to relevance, the team still had an extended stretch of futility; the last great Mariners get their due.
Alternatively, the entire series can be watched in one video.
The History of The Seattle Mariners contains the following tropes:
- Absurdly Cool City: Jon concludes that it was easy to assign this trope to Seattle in the early 1990s, applying a mystique to the futuristic looking city and the superhero (Ken Griffey Jr.) that played baseball there.
- Arc Words: The latter portions of the Mariners' history (from 2000 onward) frame people leaving the team as "having to go home", even calling Seattle "Baseball's moon colony" based on how far away it is from the rest of the country.
- Big Fun: Ken Griffey Jr. returning to Seattle in 2009 is viewed through this lens; sure, he was a shell of his former self as an on-field player, but he lightened up the clubhouse and became excellent friends with Ichiro, helping to draw him out of the shell the language barrier had created for him.
- Big Game: The 1995 ALDS, which probably determined the fate of the Mariners, was so big that it deserved its own part of the documentary.
- Bookends: Roger Szmodis, the one who named the Mariners and one of the first people talked about in the documentary, provides the last quote of the documentary as well.
- Butterfly Effect: The founding of the Pilots ultimately resulted from a Pyromaniac burning down a minor league ballpark, resulting in the construction of one of the best stadiums on the West Coast, which was the bargaining chip needed to land an MLB team. The Mariners' founding continues this, with Missouri Senator Stuart Symington forcing the Pilots to begin play earlier than expected leading to the stadium being inadequate for MLB play, leading to its departure after just one season, ultimately leading to a lawsuit that kept baseball in Seattle, and the birth of the Mariners.
- Call-Back: Jon ends his introduction of Ken Griffey Jr. at the end of part 1 by saying "You know his name". He ends his introduction of Ichiro in part 4 with "I think you might know his name, too."
- Credits Gag: After it is revealed the Seattle Pilots moved after just one season, a gag credits reel for the "History of the Seattle Pilots" rolls, with the special thanks including every player who played for the Pilots in their one and only season.
- Deadpan Snarker: Maury Wills was caught in a scheme to illegally paint the batter boxes longer than they should be, not realizing the umpire that had seen the same field for years would immediately find out. When he's suspended, he said he was "shocked and dumbfounded". Jon replies, with a kind of exhausted sarcasm:"Yeah man me too, I thought it was going to work for sure."
- Decoy Protagonist: The documentary starts with the founding of the Seattle Pilots in 1969, who are framed as the culmination of a series of bizarre events, but the Pilots only lasted one year before becoming the Milwaukee Brewers; the Mariners, the real topic of the documentary, wouldn't be founded until 1977.
- Lampshade Hanging:
- The Seattle Mariners were bought by Nintendo in 1992, which Jon says was "a turn of events that sounds made up by an 8-year-old".
- Jon summarizes how cliche the conclusion of the 1995 ALDS sounds:
"It's so beautifully, obnoxiously, fake. The superstar slides home to beat the bad guy, fireworks are lit off indoors above a nylon field. A team just played for its life, and won." - Miracle Rally: The Mariners reaching the 1995 ALDS, which ultimately led to them staying in Seattle, was the result of not only them catching fire in the back half of the season, but the division-leading California Angels simultaneously collapsing. This ultimately forced a tiebreaker game which the Mariners won, leading to their first entry into the postseason.
- Motif: The concept of returning home is repeated a lot throughout Part 5 and Part 6; the Mariners lost two managers in the middle of good seasons, both of whom left for seemingly lesser jobs closer to their hometowns. It's most pronounced with Ken Griffey Jr., who engineered a trade to his hometown of Cincinnatinote prior to the 2000 season to be closer to family, "agonized" over his decision to return to Seattle in free agency in 2009note , and retired in the middle of the 2010 season in order live with his family full-time in Florida. It's also hinted that homesickness during his minor league playing days contributed to his 1988 suicide attempt. Several other Mariners seemed to get better as soon as they left Seattle and started playing for teams closer to their hometowns.
- Precision F-Strike: The Mariners lost great players such as Randy Johnson, Ken Griffey Jr., and Alex Rodriguez going into 2001. The team was expected to regress and miss the playoffs. Jon drops one when the Mariners are revealed to have won an American League-record 116 games in 2001:"Alex, what the fuck was that?"
- Toilet Horror: One story about the Seattle Pilots was about a man who was trapped in the porta-potties that had been lugged in because Sick's Stadium had insufficient water pressure. He had drunkenly passed out inside before they had been locked for the night, and wasn't freed until the next morning.
- Vomit Chain Reaction: Jay Buhner was a master of "blurping", or vomiting on purpose to get a reaction. At one point, he caused the entire Mariners outfield to vomit at once.
- Weirdness Magnet: The Mariners are portrayed as these, with much of the 3 hours and 40 minutes of the documentary dedicated to the odd antics of the team over the years.
- "I have selected Mariners because of the natural association between the sea, and Seattle, and her people, who have been challenged and rewarded by it."
