7/23/2013 -- Mariners Are Hot

Is it hot in here, or is it just the Mariners?

That’s a trick question. There’s no reason it can’t be both. Why would the temperature have anything to do with the Mariners? What a ridiculous suggestion.

Anyway, the Mariners are in fact pretty hot right now, if you take “hot” to mean “winning baseball games.” That’s a bit of linguistic jargon that doesn’t make much sense if you stop to think about it, which is a good reminder that you should try to avoid thinking about stuff. Anyway. The Mariners are winning baseball games, and it’s all fun and exciting. You’re probably happy about the Mariners right now. You probably even want to watch the Mariners play baseball. How unfortunate for you.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but the Mariners still have a losing record on the season. They're still the Mariners. They’ve really only been good for a single week, and already here you are letting your guard down, getting your hopes up. There’s only one way this can end, and you should know what that is. Eventually, the Mariners will lose, and then they’ll either win or they’ll lose, and then they’ll either win some more or they’ll lose some more, or some combination of the above. That’s the one, single thing that can happen.

Once the Mariners are done flipping coins to determine their final record, they will almost assuredly not win the World Series. It’ll be only the 37^th year in a row that that’s happened. You probably won’t even mind. You’ll be optimistic about the future. You’ll think that maybe next year will be the year. Do you know what will happen next year?

No, of course you don’t. I don’t either. What I do know is that a bunch of dudes who you’ll never meet will spend an inordinate amount of time playing baseball. They might win something, but they most likely won’t. And then they’ll do it all again the year after that. How thrilling.

On the other hand, that Ackley fellow sure does have some mighty soulful eyes. So that’s good I guess.