Once Upon A Fractured Season: 9/11 And The 2001 Mariners’ World Series Quest

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has delayed the 2020 baseball season, perhaps significantly. Once the timeline is clarified, I’ll return to my more typical, topical fare. For now, I’m going to look back at some players and teams whose destinies were affected by previous baseball season stoppages. For a look at the effect of World War II on the career of Washington Senators’ SS Cecil Travis, and on the 1994 players’ strike’s impact on the Giants’ Matt Williams and the Montreal Expos, click here, here and here.

Everyone remembers where they were on certain dates in American history. As a small child, I remember the moon landing in the summer of ‘69, and as a young adult, the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle. Probably the most recent such historical occurrence would be the morning of September 11, 2001.

I still lived in southern New Jersey at that time, where I grew up. It was a year before my career in major league baseball began, as an Area Scouting Supervisor for the Milwaukee Brewers in the northeastern U.S. and eastern Canada.

9/11 especially hit home in that part of the country, about 100 miles from Ground Zero. It hit brutally hard in our family – the pilot of the second plane to hit the World Trade Center, Victor Saracini, was my wife’s cousin. An already horrifying day cut even deeper once we heard that news.

Obviously, any impact of that fateful day upon baseball or any sport was secondary, but it did have ripple effects. Perhaps none more so than the effect it had on a team that I would be working for as a Special Assistant to the General Manager by the end of the decade, the Seattle Mariners.

As of today, the Mariners are the only club in baseball that has never played in a World Series. Established in 1977, they have run out some really good clubs throughout their history, but none as good as their 2001 squad.

In fact, no major league team – ever – has won more regular season games than the Mariners’ total of 116 in 2001. They were a juggernaut by any stretch of the term.

When you think of the M’s strong clubs of that era, beginning in the mid-’90s, many players come to mind. They had four core Hall of Fame type players in that era – Randy Johnson, Ken Griffey, Jr., Alex Rodriguez and Edgar Martinez. Interestingly enough, only Edgar was a part of that 2001 club.

The Big Unit was moved to Houston at the 1998 trading deadline in a deal that brought key 2001 team components Freddy Garcia, Carlos Guillen and John Halama to Seattle. Griffey went to the Reds after the 1999 season in a move that brought in his replacement in center field, Mike Cameron, while Rodriguez was allowed to leave as a free agent (to the Rangers) after the 2000 season.

In 2000, after the Griffey deal, an old (average age of 31.5) Mariners’ club improved their record 12 games to 91-71, but most observers predicted struggles ahead after the departure of their best player, Rodriguez, to a divisional rival.

The 2001 club did not make wholesale changes; free agent Bret Boone, 32, was brought in to play second base, moving incumbent Mark McLemore into a super-utility role. The bullpen was fleshed out, with veterans Jeff Nelson, 34, and Norm Charlton, 38, signed as free agents to complement closer Kaz Sasaki.

Oh, and they signed one other guy – Ichiro Suzuki, 27, a star since he was a teenager in Japan, to play right field. 5’11”, 175, soaking wet, there was much debate as to the type of impact he would have at the game’s highest level. The previous inhabitant of his position, Jay Buhner, had been a powerful, productive Mariner for many years, but his body was about to betray him. The M’s needed Ichiro to be good, for many reasons, on field and off.

It didn’t take the world very long to see what this cat was about. In his 8th game, on April 11, he made “The Throw”, nailing the A’s Terrence Long at third base in spectacular fashion. He was good alright, winning the AL MVP Award, the batting title (.350), while leading the AL in hits (242) and steals (56).

The club began the season by overcoming a 4-0 deficit vs. Oakland in their opener, and literally stayed white hot all season.

They were 20-5 on May 1.

They were 40-12 on June 1.

They were 59-21 on July 1.

They were 77-30 on August 1.

They were 97-39 on September 1.

In June, their worst month, they went 19-9, a 110-win pace over a full season. Unreal.

Offensively, they led the AL in runs scored, OBP (.360) and stolen bases (174). They were 4th in SLG (.445) with the 3rd fewest strikeouts (989) and 2nd most walks (614). They weren’t the most powerful bunch, finishing 8th in the AL in homers (169).

They were even better with regard to run prevention, leading the AL in ERA (3.56). Their walk total (465) was 3rd lowest in the AL, but their strikeout total (1,051) was only 5th. Their team defense was remarkable by any measure; in some metrics they grade out among the most efficient team defenses in history.

Cameron was a massive defensive upgrade over Griffey at this stage of their respective careers, and peak Ichiro was a revelation and then some in right. Guillen stepped into a full-time role at shortstop and was a upgrade from A-Rod with the glove. Hard-hit baseballs were dead on arrival against this bunch.

As September began it was business as usual for the Mariners, as they won seven of their first eight games to run their record to 104-40. They had never lost more than two games in a row at any point during the season.

After winning the first game of a three-game set in Anaheim on September 10, the world stood still. No baseball was played over the next week, and no one wondered why. It was a new reality, and we all had to figure out team sports’ place in it.

After a week off, MLB swung back into action on September 18, with the missed games to be tacked back on at the end of the regular season schedule. The Mariners resumed play at home against those same Angels, and shut them out in the first two contests. It seemed that nothing could stop or even slow down these Mariners.

Then, for whatever reason, they looked like mere mortals for the first time all season. They lost their next four against the Angels and the hard-charging A’s, and were outscored by a whopping 29-10 in the process.

Though the M’s rebounded to finish on a 10-2 run, their aura of invincibility was gone. The top-seeded Mariners took on the relatively ordinary Indians, who finished at 91-71, a full 25 games worse.

The Indians took a 2-1 lead in the best of five series, winning Game 1 5-0 (in Seattle) and Game 3 17-2 before the Mariners circled the wagons and prevailed. Meanwhile, the Yankees were outlasting the previously red-hot A’s, also in five games.

So let’s set the scene…..in the 2001 ALCS, we have a team that had never appeared in the World Series vs. the team that had won 4 of the last 5 titles. And the sentimental favorite in most of the nation, unlike what it would have been at virtually any other point in the game’s history, was the Yankees. America was rooting for Goliath.

The Yankees punched the M’s in the mouth early, taking the first two games in Seattle, putting them on their heels. Though the Mariners bounced back with a 14-3 blowout in Game 3, the Yankees didn’t let the series get back to Seattle, taking the next two games at home. It was over. And then to make it burn even more for Mariner fans, the Diamondbacks – the Diamondbacks! – solved the Yankee magic, beating Mariano Rivera in Game 7.

So what happened? The weakest link of this Seattle club, their starting rotation, had worn thin. Jamie Moyer was their only reliable starter throughout the post-season; the Aaron Seles, Freddy Garcias and Paul Abbotts were no longer getting them through seven or even six innings before turning it over to their deep bullpen. And Sasaki and Jose Paniagua, key cogs of that pen all season, were now struggling to get anyone out.

So where did the club go from here? The 2001 club had the oldest hitters (average age of 31.3) and 2nd oldest pitchers (30.8) in the AL. Their expiration date was nigh.

They had been aggressively signing free agents and sacrificing high draft picks in the process for years. Under GM Pat Gillick and Manager Lou Piniella they were in “win now” mode for an extended period, and the bill was about to come due.

In both 2002 and 2003, they got off to great starts, and faded. They finished 93-69 both years, but were sub-.500 clubs in the second half both years, and faded out of the playoff picture. The key free agent signing of Jeff Cirillo was an absolute bust, and Piniella left after the 2002 season, with Gillick following him a year later.

No one will ever know whether the 2001 Seattle Mariners would have finished the deal and won the World Series in 2001 if 9/11 never happened. And in the grand scheme of things, it really doesn’t matter. But this clearly wasn’t quite the same club afterward, and when their moment in the crucible was at hand, they weren’t up to the task.