It seems these Seattle Mariners have sucked me back in with something special.

The Mariners somehow swept the Blue Jays in Toronto, making up a seven-run deficit in three innings and striking the telling blow in the ninth. The Mariners had a 1 percent chance of winning with 12 outs to go, but they have been working such magic since June.

Mariners fanatics Billy Hull and Christian Shimabuku have dragged me behind the bandwagon this season, and it has been a pleasure following the team that has always been friendliest to Hawaii by lifting the league’s stupid television blackout. My friends have a long-suffering relationship with the Emerald City’s biggest losers, but I have my own small bit of history with the city that evil Bud Selig stole his team from.

When I was in college at Hawaii Pacific, I took a class on the sociology of baseball and showed up every day even though I probably could have passed the class in my sleep. When it came time for the final, I was asked to name one of the most important moments in baseball history. The correct answer probably involved Alexander Joy Cartwright, Jackie Robinson, Babe Ruth or Curt Flood, but I had points to play with. I wrote my essay stating that the most important moment in the long history of the Grand Old Game came in 1995 when Ken Griffey Jr. rounded third to carry the winning run home against the Yankees on a double by Edgar Martinez.

That moment had no business being on such a list except that it was personal. Remember that 1995 was the year after Selig cried crocodile tears while canceling the World Series and I wasn’t the only one who was fed up enough to give up the game. Somehow, I caught that contest and was immediately back where I started. Blame it on Junior’s smile.

(For the record, I got a 99 percent on that final. I lost a point by naming Kent Tekulve the greatest relief pitcher of all time.)

Needless to say, I used to take my baseball very seriously. When the Marine Corps issued me my first dog tags long ago, I immediately scrapped them. The last line on the coolest of government documents is reserved for a Marine’s religion. Mine read “NO PREFERENCE,” and that just wouldn’t do. Thanks to a hookup from the office staff, if I had died of boredom in the Middle East some clerk would have had to figure out a burial based on the word “BASEBALL.”

So this is the second time the Mariners have dragged me back in. With the labor strife at the beginning of the year, my streak of seeing at least one complete game a day ended after about six years. It was no Cal Ripken or Lou Gehrig, but it was something.

Despite the game being dumbed down with the designated hitter and other rules that discourage strategy, the entertainment these Mariners provide has roped me back in. Cal Raleigh. Julio Rodriguez. Matt Brash. This exciting team has manufactured 67 one-run victories in the past two years, the first team to lead the league in successive years since Jake Beckley and Bid McPhee’s 1897-98 Cincinnati Reds.

I have no business watching a Junior League team, especially one that couldn’t finish within 15 games of winning its division. Baseball used to be the one sport that when it was all over you could rest assured that the best team won. Now, thanks to six wild cards and a convoluted postseason where 162 games of work are erased by two bad days, it is the one sport in which the best team rarely wins. Sure, the 1960 Pirates and 1988 Dodgers were inferior, but they were champions over an entire grueling season.

The world champion Braves were the fifth-best team in the National League last year, but at least they won their division before winning the 11 games that mattered. And yet it doesn’t matter.

I sighed when the wild card Nationals won after their incredible run of beating the Brewers-Dodgers-Cardinals-Astros in 2019 and shamefully told a pair of happy Nats-bedecked fans in the Kapolei Burger King: “Congratulations on winning baseball’s NIT. I hope you win something real next year.”

We all know that Seattle is not going to run through Astros-Yankees-Dodgers, right?

That would be impossible for a team that seems to thrive on the impossible, but I will be there with Seattle institution Rick Rizzs until the bitter end.