To understand why Félix Hernández is a Hall of Famer, you have to understand the history of baseball in Seattle.
You have to know what it means to live in Seattle, a far-away outpost that, until Amazon’s explosive growth, was almost off the radar of the rest of the country.
You have to experience 43 years of mediocre baseball, occasionally punctuated by a season of jubilance, inevitably followed by a hollow thud of failed expectations.
You have to realize that we Seattleites, we connect to our heroes, and our players are OURS and you can’t have them.