One of the biggest struggles in baseball, for players, coaches, and fans alike, is avoiding the demoralizing lows that are inevitable in a 162-game season. Three or four-game losing streaks are part of the job. Even the best teams ever assembled get swept, or endure stretches of bad, uninspiring baseball. It’s just, when that team is the one you love, and it has a crushing history of failure, a month as terrible as the Mariners’ July can really sink you back to the odd comfort of misfortune.
After the utterly disappointing Blue Jays “home series”, I went on a self-imposed Mariner break.