The Mariners haven’t been very much fun to watch this year.
Sure, the run differential is positive. The fun differential, though? Stinky. Trash. Probably sitting about where the 19-30 Houston Astros run differential is, near the bottom of the league (the sentence is clunky, but please allow me this opportunity to bully the Astros).
Advertisement
Most of us have probably turned off games early in disgust this year. It’s likely many of us have forgotten that the game started already, checked the score, and decided not to turn it on after all. Injuries to crucial players, underperformance and, the worst and rarest of all, expectations, have made this sub-.500 season feel awfully joyless.
Well, how many unique moments of joy can you fit into about one minute?
Colt Emerson earned his first hit. He put together some real Professional At-Bats in the last couple days. He fell behind in counts, but he fought his way back in just the way you want to: spitting on balls, fouling off some pitches he didn’t like, and swinging hard at ones that he did.
You have to do just enough, and he did that.
Advertisement
So, take your pick of joyful moments. You’d be well within your right to choose his family, who flew to Seattle just in time to watch Colt send one out – you can read his dad’s lips pretty well here.
You might take his easy, cool, calm confidence as he points out to the bullpen (a decidedly veteran move), betrayed only by the emphatic “let’s fucking go!” as he crossed home plate.
For me, I’ll take the trio of veterans that were waiting for Colt on the front steps of the dugout.
J.P. Crawford, the captain, heart, soul, leader and Shortstop of this era of Mariners baseball, positively bouncing at the opportunity to hand off the trident to, hopefully, the next Mariners shortstop. Colt has a little bit of J.P. in him. The obvious leadership qualities aside, J.P. ranks near the top of the league in pitches per PA, and Colt’s approach at just 20 already feels like the savvy veteran’s.
Advertisement
“The Mariners preach, don’t be an easy out. All the guys on the team, they’re not easy outs. So me being in the eight hole, nine hole, seeing that ahead of me, you do what you see.”
Julio, who had the most Julio grin of Julio grins splitting his face as he greeted Colt at home, lived from ages 15-21 under a microscope before his debut, desperate to prove everyone else wrong about him. Now he’s 25, has proved everyone else wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong. Will the bat develop? Is he too lumbering to even play in the corners? Will he be a liability on the basepaths? Is there enough pop to support his bat? Wrong, wrong, wrong, and wrong.
Colt has a little bit of Julio in him. Kate talked to him this spring training after being impressed by some of the power he displayed in batting practice. He smiled and said, “Scouting reports love to lie about me.”
Randy Arozarena was the first out of the dugout, the same energetic, smiling ball of human sunshine who lit the world on fire as a rookie in 2020 when he first transformed into Playoff Randy, stealing bags, hitting dingers and roaming the outfield with impunity.
Advertisement
Colt has a little bit of Randy in him, too. They both fit a surprising amount of power into compact frames. Colt’s play in the field in just two games has been smooth, confident and effortless, just like Randy’s. While Colt may not have the bombastic personality as Randy, he plans to take the league by storm in the same way.
What struck me most about this moment was how selfless the joy on their faces was. This wasn’t a go-ahead home run to win the game. It was insurance. Nice to have, but not ultimately necessary. They were happy for him, as a person, and most meaningfully to Emerson, a teammate.
“Getting drafted, you look at who’s in the big leagues, you idolize those guys, and you want to be a part of that. And finally, I’m a part of it. Seeing their faces, seeing Julio, Randy, J.P. out on the front step, waiting for me. Gosh, it means a lot. It really does,” Emerson said.
In it all, not lost on many of us, was the man who watched Emerson’s drive sail right over his head and into the stands. The last Mariner whose first hit was a home run, almost five years ago to the day. The last no-doubt, sure-thing lefty hitting prospect for the Mariners. The last cold weather, hyper-competitive kid with a chip on his shoulder who was meant to be The One.
Yes, Colt Emerson has a little bit of Jarred Kelenic in him.
Advertisement
They both are powered by an inner core of desire to win that radiates from them like a heat haze mirage. They both have chips on their shoulders, just like Julio, and so many great players. They both have dominated every level they’ve played at, and they both hit home runs in their second professional game, at home in T-Mobile Park.
But there are some obvious differences, too, even in their similarities.
Kelenic’s essential competitiveness, at least when he was with the Mariners, was best summarized as: “I want to win.” By contrast, Colt’s feels more “I want us to win.” A difference like this is obvious to those around them, especially in a team setting that relies so much on time spent together. It’s why Colt has been embraced with such open arms by those around him – his fellow players, coaches and support staff can’t stop raving about him.
Emerson had unadulterated joy from team leaders he admired waiting for him when he got back to the dugout and Naylor and Canzone waiting for him at the plate. But Kelenic? No one greeted him at home plate. No exuberant eye contact and big smiles awaited him. He lifted his hand to the sky and jogged back to the dugout, where he got a quick high-five from Mitch Haniger, a down-low from Sam Haggerty and a muted fist-bump from a tired Kyle Seager. No love, no joy.
Advertisement
Kelenic stewed, seethed, and raged when things didn’t go away, until he finally got a big hit and he could release, for just a moment, some of that anger and anxiety. But it would always come back, an ember of ire that was too strong to be doused. It defined him and his tenure in Seattle. You can hear it in his post-game interview from May 14, 2021, his first big-league hit.
“I want to bury our opponents, each and every night,” Kelenic said at the time. “And what really bugs me is when I give away at-bats, or if I don’t execute on what I’m trying to do, just because, like what I just said, I want to win.”
Emerson’s postgame conversation about his competitive drive and approach is different – lessons that Kelenic likely wishes he had learned earlier already engrained.
Advertisement
“Being a competitor means putting the ball in play when you need to put the ball in play, and if you’re up there super tight and trying to do too much, you’re not going to put the ball in play. So the only logical thing is to take a deep breath, and loosen up and go do it.”
This young, these mentalities are not ones that are fully developed and self-taught through experience. They’re what you are taught as you’ve grown up. You absorb how you view and interact with the world around you from those who you love and trust. Emerson had a true village, and 17 people flying in from Ohio to watch him is a testament to how loved he’s been.
“You can’t talk about Colt without talking about all the guys and all the people that have poured into him, all the people that taught him to play,” Dan Wilson said. “He’s a special kid. There’s something special inside of him as a player, but there’s also people who have really prepared him for this moment and those people deserve a lot of credit, because what we’ve seen from him so far has been really, really special.”
Kelenic had his parents, brother and girlfriend there to see his home run. I wonder what lessons he was taught growing up about competitiveness, performance and how it relates to your sense of self-worth.
It’s natural for humans to linger on what things could have, would have, should have been different. How things might have turned out with a laundry list of “if only’s”. Prospects, especially ones that are asked to bear the hope of a cursed franchise, find themselves doubly burdened by this weight, externally and internally. For the player, for a fandom, for everyone in so many aspects of our lives, letting things go and living in the present isn’t easy.
Advertisement
Kelenic, at least, seems to have finally found some inner peace – Ryan Divish published a great piece about his mental journey, and wrote about how much lighter he seems upon his return to Seattle.
This home run feels like a true clean break: the end of that chapter, and the start of a new one.
It’s time to let go of the disappointing, bitter past, and live in the now.
Colt Emerson has arrived.
