FanPost Friday: Your favorite Mariners Opening Day experiences

Mar 31, 2023 - 6:12 PM

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Hello and welcome back to FanPost Friday! I don’t know about y’all, but I am still positively buzzing from last night’s raucous victory. Real baseball! It’s here and it’s incredible!

The home opener, whether it be on actual Opening Day like it was last night or few days into the season after the team starts the season on the road, is always a big event at T-Mobile Park. In many seasons past, it’s usually one of the few complete sellouts of 45,000+. It attracts both the die-hards and the more casual fans. People like to be at the “first” of something, the big premiere, right? For many, it’s just tradition. You go to Opening Day to mark the passage of another year, another winter gone-by. Rebirth.

Photo by Steph Chambers/Getty Images

Last night definitely felt like the birth of something new. Fresh off the team’s first playoff appearance in 21 years, fans didn’t miss a beat and were dialed in the entire game (make sure you read John’s lovely recap because he captured the feelings very well. “Like the stick, the splinter,” indeed.) We experienced our first taste of the mayhem can follow a pitch clock violation in a clutch moment, which you can read all about in the season’s first About Last Night from Kate. After Karinchak was clearly rattled by the violation, the packed house went absolutely feral and began counting down the clock, which you can hear on the TV broadcast once it hits six.

I was there and the charge that I felt go through the crowd when the realization and full impact of the new rule hit everyone gave me goosebumps. That was truly a new experience for baseball fans. A new way for the home team fans to impact the visiting team. I have to wonder if MLB executives fully realized all the intentional and perhaps unintentional impacts of the pitch clock, but being on the giving end of this one feels prettyyyyy, pretty good.

So, obviously last night ROCKED but was it the best Mariners home opener ever? Here’s your prompt:

Tell us about your favorite Mariners Opening Day Experiences!

What was the best in-game moment? Best pre-game ceremony? Your favorite interaction with fans or perhaps with a player or someone from the org? Tell us all about it in the comments.

And heck, let’s put it to a poll, shall we?

Hey, guess what? There’s (at minimum) 161 more Mariners games to watch this season, starting tonight. Let’s go Mariners.