As discussed on today’s Meet at the Mitt podcast, last night’s playoff-clinching Mariners victory didn’t have the same emotional complexity of the 2022 drought-busting moment, but it will live forever in my mind and in many fans’ minds as the moment where Josh Naylor permanently inserted himself into the People’s Narrative of the Seattle Mariners. I cannot stop watching every bit of content I’ve found today on Naylor’s 3-run, go-ahead double from last night.

It’s perfect. It’s cinematic. It’s cathartic, but in a different way than Cal’s walk-off pinch-hit home run in 2022. This Mariners lineup is so potent that as I was watching, I knew it wasn’t the end of the world that Randy struck out (featuring a pitch that was called a strike that will likely get overturned by ABS next season), Julio got hit by a pitch, and then Cal struck out, Josh freaking Naylor was batting fourth. He can do the thing just as likely as the previous three hitters. And! In a different scenario where there weren’t two outs, Jorge Polanco and Eugenio Suárez were next in line. So, in a weird, very non-typical-Mariners fan way, it felt expected that Naylor would come through. I am 41 years old and that is a weird line of thinking as a Mariners fan! But this is a weird, wonderful team of hitters that has been assembled and yes, Josh Naylor did the damn thing.

Also, in a baseball world where the home run is king and at a ballpark that has famously not been friendly to extra base hits, I personally find it lovely that Naylor drove a good old fashioned double to the gap. Sure a grand slam would have torn a hole in the fabric of this dimension probably, but a classic double is just beautiful to me. Maybe I’m biased due to a certain other famous Mariners double, sure. He probably didn’t say this post-game, but it invokes my favorite hitter cliche of “trying not to do too much” where I guess hitting a home run is “doing too much” and simply putting the ball in play where they ain’t is “not trying to do too much.” What a sport.

So, yes, I’ve been making hyperbolic posts on social media since he was acquired that Josh Naylor is the greatest first baseman in Seattle Mariners history. Sorry Tino, Olerud, and uh Russell Branyan, I guess. No, I’m not looking at the numbers yet, but did any of those guys steal nearly 30 bags? I don’t think so. Do those guys have a playoff-berth clinching hit? Nah. So, I’m staking my claim, as well, as Naylor stakes his claim on the hearts of Mariners fans everywhere as the hyper-focused, competitive, deceptively fast slugging first baseman we’ve always wanted and deserved.

I truly did not think that this 2025 team as constructed in March was going to make the playoffs. It took acquiring two extra good hitters in Naylor and Geno to turn this team into a potential monster in the playoffs. In addition to sterling starting pitching, a mostly reliable bullpen with a dynamite closer, they now have a lineup that is 1-6 scary as hell hitters to any opposing pitcher and then three other guys who also hit home runs occasionally, too. No AL team in their right mind wants to face the Seattle Mariners right now. That’s a sentence I cannot believe I’m typing.

But you know what I do believe in?