Orioles vs Mariners — 6/18/26
I hadn’t planned to go to this one. Most of the season, I’ve been pretty meticulous in planning which games to go with Leo and which to go with the rest of the family. Leo had just finished his last day of school in the middle of the week, which left this Thursday wide open. A couple dads proposed taking the kids to the matinee game, and Leo and I jumped at the chance. We knew these families since Leo was barely a toddler in daycare—waddlers, the school called them.
The chance nature of these relationships still strikes me today when I let myself dwell on them. Leo and his friends laid down roots before any of them could talk. Their names were some of the few words Leo would speak when asked about his day. They chose each other as much as a bee chooses a flower. The parents? We were thrown together by a shared schedule and a class group chat. In our earliest play dates, we stood by each other awkwardly, occasionally exchanging bits and pieces of our worries and preoccupations as parents, our past selves, and, eventually, our beliefs and dreams. We got lucky, unknowingly landing in the orbit of people we would come to love.
On our way to T-Mobile Park, we noticed the train was remarkably busy for a random weekday at noon. Seattle was hosting some World Cup games this summer, and the USA had a match against Australia tomorrow. I could sense an air of anticipation in the train that wasn’t fully reserved for the Mariners.
When we stepped off the train, we ran into Leo’s friend and his parents who we were planning to meet at our seats. We chatted about the lineup today. No Julio, Raley, or Arozarena today; instead there were a couple less familiar names to the current season although Leo and I, being the Mariners sickos we were, filled everyone in. “The Mariners got Miles Mastrobuoni from the Cubs last year after he was DFA’d.”
We arrived at our seats along the third base line near left field to meet one more of Leo’s friends and her dad. The kids all sat together near the aisle. Just before first pitch another dad and I clanked our beer cans. We looked around at the bright stadium and the clear blue sky above us. Not a bad Thursday afternoon in June. One parent opened a scorebook. Leo and his friends had a lot of questions. One of Leo’s friends even scored parts of the game. We questioned whether Naylor’s single with an error should have been ruled a double. After a flyout to center-right, I asked whether it was an F8 or F9. “F8,” replied Leo’s friend. “Robles caught it!”
Early on Leo asked if I brought snacks. We had lunch before we left for the game. “I don’t think so… did you?” The parents around me smirked. We went to get cotton candy at the top of the second inning. On our way back to our section, I asked him to wait while Woo pitched with 2 outs. He asked why, and I explained that I didn’t want to get in the way of other fans who were seated, trying to watch the game. The usher backed me up, telling Leo that’s how people should be at ballparks and not enough people do it anymore. We chatted for a moment about the game. I don’t think I realized it initially, but the ballpark attendants at T-Mobile Park are so lovely. They look at me and Leo with such warmth; I can tell they love it here. And they just want everyone to have their ballpark moment. After Woo struck out the side, we smiled at the usher and rushed down to our seats.
After settling back into the game, I started talking with one of my parent friends about Mastrobuoni. Miles Mastrobuoni was a utility guy who played just about everywhere. Yesterday he was covering first base. Today he was out in left field, not too far from where we sat.
There’s a quiet beauty to a depth utility role—it hangs precariously alongside the everyday stars, yet its importance pulls into stark focus under the right circumstances. Defined immensely by the needs of the present, the role player has a forgotten past and an uncertain future.
When I look at my parent friends, I see exceptional role players protecting and supporting this vital season of raising our children. There’s a soft ache in seeing our kids develop together with a foundational vulnerability that we, as adults who met later in life, might never fully experience with one another. We are filling our roles perfectly for our time on the field, but I still wonder about the games played before we joined the team—and just how many appearances we have left together.
I joked with my friend Joe about Mastrobuoni being my favorite Mariner—I mean, we did have his Blue Holo Foil 2025 Topps Update card, so that probably says something. He proceeded to make every out in the top of the 5th, including a diving catch on the warning track. He was designated for assignment the very next day to make way for right-handed bats against the upcoming Red Sox pitching. I spent the next week hoping no other team would pick him up; fortunately, he remains in the Mariners organization and is back in Tacoma.
Ivan, a parent to one of Leo’s friends, started proposing prop bets on pitch outcomes with Leo, who kept losing and doubling down. Later Leo snuck by my seat and mischievously whispered, “I’m going to give him the coins we use to pay for screen-time.” So my son is now participating in gambling and fraud in this questionably influential group outing.
Watching Leo scheme and play around with Ivan brings me to a past that never was, where I imagine our younger selves laughing about our questionable choices. Our conversations as parents often drift backwards, trading stories of the dumb bets and lawless behavior of our own youth. Part of this is an attempt to decode our kids as they try to figure it all out. But another part of it feels like a gesture, tethering our past lives to our present. We won’t ever grow up together watching baseball along the third base line like our children, but we offer each other glimpses of what might have been.
It turns out all of the action in the game occurred in the first inning, when the Mariners scored three runs. Due to our crew’s dutiful scorekeeping, we also realized towards the end of the game that the Mariners didn’t have another hit after the second inning. We joked about how we could have left after the first inning, and Leo interjected, “But we got to see Bryan Woo pitch a magnificent game,” and my heart swelled a little. We also would have missed an Australian here for the World Cup, chugging a beer from a dirty, dirty tennis shoe on the Jumbotron.
Muñoz closed this game. This was the first time I noticed the “Bring the Heat” slogan surrounded by flames on one of the Jumbotrons. I chuckled to myself as I remembered Leo yelling “He brings the heat!” above the bullpen as Muñoz was warming up against the Astros at the beginning of the season.
Final: Mariners 3, Orioles 0
Seats: Section 148, Row 26
Memory: Keeping score, screen-time fraud, utility roles, and a past that never was