Two decades after Seattle’s record-breaking 2001 season, a new generation of Mariners fans is fueling the same electric energy.
SEATTLE — For fans who remember the Mariners’ 2001 playoff run, standing outside T-Mobile Park this week feels like stepping into a time machine. Twenty-four years after that record-breaking season, the city once again finds itself two wins away from a World Series berth — and the nostalgia is unmistakable.
Back then, Seattle’s baseball fever was called “SODO mojo.” In 2001, the team won 116 games, tying a Major League Baseball record, and advanced to the American League Championship Series before falling to the New York Yankees. The Mariners were eliminated on October 22, 2001, when they lost Game 5 of the ALCS at Yankee Stadium.
For fans like Brandon and Tarren Fix of Tacoma, that season holds personal meaning. Tarren Fix was pregnant during the 2001 run — and the couple joked about naming their son after the team’s new superstar, Ichiro Suzuki.
“The doctor said, ‘Do you have any names for him?’ We were jokingly like, ‘If it’s a boy, maybe Ichiro,’” Tarren Fix said. “When he was born, she said, ‘We got us an Ichiro.’ So she unofficially named him.”
That baby, Solomon Fix, is 24 now, and just experienced his first Mariners playoff game in person. The family paid about $283 each for standing-room-only tickets Thursday night, a stark contrast to 2001, when ALCS single-game seats at Safeco Field cost $65 to $85 and World Series tickets ran $125 to $175.
“It’s incredible,” Brandon Fix said. “He’s fully grown, graduated college, and never seen any of this since he was literally born.”
In 2001, fans lined up outside Tower Records locations for wristbands just to earn a place in line to buy tickets — no seat guaranteed. “They’re going to be really hard to get,” one fan told KING 5 News that year. “It’s been sold out here for so long, so it’s going to be difficult, but we’re going to do everything we can to get them.”
Another fan shouted the rallying cry of that era: “We’re going all the way. We’re winning the World Series!”
They didn’t, of course. But the optimism, and anxiety, never really left.
“It’s really up to the nine men on the diamond whose performance directly determines the state of my mental health,” said fan Katie Biddle, who also attended both the 2001 and 2025 runs.
This time, Seattle is daring to believe again. The Mariners’ 2025 postseason push has sent ticket prices and fan expectations skyrocketing. Standard-price ALCS tickets now start around $262 before service fees, and World Series home-game seats, when available at all, run “a few hundred” dollars at face value before resale markets drive them even higher.
And while the numbers have changed, the emotion hasn’t.
“So it’s up to us to just take these two games,” Brandon Fix said. “Gentlemen’s sweep, that’s what we’re all about right now.”
For the Fix family, the connection between 2001 and 2025 is more than sentimental, it’s generational. Their “Ichiro baby” is grown, and a new era of Mariners fans is carrying the torch.
The 2001 season, meanwhile, will forever stand as one of the sport’s most historic, not just for Seattle, but for baseball. Games were postponed for six days following the September 11 attacks, marking the first nationwide MLB shutdown since World War I. When play resumed, America found a moment of unity in the game, and Seattle found a citywide identity in its team.
Two decades later, that same spirit is alive again in SODO.