heartbreaking end<\/a> to their playoff run.<\/p>\nFor 76-year-old Joe Cox, a lifelong Mariners fan, that moment came Tuesday morning \u2014 standing nearly alone outside T-Mobile Park, where just a night earlier hundreds had crowded inside the ball park for the American League Championship Series Game 7 watch party.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would love to see us take this to another level,\u201d Cox said. \u201cIn my lifetime.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cox has seen it all: the droughts, the rebuilds, the glimmers of hope. He remembers every year the Mariners came close, including this one.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause nobody has gone through a drought like this \u2026 48, 49 years,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Less than 24 hours after the loss, Cox returned to the ballpark to tape typed letters to the Ken Griffey Jr. statue, part of his tribute to a team that captured the city\u2019s heart, reclaiming the division title for the first time since 2001 and putting together a postseason run fans won\u2019t soon forget.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not a spring chicken anymore,\u201d he said. \u201cI would love to see this thing come through to sweet fruition. And to have it dangled in front of me and snatched away in the seventh inning is not easy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cox admits some might call it just a game. But to him, as to many fans who have waited decades for a World Series appearance, it\u2019s far more than that.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou say that to a Red Sox fan trying to get out from under the curse of the Bambino 15 or 20 years ago,\u201d Cox said. \u201cIt ain\u2019t easy \u2026 It leaves a mark.\u201d<\/p>\n
That mark runs deep for Mariners fans as the only Major League Baseball franchise still waiting for its first trip to the World Series.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis year I missed a couple games because I went to the Ichiro induction,\u201d Cox said. \u201cBut I\u2019m there all the time. I would\u2019ve given all the money from those tickets for that one game. It\u2019s just hard.\u201d<\/p>\n
As the countdown begins for next season, fans like Cox are already looking ahead.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Mariners open at home against the Cleveland Guardians on March 26, 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mariners fans are holding onto pride and belief even after a heartbreaking end to Seattle’s playoff run. SEATTLE…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":231400,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,85],"class_list":["post-231399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231399\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}