Mariners veterans have believed in this team all along, but they're not finished yet

Oct. 5—Sometime between the explosion of Champagne bottles in the clubhouse celebration and the explosion of fireworks above T-Mobile Park. Or maybe, it was after the fireworks and before the second round of postseason partying — the timeline of events following Cal Raleigh's majestic walk-off homer in the bottom of the ninth and the Mariners' unforgettable playoff-clinching 2-1 victory remains a little fuzzy.

But somewhere in the festivities of late Friday into early Saturday, Mitch Haniger and Marco Gonzales sat alone in the dugout.

The two longest-tenured Mariners on the roster — Haniger was acquired before the 2017 season and Gonzales in the middle of that season — found themselves engrossed in yet another conversation about baseball and life.

But this one was different. The overall subject was the same, but the context was different.

After so many discussions about how it would feel to finally make the playoffs, they'd done it.

"We've been here for a while," Haniger said. "We've had so many conversations about when we were really crappy and just wanting to be the team that made the postseason, end of the drought and, ultimately, win a World Series here."

No conversation was quite so gratifying.

"It's always an honest conversation with him," Gonzales said. "We dreamed it would happen. But realistically, every year we were disappointed. So, to be in that position, I think we both just kind of sat back and took it in."

It had finally happened.

They ended the (expletive) drought.

Haniger still smirks at the oft-repeated phrase he used in his open letter to Mariners fans for The Players Tribune that was published Oct. 14, 2021.

Always honest, more verbose than he's ever been in his baseball career, Haniger opened his heart and shared his feelings after the 2021 Mariners fell two games short of making the postseason.

While he downplayed the words in his doctrine, saying the editor "made me sound smarter, a lot smarter than I am," they were still his and they dripped with intensity. They put his teammates and the organization on notice about expectations he, Gonzales and shortstop J.P. Crawford had held when others didn't. There would be no more discussions of rebuilding, development or the future.

"But I also need them to know something else: This group is going to the playoffs. That's not an if ... it's a when. And that when is soon," he wrote.

And then came the kicker line — simple, direct and understandable in its tone — that became a rallying cry for Mariners fans, inspired a series of T-shirts and memorabilia and won't be soon forgotten:

"We're going to end this [expletive] drought."

Does he get any royalties from those shirts?

"It's all good," Haniger said with a laugh. "If we win a World Series, I will be so ecstatic, I won't care about any of that stuff."

But while that one line was what so many people took away and repeated from his letter, Haniger has always been quick to point out, ending the Mariners infamous postseason drought was never the endgame. It's winning the World Series — baseball's ultimate prize.

"We shouldn't be satisfied that we just made the playoffs," Haniger said Monday. "In order to win the World Series, you need to make the playoffs. I celebrated just as much as anybody that night, as we should have. But at the same time, it's also: 'Let's get back to work, let's keep working hard. We're not done. We can't have this mindset that we're just happy to be here. We want to win it all.'"

Yes, they celebrated like crazy, and making the postseason is something more than a participation certificate. But it was never the only goal. That became clear in their postgame comments.

"It's a championship mindset, it's not a make-the-playoffs mindset," Gonzales said. "From Day One of spring training, it's been a championship mindset, championship preparation, every single day. That's the goal."

In the hopeful days of spring training, where possibility and positivity abound, Haniger was just as adamant when asked about the drought comments.

"Our goal is to win the World Series," he said in March. "That should always be the highest goal. That's what you play for. There are other goals along the way to achieve. Obviously, we have to make the playoffs in order to do that."

But "checking off that first box" of making the playoffs hasn't been simple. Haniger and Gonzales have lived it since coming to Seattle.

A veteran team with playoff hopes in 2017 was racked by injuries to the pitching staff and fell well short. The 2018 team had all the proven veteran talent and overall potential to end the drought. But after a 56-32 start, including an 11-game lead over the A's for the second wild card July 5, that team faded in the final months, going 33-41 to end the season, succumbing to the pressure of Oakland's second-half push and its own internal strife and dysfunction amid a PED suspension for Robinson Cano and infighting with the team against Jean Segura.

After that season, Haniger and Gonzales learned of a new meaning to the words "step back." The Mariners went into a rebuilding plan that saw massive roster turnover.

"It's not what you want to hear," Haniger said. "As a player, you want to show up to spring training with a realistic chance that you might win the World Series. When you get rid of really good players, that makes your chances less likely. I understand the business side of things, and sometimes you need to have a longer vision. Those things aren't up to me."

Teammates, including close friends like James Paxton and Mike Zunino, were traded away for prospects, and Nelson Cruz wasn't offered a contract extension. The priorities for the organization shifted in the immediate, and it wasn't playoffs or beyond.

"All of this felt pretty far away back then," Gonzales said.

But rebuilding didn't mean complacency. If anything, their focus on preparing to win each day's game narrowed. They couldn't control the roster or the payroll, but they could control their daily work.

"Throughout 2019 and 2020, when we were taking a step back, all we had was our preparation every single day," Gonzales said. "That's all we had. The results were going to be what they were going to be. All we could control was showing up with the right energy, the right attitude, preparing our bodies and trying to stay healthy."

That mindset, with heavy influence from Cruz, Kyle Seager, Dee Gordon and teammates past, permeated in 2021 and is mostly team-wide in 2022.

"It's setting the right example more than anything," Gonzales said. "It's more than being vocal or whatever you can be as a leader. Leading by example is most important."

It's the standard that manager Scott Servais demanded, but they imbued it. It only works when the right players embrace it.

"That's the message and tone that me and Marco were wanting to send," Haniger said. "There were times in the rebuild where I don't know if everyone had that same expectation. I'm sure some people kind of just felt happy to be here instead of trying to win ballgames and trying to win a World Series. But that's the precedent that we wanted to set here: 'Hey, if you come into our clubhouse, winning better be your No. 1 goal. And [you] have to be able to prepare to win.' And a lot goes into that."

Along the way, they found teammates with similar mindsets like Crawford, Tom Murphy, Dylan Moore, Ty France, Paul Sewald, Chris Flexen and eventually rookies like Jarred Kelenic and Logan Gilbert and now Julio Rodriguez and Robbie Ray.

It started well before the unexpected success of 2021, which made them even more vocal in their goals and expectations when others were still speaking in abstracts.

"We always just felt that we wanted to control the narrative," Gonzales said. "We knew this group was good enough and would be very good moving forward. We wanted to establish the championship mindset, even before we knew that we could compete."

But this mindset wasn't theirs alone. It was shaped by those who came before.

With Champagne dripping from his hat, Haniger mentioned that he wished so many of his teammates could've felt that feeling.

"Hani said it perfectly," Gonzales said. "There's a lot of guys who had a hand in getting us to this point, who aren't here right now. It's Kyle Seager. It's Felix and Nelson Cruz. There have been guys that have put their heart and souls into this organization that weren't here tasting Champagne with us, who should be."

After the clinching game, Haniger texted Seager. They had made the push in 2021 with the rallying cry "Playoffs for Cap," knowing Seager's time in the organization was ending. Haniger wanted to let his former teammate and lifetime friend know that he was part of this achievement.

"I just said, 'We wouldn't be in this situation, and I wouldn't be in this position that I am, without your guidance and help and how you laid the law down for everyone in here about winning,'" Haniger said. "I've never spoken more truer words when I said, 'Without those guys, I don't think we are here.' All those guys played here for a long time and they didn't get in. A large part of me was playing for them, too."

With Haniger a free agent after this season and Gonzales aware that he was on the trade block at midseason as talented young pitchers in the organization move closer to the big leagues, they know that they too might be gone sooner rather than later.

When that time comes, the goal is to have left the team in a better place with what they helped establish, what they accomplished and what they might influence in the future.

But that time isn't quite yet. There's more left to do.

As Gilbert, Raleigh, Kelenic and George Kirby and the young core of the team sat in the clubhouse that Friday night, soaking in an experience that so many players before them didn't feel, Haniger offered another lesson.

"I told them, 'You guys don't know how lucky you are, and you should be really grateful, but at the same time you should be even more hungry to feel this again because you don't know if you'll make the playoffs again,'" Haniger said. "We went 21 years. This is my first time. I told them: 'You guys are a massive part of our success and you need to keep it going. You never know if you're gonna have this opportunity again.' Although I think this group will continue to go to the postseason. It's a really good roster that's going to be here for a while. I expect big things for their future."

And yet ...

"But we are staying focused on the now," he said. "And that's a World Series."

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