The T-Mobile Park stands had all emptied Monday night, the scoreboard turned black, and two GOATs and one puppy remained on the grass in front of the Mariners dugout.
Greatest of All Time? All right, all right, that’s a stretch. But Cal Raleigh and Luke Raley combined to deliver the Mariners’ greatest comeback of the season — doing so in two very different ways — and then the two of them returned to the field well after the Mariners’ 8-4 victory over the White Sox for a classic game of fetch with Raley’s puppy, Kit, named after a character from “A League of Their Own.”
Raleigh, nearly ejected by home-plate umpire Chris Guccione an inning earlier, hit a walkoff grand slam with one out in the bottom of the ninth inning, helping the Mariners (38-30) avoid an embarrassing loss to a White Sox team that came into this four-game series with the worst record in baseball.
The Raleigh-Raley rally helped erase a 4-0 deficit entering the bottom of the eighth inning and pushed the Mariners’ lead atop the AL West to 5.5 games over idle Texas.
“You could be 0 for 4, or 4 for 4, but when it comes to that moment it doesn’t matter,” Raleigh said. “You’ve just got to slow it down and try to do whatever it takes to help the team win. It was a big moment, for sure.”
Raleigh got ahead 2-0 in the count against White Sox reliever Jordan Leasure, and he got the fastball he was expecting — a 97-mph heater that Leasure left over the heart of the plate.
Raleigh didn’t miss it — sending it 383 feet out to right field, 108 mph off the bat for his team-leading 12th homer of the season.
It was his first walkoff home run since his iconic blast against Oakland on Sept. 30, 2022, ended the Mariners’ 21-year playoff drought.
“All those moments, you know, are kind of similar in a way. Your heart rate goes up; you get a little antsy, excited, jittery, whatever it may be,” Raleigh said. “But just realizing that I’ve been there in those moments. You try to take a deep breath, slow it down and [that] definitely helps. You just try to stay in the moment, not for the moment.”
Raleigh’s third career walkoff hit came after Raley drove in the tying run in the most unlikely fashion in the eighth inning.
With two outs and Josh Rojas on third base, Raley managed to drop down a 99-mph fastball on a 1-1 pitch from the White Sox’s Michael Kopech for a sneaky bunt single toward third base. Rojas scored easily and Raley sprinted to first without a throw.
Raley’s five bunt singles are tied for the league lead this season, and he is the first Mariners player with a game-tying (or go-ahead) RBI bunt single since Mark McLemore on July 30, 2002.
“It was a great feeling,” Raley said. “I obviously knew the risk of a bunt. If I foul it off, I’m down two strikes. If I bunt it too hard, the third baseman throws me out. There’s a bunch of different scenarios that could play out that are bad, but I feel like I’ve been bunting the ball really well this year and it’s something I continue to work on, so I’m confident in getting it down.”
The Mariners, incredibly, have three walkoff victories in their three Bark in the Park Nights at T-Mobile Park this season. Which is why Raley’s puppy was in attendance for a sweet moment well after the game ended.
Stymied for seven sleepy innings, the Mariners offense sprung loose late Monday, rallying from a four-run deficit with a wildly eventful eighth inning, in which they sent 10 batters to the plate, with five hits, one walk, one hit batter and one manager ejection.
In the bottom of the ninth, J.P. Crawford and Rojas drew back-to-back walks with one out, and Julio Rodriguez followed with a sharp single to left field, loading the bases and setting up Raleigh’s heroic blast.
Kopech, the White Sox’s reliever armed with a 100-mph heater, was on the verge of escaping a bases-loaded, no-outs jam in the eighth when he struck out Rodriguez and Raleigh, and then got ahead on Mitch Haniger 0-2.
Haniger, though, sent the next pitch — a 99.9-mph fastball — to right field for an opposite-field single, scoring Ryan Bliss and Crawford to cut the Mariners’ deficit to 4-3.
Raley followed with the most unexpected hit of the evening that tied the score at 4-4.
Dominic Canzone had opened the eighth with a 413-foot home run off White Sox starter Erick Fedde, spoiling his shutout bid. Fedde had scattered just four hits through the first seven innings.
Scott Servais got the heave from Guccione when he came out of the dugout in defense of Raleigh, who was vehemently arguing a called third strike on Kopech’s inside fastball.
Servais said he left the dugout “very quickly” to make sure Raleigh wasn’t ejected.
“Cal was certainly upset after the at-bat that he struck out on, and I’m glad I got thrown out because I can’t hit grand slams,” Servais said.
Fedde and the Mariners’ Logan Gilbert had traded zeros through the first five innings in an impressive display of pitching.
Luis Robert Jr. spoiled Gilbert’s night in the sixth inning when he mashed a 2-2 pitch just fair into the second deck in left field with two outs, breaking open a scoreless game.
The White Sox (17-50) added one more in the sixth inning and another in the seventh to make it 4-0.
“I don’t think the dugout every really gets deflated,” Raley said. “We know how the game works. You play 27 outs and they have to get ‘em all. … We never gave up.”