Eugenio Suárez grand slam powers Seattle Mariners to within one win of first World Series
By Jamie Barton, CNN
(CNN) — It is no exaggeration to say the most important swing of the bat by a Mariner in 30 years happened on Friday night.
Eugenio Suárez approached the plate in the bottom of the eighth inning with the score tied at two each. Moments later, he hit just the second grand slam in franchise postseason history to give Seattle a 6-2 win over the Toronto Blue Jays and put the Mariners closer to the World Series than they have ever been.
“I’ve been waiting for games like this my whole career,” said Suárez in an emotional postgame press conference to which he brought his two daughters.
“Today I had it. Today I had it in front of our crowd, in front of my family – my two daughters, my wife. The moment is very special right now.”
After defeating the New York Yankees in the 1995 American League Division Series (ALDS) – a win which many believed saved baseball in Seattle – the Mariners came within two wins of the World Series in the resulting Championship Series but ultimately lost out to Cleveland.
Five years later they were within two victories of the promised land once again, but could not get past the Yankees.
Now, Seattle needs just one more win to erase its unwanted record of being the only active major league franchise never to make it to the Fall Classic.
“After Geno’s grand slam, I’m not sure I’ve heard that building any louder than that,” said Mariners manager Dan Wilson.
“It makes you emotional thinking about that, and just how loud it was in that moment. Talking to a lot of people who have been around here since the 2001 days, and they don’t remember a time that it was this loud before.”
After the Blue Jays had tied the series with two alarmingly comfortable wins in Seattle in Games 3 and 4, Suárez got the Mariners on the board with a solo home run to left field in the second inning.
A magnificent double play from Cal Raleigh got Seattle out of a bases-loaded jam in the fourth, but the Blue Jays struck back after Mariners starter Bryce Miller was surprisingly sat down in the fifth inning.
A two-out double from George Springer brought home Addison Barger in the fifth to tie the game, before Ernie Clement’s single drove in Alejando Kirk an inning later.
By the eighth inning, the Mariners were facing the serious possibility of having to win both games in Toronto to take the series. But they found a spark from a familiar source, Raleigh tying the game with a floaty fly ball which hung in the air for 6.7 seconds before just barely clearing the wall in left field.
“It felt like Cal’s ball was in the air for about an hour,” smiled Wilson after the game.
Raleigh’s homer – his fourth this postseason and his 64th including the regular season – means he is now tied with Aaron Judge in 2022 for the most in a single year in the American League.
It was also Seattle’s first game-tying or go-ahead home run in the eighth inning or later of a playoff game since Bret Boone in Game 4 of the 2001 American League Championship Series (ALCS).
Having waited 24 years for such a dramatic postseason homer, Seattle fans were treated to another just moments later when Suárez’s heroics gave the Mariners an insurmountable lead.
They now lead the series 3-2 and go back on the road. Game 6 takes place in Toronto on Sunday night.
The-CNN-Wire
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