The calendar only says “Game 7,” but everyone in Seattle knows it reads like a personality test. Do you believe this team’s defining trait is survival? Then you’ve seen enough late-inning rallies to know the Mariners tend to play their best when the oxygen gets thin. Do you believe in variance? Then you also know baseball saves its strangest bounces for the night when every pitch is a referendum. Both can be true, and that’s why hope isn’t a posture tonight; it’s a plan.
That plan starts with context, not vibes. Shared by Sarah Langs on X, home-field advantage in winner-take-all games is historically a coin flip — teams hosting are 68–67 all-time, and 30–29 in best-of-seven sets, so nobody should expect the park to do the scoring.