With seemingly everything on the line, with the ever-present threat of the city’s perennially-winning football team overshadowing this scrappy little club looming large, and with a heavy advantage on their side, the Mariners found a way to lose.
There’s still time to be wrong—this team has been declared dead more times than it’s been called alive—but the feeling that this game’s slow, painful unraveling spelled a death rattle is hard to shake.
Between a short, iffy outing from Yusei, a scuffling offense, and a middle relief implosion, everyone on the team contributed to this rubber match tire-fire.