Mariners dangle victory before Rangers, snatch it away at last second, laugh cruelly

Photo by Lindsey Wasson/Getty ImagesMy dad was never one of those parents who let me win at games. Victories had to be earned, fairly, no handicap, no special set of rules. Also, training wheels on bikes were for weenies, but I and my eternally skinned knees digress. Anyway, the most agonizing feel of my childhood was when I thought I was about to take my dad down at a game of skill—not something like Clue, where you’re racing to cross things off process-of-elimination style, or Monopoly, where a few bad rolls can derail your whole game, but something that involved strategy or knowledge or skill. I set my sights on things like Boggle, Scattergories; word-based things that would be in my wheelhouse. But my dad, too, loves words and collecting them, and he had a thirty-year head start.

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