SEATTLE — The owner of the most home runs and the most famous back side in baseball was kicking off his dirt-caked cleats before entering the carpeted clubhouse, like the well-raised son of coach that he is, when he spotted two huge coolers filled with champagne and beer.
“I need one!” Cal Raleigh shouted to no one in particular.
Never had victory and its spoils been this well-earned. The Mariners and Tigers played more innings (15) and more hours (two minutes shy of five hours) than any two teams locked in win-or-go-home survival mode. It took fifteen pitchers, 37 strikeouts and 472 pitches for Seattle to advance to its first ALCS in 24 years with a 3-2 win in ALDS Game 5 on Friday.
It was a Hitchcock directorial gem of a baseball game, chock full of unspoken tension, hidden dangers, suspense, red herrings and ordinary people caught in extraordinary situations. The Longest Winner Take All Game Ever Played was baseball’s North by Northwest, which you could have watched twice before this one ended.
It was a thriller that turned and twisted more on what might happen than what did happen. Fifteen runners reached base in extra innings before Mariners second baseman Jorge Polanco finally sent one home with a bases-loaded single off Tigers righthander Tommy Kahnle.
The homer-happy Mariners picked a good time to win their first baseball game without a home run since Sept. 18. However fatigued, they advanced to play their 1977 expansion brothers, the Toronto Blue Jays, for the American League pennant.
ALCS, HERE WE COME! #SeizeTheMoment pic.twitter.com/wSozKlK1MW
— Seattle Mariners (@Mariners) October 11, 2025
Welcome to the Hunger Games. Toronto hasn’t played in the World Series in 32 years. The Mariners are the only team never to have played in the World Series. Counting the 1969 Pilots, Seattle has waited through 50 seasons to see a World Series, the longest current drought of any MLB city.
“This atmosphere here,” said an exhausted Tigers manager A.J. Hinch, “is legit.”
Cal Raleigh’s ALDS performance was a long time coming
Raleigh is the player most responsible for the joyride and the lovefest that is happening here between a region and its baseball team. Somehow, it feels right that Raleigh is still playing baseball this year. No offense to Aaron Judge, whose Yankees are 32–33 in the postseason with him and home again, or Shohei Ohtani, who just went 1-for-18 with nine strikeouts in the NLDS. Raleigh is the face (and the back side) of the 2025 baseball season.
The Big Dumper, so named by minor league teammate Jarred Kelenic upon marveling at the size of his posterior, signed a $105 million contract (that instantly became a bargain), won the home run derby, hit the magic number of 60 home runs while catching more innings than anybody in his league, knocked from the record books names such as Johnny Bench, Mickey Mantle and Ken Griffey Jr. and won over anybody in the company of his (mostly) aw-shucks charm.
Now he has the chance to join Babe Ruth and Roger Maris as the only players to hit 60 homers and play in the World Series in the same year.
No one deserved a celebratory quaff more than The Big Dumper. He caught all 209 pitches from his staff in Game 5 (and all 840 from his pitchers in the series), set up the winning run by moving it to third with less than two outs with a deep fly ball he practically one-handed, blocked his usual handfuls of spiked pitches in the dirt, threw out a would-be base stealer and at every critical juncture directed the game like Hitchcock himself. In what seemed like every inning, often mid-at-bat, Raleigh would push his mask atop his head and walk slowly to the mound for a lengthy conference with his pitcher. He made sure the game was played at his terms and his pace.
Years ago, Todd Raleigh, a college baseball coach, wanted a baseball name for his son. He liked Cal, in honor of Cal Ripken Jr. Stephanie, Todd’s wife, liked Caleb John. Stephanie won out, at least on the birth certificate, because everybody called the boy Cal, except his mom in fits of pique.
“When she’s mad at me, it’s always, ‘Caleb John!” Raleigh said.
He grew up in the Plott Balsam Mountains of western North Carolina, a place whose rugged geography and remoteness prompted directors to shoot movies there such as Deliverance and The Fugitive. Cal was only five years old when Ripken retired, but Ripken was his favorite player. In 2014, the two Cals met for the first time at a high school all-star game in Chicago.
Like Ripken, another son of a coach, Raleigh is more dependable than spectacular. The wonder of Raleigh is the same as it was for Ripken. They don’t wow you with snapshots of athleticism but impress you over time. The more you see of them the more you are impressed, especially in the fundamentals of the game.
The ALDS played out exactly so when it comes to appreciating Raleigh. He slashed .381/.480/.571 in advancing in the postseason for the first time. His game-calling was impeccable as Seattle stymied the strikeout-prone, fastball-munching Tigers with a boatload of secondary pitches. His pitch blocking was textbook perfect, honed by years of blocking tennis balls fired at him from his machine, even in minor league hotel rooms on the road.
After Game 3, in which Raleigh hit the second-longest opposite field home run this postseason after catching eight innings and throwing his body in front of a gazillion spiked splitters from Logan Gilbert, I asked Raleigh how he planned to recover for the scheduled day game the next day.
“I’ll do the hot and cold tubs to recover,” he said.
“What about your wrist?” I asked him. “I saw one of those splitters caught you on the wrist and you seemed to be shaking it.”
“Yeah, got me good,” he said. “Got a zinger, like, I couldn’t feel anything right there for a while. Nothing. But it went away. I’m good.”
Think how many times such painful annoyances occur. He sees about 150 pitches every night, and about seven to 12 require him to throw his body in front of them.
I saw Raleigh the next day. He had a cup of coffee in his hand in the clubhouse.
“How did you sleep?” I asked.
“Real good,” he said. “I took a little NyQuil. There’s a little bug or something going around the clubhouse and I caught it.”
That’s so Cal. Catch an entire game, hit a ball 391 feet the other way, throw yourself in front of Gilbert’s lawn darts and later reveal the whole time you weren’t feeling well.
Tigers, Mariners combine for stellar pitching performance
ALDS Game 5 was played at a high level that even the Tigers will recall it proudly once the sting of losing starts to fade. Usual starting pitchers Gilbert, Luis Castillo and Jack Flaherty did not allow a run while making rare or unprecedented appearances out of the bullpen. Seattle relievers Matt Brash and Eduard Bazardo pitched longer than they had done before. Mariners utility player Leo Rivas, who had not driven in a run in a month, tied the game with a run-scoring single on his 28th birthday. Tigers ace Tarik Skubal wore himself out throwing 99 pitches and striking out 13 in six innings.
LEO RIVAS TIES IT!!! #SeizeTheMoment pic.twitter.com/FdtiEhZ26L
— Seattle Mariners (@Mariners) October 11, 2025
The biggest pivot point of the game was in the seventh when Hinch was one out away from turning over a 2–1 lead to his closer, Will Vest, for a six-out save. Hinch had lefty Tyler Holton ready for Josh Naylor but opted to stay with a shaky Kyle Finnegan (two deep flies sandwiched around a walk) and his splitter. He got burned when Naylor singled.
When Mariners manager Dan Wilson sent Dominic Canzone to pinch hit, Hinch summoned Holton to take Canzone off the board, knowing that Wilson would hit for Canzone. On the suggestion of bench coach Manny Acta, Wilson sent Rivas to make his first plate appearance in almost two weeks. Rivas delivered. In the chess match that inning, Wilson wound up with the platoon advantage for each of the two huge at-bats and his players cashed in with hits each time.
Wilson, a former catcher, acquitted himself well in the series after his Game 1 gaffe of letting George Kirby throw a high fastball to Kerry Carpenter. (And why Gabe Speier gifted a high fastball to Carpenter for a home run in Game 5 was inexplicable.) But Wilson’s greatest asset is having Raleigh to run the game behind the plate, change it at any moment from the batter’s box and lead in the clubhouse with his quiet, unshakable confidence.
When the Mariners clinched the AL West last month, Raleigh, living up to his unofficial role as team spokesman, was handed a microphone to address fans at T-Mobile Park. Raleigh, shedding the aw-shucks side of himself, thought it would be a good time to go all Jake Taylor, the catcher in Major League who blurts out his profane response upon hearing at a team meeting that the owner wants to finish dead last so she can move the team.
“Well then, I guess there’s only one thing left to do,” says Taylor, played by Tom Berenger.
“What’s that?” a teammate asks.
“Win the whole f---ing thing.”
And that’s what Cal said into the mic.
Todd turned to Stephanie and said, “Did he just say that?”
“Yes, he did,” Stephanie said.
Goodnight, Seattle 🔱 pic.twitter.com/rhSDctUEAF
— MLB (@MLB) October 11, 2025
Todd said he would talk to his son about cleaning it up a bit, but deep down he decided it was apropos, given the brotherhood of catchers and the unexpected nature of the Mariners’ success.
So, after almost five hours of baseball Friday night, before the team left the field, the splendor of victory still in full bloom, a Mariners’ staff member handed Raleigh a microphone and asked him to address the house.
“Might as well go win the whole f—ing thing!” he shouted.
The crowd roared with delight. As he has done often in this Year of Cal, Raleigh delivered again.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Cal Raleigh’s Star Shines Brightest in Mariners’ Epic ALDS Triumph .
