Seattle’s Emotional Sports Roller Coaster Shows Golden Age May Be Just on the Horizon
Monday night featured a pair of men named John Schneider who could directly impact, or already had, the future of Seattle sports. Who could, if the gods of games desired, usher in a golden era the likes of which Seattle and its athletic landscape has never before seen.
Neither John Schneider, in this instance, was the most famous of all John Schneiders. That would be the actor/country music singer John Schneider. To those of a certain age, especially outside of greater Seattle, Bo Duke from will always reign supreme—at least in the case of John Schneider supremacy. But to anyone under 50, living and breathing Seattle sports, Bo Duke was no hazard on Monday night.
Instead, a metropolis known for many things—but not any sort of sports supremacy, especially from multiple teams in multiple sports winning and building momentum at the same time—turned its eyes to two games and two John Schneiders and a future that looked bountiful. At least for anyone who dared to dream in a city where that hasn’t worked out well, not in sports, for, well, ever.
At 5:10 p.m. local time, the Mariners would begin Game 7 of the American League Championship Series against Toronto. John Schneider, baseball version, is at the end of his third season as the Blue Jays’ permanent manager after spending part of 2022 as the interim. If the Mariners toppled the baseball Schneider, they would advance to the first World Series in franchise history.
At 7 p.m., also local, the Seahawks would kick off a contest against the Texans. Their general manager, the football John Schneider, has raised expectations for Seattle’s football team all fall. A big win—on the sport’s grandest regular-season stage—would cement the notion that has been percolating. That these Hawks are the best version of a professional football team in town since, well, that Super Bowl they lost 10 years ago.
If both games featuring a John Schneider went well for the Emerald City’s sports denizens, then a true golden age of sports in Seattle could dawn, in full. To write that before Monday’s first pitch in Toronto or kickoff in Seattle was tantamount to daring those gods of games. Whomever they are, wherever they are, they’ve never treated Seattle kindly.
The Seahawks played their first football season in 1976. The Mariners played their inaugural baseball season in ’77. And yet, from the ’77 sports calendar through the 2024 iteration, both teams have never won a postseason game in the same season. Not even once.
Would that pattern take a step toward ending Monday night via two games featuring two John Schneiders? At 3:40 p.m. local, there is only hope from greater-Seattle sports fans. Hope that this time will be different. That a true golden age will dawn Tuesday morning, after the Hawks announced themselves as true Super Bowl contenders and the Mariners made their first World Series.
What could possibly go wrong?
2 p.m. PST: Golden age or missed golden opportunity?
The Seahawks’ John Schneider receives a text message from , laying out the premise for this story. He asks if he can call “on the way home.” Of course he can.
Schneider worked in this market in 2000 (as the Seahawks director of player personnel), left and returned in 2010 as the Hawks’ general manager and vice president. Which is to say that he understands the city, the history, what has been and what was possible Monday night, what is possible in the months and years ahead. The Seahawks don’t make back-to-back Super Bowls in the mid-2010s without him. They don’t do what the Mariners are trying to do—win that elusive first championship—without him, either.
As the starts of two critical games in two sports featuring two JS’s drew nearer, “golden age” needed to be defined. Consider the antithesis to this piece I wrote in 2008—where no less authority than Sir Mix-A-Lot described a putrid Seattle sports scene as —the baseline for one. A golden age of Seattle sports, then, would feature all local teams moving in the right direction, with at least two headed toward or at the top of their respective sports.
Next, research. In the Mariners’ 49-season baseball history, the club made the ALCS four separate times, including this season. The others: 1995, 2000 and ’01. In those long-ago football seasons, the Seahawks finished 8–8 (third in the AFC West), 6–10 (fourth) and 9–7 (second) respectively. They didn’t move to the NFC until ’02.
The Mariners didn’t make baseball’s playoffs from that historic 2001 season until ’22. The Seahawks didn’t make their playoffs from 1988, where they lost in the wild-card round, until ’99 (same round, also lost). They didn’t make the playoffs again until 2003—loss, same round—meaning their droughts coincided, directly, with the best seasons in Mariners history. The Hawks subsequent runs—’03 through ’07 under Mike Holmgren; ’12 through ’16 under Pete Carroll and, yes, the football John Schneider—fell squarely inside the Mariners’ two-decades-plus postseason drought, which grew to be the longest in professional sports.
When that mercifully ended, the Seahawks even made a playoff appearance the same season. They lost in wild-card round, played early in 2023, and haven’t been back since.
Seattle sports, in other words, could have nice seasons. Just not too many at the same time. Which prevented any golden age, however defined, from truly blooming.
2:40 p.m.: A city braces for heartbreak
Downtown Seattle bustled with magnitude, sports fandom and uncommonly high stakes for a Monday in mid-October. The highest, I’d argue, that this sports scene had ever held on a random weekday this late into any given year. The Seattle Storm had made the WNBA playoffs before being eliminated on Sept. 18. The Washington football program holds a 5–2 record as of this Monday, its only losses against traditional Big Ten powers in Ohio State (ranked No. 1 when UW hosted the Buckeyes late last month) and Michigan (yes, unranked but also last weekend and on the road). The Mariners were still playing baseball on Oct. 20, right as the Seahawks seemed to be rounding into midseason form.
I drove through the stadium district, around T-Mobile Park, which would host a watch party for Game 7 on Monday evening, and around Lumen Field, where the Hawks would kick off roughly two hours after the baseball started. I stopped to talk to anyone who seemed interesting, in light of two games and two JS’s on Monday night.
For once, the local sports scene was in mid-October conflict. There were Steve Largent jerseys among Cal Raleigh ones. One man stood waiting for the light near the Ken Griffey Jr. statue on First Avenue, wearing a No. 16 Tyler Lockett jersey and a Mariners ballcap. Vendors had already set up on Edgar Martinez Dr. S. or Occidental Ave. Local watering holes with televisions—I stopped inside four of them—each planned to show both games Monday night.
Parking twice meant those four stops and four attempted conversations with local sports fans. None would touch this golden age and whether it might dawn in the next seven hours or so. It was like no one dared jinx the possibilities. (At , we live with one of the most notable jinxes in sports. Perhaps the non-answers stemmed from that.)
Of note: On the drive back to the suburbs east of downtown Seattle, traffic thickened. As if everyone who worked downtown also understood Monday’s stakes. As if those who couldn’t swing a ticket for either stadium’s event on Monday night, surely weren’t going to miss either game on television.
2:57 p.m.: Seattle’s near-golden ages
Mid-stadium route, I sent a text message to Danny O’Neil, a friend and former colleague who, per my recollection, understood Seattle sports as well as anyone. His Substack always teaches me something about this landscape I didn’t know before. I asked for his take on my research, the golden age, those Monday night sports stakes extending far beyond the NFL’s loudest stadium.
For once.
O’Neil pointed out 2000, when the Mariners went to the ALCS and the football Huskies won the Rose Bowl on Jan. 1, 2001. He also noted 1995, when the M’s made the ALCS (for the first time ever)—and the 1995–96 Seattle Supersonics would advance to the NBA Finals. He wasn’t arguing those were that, only informing with what he knew.
Consider those years the best candidates for any golden age of Seattle sports. This is not that. The possibilities seem higher; the baseball-football momentum, without precedent; the entire landscape moving in the same direction, not just pieces.
4:06 p.m.: Seahawks’ John Schneider relationship with “special” in Seattle
Seattle’s John Schneider did call Monday. He was en route to Lumen Field for the Monday Night affair and willing to entertain questions on building sports momentum in Seattle and famous John Schneiders of all sports/standing. He pointed, right away, to 2010, when he came back to Seattle and Pete Carroll arrived and Seahawks moments without precedent were set in motion.
“O.K., we’re gonna have this stadium rocking, we’re gonna build this team,” the men who changed Seattle’s sports landscape told each other then.
They carried, the football Schneider says, the chip familiar to those steeped in West Coast football with them. There is no better time zone in which to watch football—to watch sports, really. Schneider had already noticed the franchise’s momentum culled from the Mike Holmgren–Tim Ruskell pairing from 2005 through ’09. Seattle’s JS had wanted to come back earlier than ’10. “I tried getting a shot [at GM, when the team hired Ruskell] really badly,” the football JS says. “Like, I wanted to get back [to Seattle], because of the people in the building and the fan base.”
He believed the Seahawks could carry the same heft that the Packers did in Green Bay, near where the football Schneider grew up and where he spent the bulk of his pre-Seahawks-GM career. “Watching the Mariners, the intensity of the fans is really what brings [those memories] back for me,” he says Monday. “That’s what drives us to do what we do, trying to make their team(s) incredible. I get that feeling watching the Mariners.”
For the Seahawks, notes the football JS, 2012 marked the season when seemed possible, even imminent. That wasn’t a Super Bowl team. But those Hawks did finish 11–5. They did make the postseason. Did batter their division’s winner, San Francisco, in the regular season’s penultimate game, winning 42–13. “I just remember thinking, at that time, we’re gonna beat San Francisco, we’re gonna go to Atlanta and we’re gonna beat those guys. These [Seahawks] are buying into what Pete’s preaching. They dig each other. This could be … .”
Like these Mariners in 2025.
5:18 p.m.: The Mariners game begins
In these John Schneider wars on Monday night, the Mariners struck first. Julio Rodríguez doubled to start the game and scored when Josh Naylor—already worthy of a Mariners statue?—sent him home. This, to Seattle sports fans, feels too good to be true.
Seattle’s John Schneider is not a Mariners expert. But he did catch a few games recently for the baseball team that plays in a stadium across the street in what’s known as SoDo—south of downtown—or Seattle’s stadium district. He saw a team that played for each other; an elite everyman who could be rallied around in catcher Cal Raleigh and, potentially, a postseason catalyst similar to Marshawn Lynch for the Hawks in 2012.
“He was ours,” football JS says, referring to Lynch, while pointing to the M’s midseason acquisition of Naylor from Arizona in late July. “Players loved [Marshawn]. They didn’t want to let him down. I just see that from [Naylor].
“I could be totally wrong,” he adds.
5:37 p.m.: Blue Jays strike back
John Schneider’s Blue Jays, loaded with bats, even the score in the bottom of the first. But fold? Not these M’s. In the very next inning, two more batters reach base, and they’re moved by a bunt from J.P. Crawford into scoring position. In Seattle last week, Toronto put on a bunt clinic of sorts, especially in its Game 4 victory.
This turn toward artful baseball indicated that Seattle would not shrink under such stakes. But the set-up yielded no runs.
The Seahawks’ John Schneider has never met the Blue Jays’ John Schneider. The football JS, however, has met Bo Duke. As a fan, this marked a life highlight for the football general manager. It happened “about 10 years ago” when Bo/John attended a Hawks game amid Seattle’s football rebuild. Two John Schneiders spoke briefly that night in the tunnel at the football stadium.
“Wow, people really don’t like you on Twitter, man,” the actor/singer John Schneider told the John Schneider who built football teams. “They don’t like me, either,” the Bo Duke JS added.
As for the Blue Jays manager, the Seahawks exec says they do have mutual friends in common. All sounded the same theme, that his baseball managing counterpart is a “great guy, really good dude.”
6:01 p.m.: Mariners take the lead
Juuuuulllliiiiiooooo. The brightest, youngest star—he is 24; Raleigh, 28—in the Mariners’ suddenly budding constellation of baseball talent saw an 85-mph slider and swung that sweet, natural swing to give the M’s a 2–1 lead. His fourth home run this postseason traveled 423 feet into Mariners postseason lore.
Which, of course, is neither glorious nor expansive. At least for one more night.
6:40 p.m.: The Big Dumper goes yard
My 8-year-old boy yelled from the next room over. “Daddy, home run!” He was right. It’s from Raleigh, the Mariners’ MVP this season, to expand the lead to 3–1 in the fifth. Attempts were made to explain how unusual this concept is—Game 7, ALCS, real, actual cushion—but the boy knows only winning baseball. This is what he .
7:04 p.m.: Mariners hold the line
Was that Bryan Woo, pitching for the second time this series and since a late-season injury shelving? Yes. And did he really strike out Vladimir Guerrero Jr. to preserve that two-run lead?
Anything seemed possible at this point on Monday night.
7:32 p.m.: Disaster strikes
The Seahawks have taken a 7–0 lead across the street from the baseball stadium where Mariners fans watch Game 7 on the big screens. The roars volleyed back and forth.
Until! Bottom of the seventh, Game 7, Mariners perched nine perilous outs from the—have you heard?—first World Series appearance in franchise history. Woo was still on the mound. The Blue Jays put a runner on first, then runners on first and second. Out went Woo. To the plate came George Springer—the most booed of all the , as the 8-year-old calls them, because Springer played for the hated Astros before the Blue Jays, winning a World Series and WS MVP in 2017, in year 16 of the M’s drought, amid the yet-to-be-revealed sign-stealing scandal down in Houston.
His three-run home run gave Toronto its first lead Monday night. Score one for baseball John Schneider, who adeptly managed his pitching staff, starters and bullpen throughout this series. Mariners manager Dan Wilson, meanwhile, faced with increasingly difficult decisions for his tired bullpen Monday night, kept Woo in—and perhaps two batters too long.
Suddenly, the Mariners, in their first-ever ALCS Game 7, were down to their last six outs. Of the game, sure. But also for 2025.
Anyone who said that of course this would happen didn’t know the history. The Mariners had never reached such stakes. Win or lose, the magical season that was still counted. And yet, this close? Against guy?
The gods of games can, of course, be cruel.
7:40 p.m.
. After Crawford grounded out to short.
7:41 p.m.
. After Eugenio Suárez, Game 5 hero, struck out looking.
7:43 p.m.
. After Randy Arozarena also grounded out.
7:49 p.m.
About those gods. The boy had all but given up, consigned to the Blizzard that was marked either for his celebration or consolation prize. The Mariners’ bullpen appeared as tired as it should have been. In came Andrés Muñoz, Señor Smoke, as dependable a pitcher as exists in that Seattle bullpen. Two more runners. First and third. Disaster appeared imminent.
But! A line drive shot from a Blue Jays bat lasered into Nailor’s glove at first, enabling an easy double play that was anything but to enable escaping the eighth inning without any more runs added by Toronto.
7:55 p.m.
Top of nine. Three outs remaining in this magical 2025 season.
7:56 p.m.
.
7:58 p.m.
.
7:59 p.m.: Mariners go down swinging
Rodríguez strode to the plate. Raleigh stood in the on-deck circle. One strike. Two strikes. The count, 2–2. The count, full. The boy curled up in anticipation. Strike three. He sighed.
No shame in that. No shame in this Mariners season, nor what it projected next season and in others, near-term.
Cameras flashed to Rodríguez in the dugout. Tears welled in his eyes. The 8-year-old did not cry. His history doesn’t run deep enough yet.
“This is sad,” the 8-year-old says, wisely. “But they were close, so close, to history.”
The baseball John Schneider celebrated on his home field in Toronto, having just clinched the Blue Jays’ first World Series appearance since 1993. The Seahawks took a 14–0 lead across the street from an instantly dejected T-Mobile Park and would go on to win 27–19. Springer was on TV, detailing all the things that made him happy. Perhaps others threw up in their mouths right then.
Regardless, Monday night and the battle of John Schneiders may still end up as the dawn of the first true golden era for Seattle sports. That will be answered by the Seahawks this season and the entire landscape, Hawks and M’s included, in the years ahead.
If not, at least wait-’til-next-year is already the baseline. And signs for an unprecedented, all-around surge remain—young talent, all over; additional resources, in all places—just not with a World Series payoff Monday night.
“Can I turn on Netflix?” the boy asks. Of course. His winning baseball team has plenty of games ahead.
The clearest winner Monday night: John Schneiders.