On a day when the energy hovered between low and “I’ve felt better in my life” and their eyes felt a little fuzzy from minimal sleep and maximum celebration, the Mariners rolled out a lineup similar to a mid-March Cactus League road game for Saturday afternoon.

SEATTLE – The man they call “Mr. Mariner” was ready for the celebratory night that had been 21 years in the making.

SEATTLE – After 21 long years of frustration and failures, of close calls and coming up just short, of spring trainings filled with hope and offseasons spent with regret, of entire careers without champagne celebration for King Felix and Kyle Seager, of so much change, including three general managers, eight managers and two interim managers, of hundreds of players, who were good, bad or Chone Figgins, of “Believe Big” to “True to the Blue” to “Sea Us Rise,” the Seattle Mariners are finally returning to the playoffs.

SEATTLE – All signs are pointing to Julio Rodriguez returning from the injured list Monday, just in time to play in the final few regular-season games before the Mariners’ first potential playoff series since 2001.

And now the number is one.

It wasn't supposed to happen this way. When people envisioned the long-awaited end of the Mariners' interminable playoff drought, I suspect they foresaw them strutting in with a blaze of glory. It was going to be a smooth ride to the finish, capped by the wild clubhouse celebration that everyone has been dreaming about for, oh, two decades. 

SEATTLE – Maybe it was the “show-and-go” philosophy of their Little League days that helped them remember that baseball is supposed to be fun.

Here’s the thing about stretches of bad baseball. You can change the venue. You can change the opponent. You can even change the pregame routine, walk-up songs, the uniforms or any superstition that might seem relevant.

For La Piedra, it was the feeling of la familia that made him want to eschew the flexibility of his looming free agency and commit to the Mariners for the next five years and perhaps beyond.

The baseball popped off Eugenio Suarez’s bat, over the wall in left field and ricocheted off an advertising sign some 400 feet from the plate, just missing one of the Kauffman Stadium fountains.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – What … was … that?