Hey, Mariners: Play well in Game 7. A group of seniors in Rockwood Retirement want an end to ‘perpetual disappointment’

Jo Anthony, 79, got distracted on her way to watch the Mariners game with a friend at the bar at Rockwood Retirement center on the South Hill.

“I’m sorry, I was on my way down and I saw a rainbow,” she said to her friend Kathy Meritt, who had claimed a cushioned seat before the first pitch.

After sharing pictures of the rainbow, the two quickly decided it was a good omen for the game ahead. With a lot on the line for Sunday night’s game, a Mariners win advancing them to their first World Series appearance, the M’s could use all the luck they could get.

The Mariners played the Toronto Blue Jays in Game 6 of the Amerian League Championship Series, deciding who would ascend to the World Series against the defending-champion Los Angeles Dodgers.

“We’d be elated,” Merritt, 77, said of watching the M’s in their first World Series, immediately turning to make dinner plans with Anthony for the next game.

The Mariners’ loss means they’ll have to play the Blue Jays again on Monday – the anxiety-inducing, nail-biting, World-Series-deciding playoff Game 7. The loss just adds an extra sprinkle of uncertainty to long-suffering Mariners fans now watching from Rockwood Retirement, a senior living facility on the South Hill.

One such fan, 83-year-old Linda Shortell is a “diehard” Mariners gal.

“Oh, it would be just wonderful; I would be so happy,” Shortell said, throwing up her hands in elation at the thought of the Mariners playing in the World Series. “My grown kids would be just so happy.”

She’s rooted for the team since they were conceived in Seattle in 1977, while she was raising a family in Spokane.

“I have three sons, and they were always into baseball growing up, and when Seattle got a baseball team, we just kind of fell into it,” Shortell said, recalling going to games in the original Kingdome, demolished in 2000.

She started really getting into the game when the Mariners were in their prime in the late ’90s and early 2000s, recalling with a smile the hits of Edgar Martinez, who in 1995 hit “The Double” that spurred support for Seattle baseball, considered by some to have “saved the Mariners.”

One of her fondest memories is attending Martinez’s last game in 2004, in which he was honored for his contributions to the team and legacy of Seattle baseball. She went with her whole family, who later gave her a disc recording of Martinez’s recognition and a photo album from the game.

Since the glory days of 1995, 1997 and 2001, when the Mariners last won reached the ALCS, she’s shared many M fans’ “perpetual disappointment” in the team, but still tuning in and sending commentary to her family’s text message group chat.

“But this year’s a different year,” Shortell said.

Shortell sat in one of the community’s common spaces next to her friend Margaret Phillips, 93. The two have occupied these seats for every game this season, and they’ll be there again Monday night, approaching the game with the same optimism and hope they carried throughout Sunday’s game, even when the Mariners were four runs behind in the seventh inning.

Across the facility at the bar, Meritt and Anthony carried the same guarded optimism.

“We have to be positive; the rainbow,” Anthony cautioned at the groans of watchers at each run for the Blue Jays.

Meritt has been a Mariners fan for over a decade, used to watching the games with her late husband. At the time, two players shared the names of their sons, so the couple would joke that their kids were up to bat, she laughed. Some of her sisters root for the Mariners in Seattle, others from their condos in Spokane.

“Now I enjoy it, because I can hear it, and it’s easy to watch part of it and pick up the rest later,” she said. “And it’s a social activity.”

Meritt and Anthony became fast friends, both relatively new to the retirement community and already swapping banter over each other and the game. Anthony grew up watching teams around the San Francisco Bay, so rooting for the Mariners is an adjustment, but one she’s willing to make.

“I’m picking it back up again, more in-person because I get to sit with Kathy, who’s guzzling beers,” she teased, the two of them each nursing half of a bottle of Michelob Ultra, split between the two of them.

The pair picked their favorite Mariners players to root for, Meritt going with Cal “The Big Dumper” Raleigh for his nickname and, of course, batting skills. New to the Mariners, Anthony went with center-fielder Julio Rodríguez, rolling the Rs in his name each time he was on camera.

“He’s got those green eyes,” she said.

Though disappointed by the Mariners’ loss Sunday, it’s not the end of the line yet. The same loyal seniors will take the same seats at Rockwood for Monday’s game, carrying with them the same optimism needed to withstand decades of that “perpetual disappointment” from the Ms.

As for the rainbow, maybe that was a sign.

“We’ve been waiting so long, the least they could do is produce a miracle,” Phillips said.