Montreal vs.Seattle

Yesterday, I touched on the 1994 Major League Baseball season in which one of many forgotten pieces was the success that season of the Montreal Expos.  Of course, the Expos had the best record in baseball that year, but never made it to the playoffs because of a premature end to the season due to a strike.  The Expos had only made the playoffs one time in their history (1981, also strike-shortened), and would lose the only playoff series of which it participated.  They would never win a National League Pennant, and after the 2004 season, they relocated to Washington D.C. where they have continued to keep that streak alive.

While the former Expos, now known as the Nationals, are the oldest franchise never to win a pennant, there remains one other team that never has, the Seattle Mariners.  The Nationals franchise is still eight years older (1969)  than the Mariners (1977), so they will continue to keep the longest active drought.  However, let's look past the actual franchises to the cities of Montreal and Seattle themselves. 

Montreal had spent 36 seasons with the Expos, and 36 years without a Pennant.  When the Expos relocated to Washington D.C., the streak of 36 seasons stopped, but still maintained the record.  Meanwhile, Seattle has slowly been creeping up the last seven years from the confines of Safeco Field.  The Mariners have been playing baseball in Seattle for 35 years, and never have won a Pennant.  At first glance, Seattle might look like they are only one year behind the dubious Montreal record.  

However, the Mariners were not the first franchise to play in Seattle, more or less the first to lose in Seattle.  Eight years prior to the Mariners, an expansion franchise known as the Seattle Pilots joined the American League (same year as the Expos).  They record one last place finished before relocating to Milwaukee, and were renamed the Brewers.  Therefore, Montreal and Seattle are tied for the longest active droughts without a Pennant at 36 years a piece.  If the Mariners can avoid winning one more year (and the Angels and Rangers would seem to imply they can), Seattle will hold the distinction of the city with the most baseball seasons to never have seen a team win a Pennant.

The Mariners have had a long history of futility.  The Tampa Bay Rays are thought of as being an expansion club that shouldn't have been because of their ten horrible years of existence prior to winning a Pennant in 2008.  However, the Mariners would have put the Rays to shame with their history.  As mentioned, the Mariners have completed 35 seasons.  From 1977-1993 (17 years), the Mariners had only two winning records with a mere 82 and 83 wins in those seasons.  They never finished higher than 4th (out of seven) in the old American League West, and therefore never sniffed the playoffs.

Towards the end of that run, the Mariners began to find franchise players.  Ken Griffey Jr., Randy Johnson, Edgar Martinez, Jamie Moyer, Alex Rodriguez began to show their faces.  When baseball split two divisions into three (also 1994), the Mariners began to win.  They won their first two division titles in 1995 and 1997, making their first two playoff appearances subsequently.  In 1995, they made it to Game 6 of the League Championship Series before falling short to the Yankees.

The wheels came loose after that, and Randy Johnson was traded away in 1998, Ken Griffey Jr. after 1999.  The Mariners would win their first and only wild card in 2000, only to lose in Game 6 of the ALCS once more.  Despite the departure of then free agent Alex Rodriguez, the Mariners put together their best team in franchise history, and one of the best teams ever in the history of the game.  Ichiro Suzuki became the new face of the franchise, and led the Mariners to tying the MLB record for wins in a season: 116.  Once again, the ALCS proved two much, and for the second year in a row, the Yankees would end their season.

While it's hard to imagine a 116-win team not coming together the following year, the Mariners were never the game, and in the ten years since have only finished as high as second (twice) in the four team AL West.  It's hard to imagine a team that has seen as many super stars in the last twenty years could be one of only two franchises never to play in the World Series, but that has been the case.

Most readers here know I've only recently moved to the Seattle here.  While I'll attend games, and cheer for the Mariners casually, who would have thought I could witness baseball history this year, and Seattle could become the longest running baseball city never to witness a World Series.  It's been 36 long years in the Pacific Northwest for baseball, what's one more?

One interesting side note, the NFL's Seattle Seahawks have been around one year longer than the Mariners, meaning they already have a streak of 36 seasons without winning a Super Bowl.  That leaves them as the 4th oldest NFL franchise never to win a Super Bowl or NFL Championship (Vikings, Falcons, and Bengals being the three others).