AL Wild Card Series: Seattle Mariners fans unveil the rally shoe
Mariners #Mariners
9:16 PM ET
Joon LeeESPN
Close Previously a Staff Writer at Bleacher ReportCornell University graduate
The rally cap is yesterday’s news. This is the rally shoe’s moment.
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When the Toronto Blue Jays led the Seattle Mariners 8-1 in the sixth inning of Game 2 of the AL Wild Card Series, Seattle possessed a 1% chance of winning, according to ESPN win probability. Those chances increased incrementally as the Mariners chipped away at the lead. Heading into the eighth inning, down 9-5, the odds of a Seattle victory increased to 3.1%. But the Mariners would need some postseason magic to win Saturday’s contest.
Enter the rally shoe.
At a Mariners watch party at T-Mobile Park in Seattle, a Mariners fan put a shoe on his head, a twist on the traditional rally cap, and found himself on the stadium Jumbotron as the game entered the eighth inning.
Not long after, the stadium’s official Twitter account was telling Mariners fans to put shoes on their heads.
And in the blink of an eye, the Mariners tied the score 9-9 on a J.P. Crawford three-run, eighth-inning double where Blue Jays shortstop Bo Bichette and outfielder George Springer collided in center field.
It wasn’t long until T-Mobile Park became a stadium filled with people wearing shoes on their heads. With the score tied in the top of the ninth, Mariners outfielder Adam Frazier hit a go-ahead RBI to give the Mariners a 10-9 lead that would send Seattle to an ALDS matchup with the Houston Astros.
The Mariners became the third team ever to come back from a seven-run deficit in a postseason game, joining the 2008 Boston Red Sox, who came back to beat the Rays down 7-0 in Game 5 of the ALCS, and the 1929 Philadelphia Athletics, who beat the Chicago Cubs in Game 4 of the 1929 World Series after trailing 8-0.
In 2022, teams were a combined 4-434 during the regular season when trailing by seven runs or more. In postseason history, road teams were previously 0-126 in games trailing by more than seven runs, making the Mariners the first ever team to accomplish the feat.
And with that, the legend of the rally shoe was born.