Take me to the diamond, lead me through the turnstile, shower me with data that I never thought to compile now we're freely now a scorecard with a cracker

jacket of smile that did they while hello and welcome to episode 2390 of effectivelyively Wild, the Fangraphs Baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters.

I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs and I am joined by Ben Lindberg of the ringer. Ben, how are you?

Well, I'm doing fine. I have very little personally at stake.

But what I want to know is, how are you?

Because we are recording in the hours, yet again, immediately preceding the most consequential game in your life as a fan.

It's probably fair to say.

The games just keep getting more consequential as they go on.

So how you feeling? You know, not great,

candidly. I figured. And not just in a general nerves sort of way, but in, uh, uh, what does the future

hold for the mariners. I mean, I guess more generally, but for the mariners in particular at this juncture.

And so I feel unwell. I feel ill at ease. And, you know, once again, just wishing I understood the contours of magic a little bit better.

And also maybe hockey. I wish I understood hockey better because apparently Vladimir Grewir Jr. who has had very few missteps this entire postseason

got to the ballpark today in a Toronto Maple Leafs jersey. And I'm going to, I'm given to understand that they haven't had a good time of things. Yeah. Is that going to have an influence? Is he doing like a counter jinks? Is this like an Uno reverse sort of situation, actually? Like put all the bad vibe on the, on the jersey you're not wearing for the night. Is that how it, I don't know, I don't know how

magic works. I don't know how infield defense works, but neither do the Mariners, maybe.

Base running sometimes, too. That's also not entirely clear to them at all times.

Yeah, I mean, in that game, that was less an issue than the double play ball.

Splitters more confounding than base running.

But I think that mostly what I would say, and this feels lousy, this is perhaps the worst feeling

you can have about the team you want to win.

They deserve to lose that game.

They deserve to lose Game Six. They deserve to lose Game Six.

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