Originally Published: January 31, 2012
Updated: March 31, 2020
I got to thinking about this when I was thinking about how much the Mariners suck (thinking about how much the Mariners suck is something I do quite a bit, in proportion to all the times I think about the Mariners in general). Did you know you could count all of the times the Mariners have been in the playoffs on one hand? That is, if you’ve got at least four fingers on that hand.
Four times. Dating all the way back to 1977! And out of those four seasons, zero resulted in a world championship.
Which got me to wondering: what the hell went wrong those four times?
Which got me to further wondering: what the hell went wrong with all those other times all those other Seattle teams made the playoffs and failed in their ultimate goal?
The Seahawks have made the playoffs a somewhat-respectable number of times, however every time (except one!) they ended those seasons with a loss. Dating back to the 1976 season, again not great, Bob!
The Sonics are the only other team in Seattle professional sports history to win it all. Yet, they made the playoffs 22 times in their history. 1 championship in 22 playoff attempts … not the best figure in the world. 22 out of 41 seasons, by the way, is a 54% Playoff Rate, by far the best of the big three (just to show you where the success was in Seattle sports history, and why their theft is so tragic).
Out of those big three, we’re talking about 2 championships in over 125 overall seasons. So, in essence, I have a potentially-unlimited number of posts to get to if I want to chronicle every time a professional Seattle team blew it when it mattered most (especially considering I’m apparently only writing one of these a year on average).
Since they have the fewest, I’ll start with the Mariners and work my way through the Seahawks and Sonics as I have a free day. And, if I feel up to it, I might add some posts targeting Husky basketball losses in the NCAA Tournament, and even some posts about Husky football bowl defeats. Because who ever said futility starts and stops with the Pros?
Seattle Mariners
Seattle Seahawks
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