Mary Oliver recaps a 7-1 Mariners loss to the Rangers

The world is full of many good things, none of which were contained in today’s Mariners 7-1 loss to the Rangers, but many good things nonetheless. In praise, then, of goodness, of beauty, of things that are not watching the 2026 Mariners continue to fail and frustrate and fail again. (That’s right, readers, we have reached the part of the season where I’m in my Mary Oliver era. It’s a summer benchmark: Solstice parade, Fourth of July, the Mariners play such bad baseball Kate cries into her MFA degree.)

Realistically, this game was over in the first inning, which at least frees up a lot of time for thinking about nicer things, like the life cycle of cicadas or how the beauty of every flower is also a reminder of the fleeting nature of life. Right after Angie opined, very poetically herself, that part of healing is returning to the site of the wound—in this case, the place where Woo’s road troubles began, in big old, mean old Texas—in a flash of poetic injustice, Woo left a fastball right in Wyatt Langford’s kitchen for a one-out double. Ezequiel Duran followed, taking advantage of a sweeper in the same location for an RBI “triple” that was mostly some poor fielding by fill-in center fielder Luke Raley and poorer backup by Dominic Canzone.

Perhaps the game would have taken a different path had Woo been able to cap the damage there, but Woo instead made things harder for himself, losing Brandon Nimmo to a walk despite having him in an 0-2 count. He then gave up a bad-luck ground ball double down the left field line to Evan Carter that allowed Duran to score and pushed Nimmo to third; Nimmo would later score on an RBI groundout to put the Mariners in an early 0-3 hole.

But have you considered: the perfect orb of a bumblebee nosing along in beachside bull thistle? A clutch of tiny wild huckleberries, jewel deep and plump? Or the bright blue of a mussel shell, barnacled and broken but still shining in the summer sun? Or perhaps the inky emerald green of seaweed fluttering gently on the waves, sea-tossed and shimmering? Because these things also exist in the world with the 2026 Mariners, and are much nicer to contemplate.

The Rangers continued to pour it on in the second inning, despite a quick two outs. Joc Pederson singled, and then, humiliatingly, stole second, which allowed him to score on a Langford double, because once again Woo tried to pitch him inside and Langford just pulled it down the left-field line. Duran followed with his second hit of the day, an RBI single to put the Mariners in a 0-5 hole.

A poem should always have birds in it, says Mary Oliver. A person wants to stand in a happy place, in a poem. I do not have a happy place to stand in today’s recap for you, reader, because nothing good happened in this game. But I can offer you a bird from my walk in the park today: a great blue heron, with a fringe of slate blue feathers, elegant pinprick legs perched on driftwood; and better, I can offer you a child looking at the bird, pointing look looklook as the heron opened its wings and rose, sudden and impossible, and a child, at least, standing in a happy place.

I think this is the prettiest world—so long as you don’t mind
a little dying, how could there be a day in your whole life
That doesn’t have its splash of happiness?

The splash of happiness came in the fifth inning when the Mariners scored their only run of the game against Nathan Eovaldi, sitting pretty at under 70 pitches with six strikeouts. Luke Raley hit a solid single and J.P. Crawford – who recorded the Mariners’ first hit in the third – took advantage of a poorly located splitter, smashing it into the right-field corner for an RBI double. That would be the only hit the Mariners would record off the splitter. Eovaldi threw 38 splitters in the game. You can see where the math is going.

In the same poem (“Singapore”) where Mary Oliver talks about poems being full of trees and birds and happy places to stand, she also questions “If the world were only pain and logic, who would want it?” Sometimes you have to be a little illogical about a baseball team. So I am choosing to focus on Colt Emerson coming up with another hit today, and Cole Wilcox pitching yet another solid inning of relief. These things are not clipped on MLB dot com as highlights because they are not highlight to anyone but me. I think Mary Oliver would approve.

To his credit, Bryan Woo did bounce back and manage to give the Mariners five innings when it looked like he might not clear three. Postgame Woo talked about how you have to look at the good things you’ve done and how there’s still a lot of baseball left, which is troubling, because while it is a relief Woo is no longer beating himself up after bad outings, it suggests a certain kind of resignation that this is where we stand now. Not in a happy place.

The additional runs were courtesy of Nick Davila (and Wilcox, since he technically walked one of the runners who scored before being lifted for Davila). The Mariners, for their part, did not do anything against Texas’s bullpen when they finally came on the scene in the eighth. They totaled five hits all game. The Rangers had six hits in the first two innings. With the loss, and the Astros winning, they have now fallen into third place in the division. There is a lot of baseball left, yes, but there is also less baseball left than there was yesterday, and tomorrow, there will be even less baseball left. This, any Mary Oliver devotee knows, is the way of the world.

It’s a pretty world. So long as you don’t mind a little dying.