TORONTO — Every so often in the Seattle Mariners clubhouse, the “Top Gun Anthem,” full of soaring guitar notes and pick-me-up vibes, will randomly blast from inside a locker. Everyone knows the culprit. Jorge Polanco, the Mariners’ veteran second baseman, is not a fan of silencing his phone.
The Mariners’ dominant position is in large part thanks to a 32-year-old infielder whose feats have earned him the right to be called Iceman himself — and yet that’s not the nickname Polanco wears these days.
Particularly considering that last winter Polanco didn’t know whether he would be healthy enough to keep hitting major league pitching. Polanco, who had struggled for years with left knee issues, underwent surgery last October to repair his patellar tendon. A free agent, Polanco drew limited interest on the market and wound up re-signing with the Mariners for one year and $7.75 million.
“It’s been a journey, man,” Polanco said. “That’s the way I can put it. I wouldn’t say it’s been bad. I wouldn’t say it’s been easy. I think God just prepared me for this year. I’ve been hurt a little bit, so, yeah, but now we here and I’m glad to be back.
And then came the fifth-inning blast off Toronto reliever Louis Varland, who fed a 98-mph fastball over the plate and watched it leave the bat at 105.2 mph, flying 400 feet to turn a 3-3 tie into a 6-3 Mariners lead.
“He’s always been a great hitter,” Mariners manager Dan Wilson said. “His swing right now is very short. That ball tonight, I wasn’t sure it was going to go out of the ballpark, but I think he’s just getting that kind of spin on it right now where it stays up.”
That is no accident. Polanco arrived in the major leagues with Minnesota at 20, a bat-to-ball savant whose ability to hit from both sides of the plate carved him out a regular role with the Twins.
“He wasn’t George Bonds before,” Garver said. “He was Harry Potter. Because he was a wizard. He’d just make hits appear.”
“Throughout the years, I hated going to Minnesota just solely because of him,” said shortstop J.P. Crawford, the longest-tenured Mariner. “The guy single-handedly beat us so many times. We all know the type of player he is when he is healthy, and it’s clearly showing right now.”
Never in the game’s 150-year history had a player logged three consecutive game-winning hits after the fifth inning in the postseason. It’s the sort of performance teams need to win pennants — and championships. As brilliant as Raleigh has been in a could-be-MVP campaign and as conflagrant as Julio Rodriguez was in the second half and as dominant as Seattle’s pitching has been en route to this point, winning playoff baseball takes more.
Like, say, a guy who over the winter was an afterthought hitting cleanup and never wavering, even in the highest-leverage situations.
“What’s most impressive is bouncing back after a rough year last year,” said Bryan Woo, who will start Game 3 on Wednesday against Toronto’s Shane Bieber. “Especially for a guy on his second team, back half of his career. To do what he’s doing — get healthy, come back, help the team like he has — is even more impressive than just playing good baseball.”
Playing good baseball helps too. Polanco has helped get Seattle in a place that barely a month ago looked impossible to conceive. From mid-August to early September, the Mariners lost 13 of 18, trailed Houston by 3½ games in the AL West and held a half-game lead on Texas for the final wild-card spot. From there, the Mariners went 17-4, won the West, earned a first-round bye and charted a course for history.
They’re not there. And yet even Polanco admitted that Mariners players can’t ignore the team’s history and recognize what it would mean to get to the World Series.
“But he loves Maverick and Iceman,” Mariners star Cal Raleigh said.
“He’s George Bonds,” M’s catcher Mitch Garver said.
“You just have to have faith. You overcome. Come back stronger.”