'It should be a national holiday': Seattle Mariners welcome fans back

Baseball returns in full swing in Seattle Thursday, April 1.

The Seattle Mariners are welcoming 9,000 fans back to the ballpark for the team's opening day match against the San Francisco Giants.

In March, Washington state officials said sports venues to reopen to in-person fans but only at 25 percent capacity.

The Mariners quickly sold out tickets for the opening game and the entire three-game series against the Giants.

It's just one more sign that the state and nation are slowly trying to return to normal.

But "normal" may mean another so-so season for the Mariners.

"Sorry, folks," says KUOW Morning Edition host Angela King. "I've got to keep it real."

Whatever this season holds for the Mariners — still the only team in Major League Baseball that has never played in the World Series — fans are just happy to be back in the stands.

That goes without saying for Rick Rizzs, who is ready for his 36th season as the team's announcer.

"As far as I'm concerned, it should be a national holiday," Rizzs says.

He was still the voice of the Mariners' last season, but he was talking to a less than animated crowd at T-Mobile Park. Raucous fans were replaced with cardboard cutouts, and their cheers and jeers were merely recordings.

Suffice to say, it wasn't the same for the players or for Rizzs.

"It was very strange. You saw all these wonderful frozen faces in the stands, with a big smile or going into a cheer," he recalls. "But now, I can't wait to see 9,000 people out there, you know, making the noise and getting excited and yelling and screaming for their baseball team."

Rizzs won't be traveling with the team this season, as was the case in 2020. He's counting the days until he gets a step closer to the old ways of the job; he says he'll get his first dose of a coronavirus vaccine on April 9.

His son, Nick, three grandkids and his cat, Sparky, kept him busy in the off-season, he says. But being pulled away from the career as he's known it for the 47 years he's worked in baseball, that just felt wrong.

"When you have it taken away from an un-seeable foe, like a virus, there's just this tremendous void in your life," he says. "I'm sitting here watching 'The Price Is Right,' and I'm thinking there's something wrong. Nothing wrong with 'The Price Is Right,' but I should be at the ballpark."

Well, he'll be there Thursday night at 7:10 p.m. to call what he hopes will be a winning opener for the Mariners.

And, for the record, Rizzs is expecting an exciting season.

"I think we're going to get to the playoffs real soon. Hopefully, it's this year, because I think they have the players to do it," he says. "It would be really nice to see everyone go home tonight with a victory. Because, it seems like, when you win on opening day, it seems like it's worth 10 wins."