“WORLD SERIES, baby!”

That’s what Chad Lackey from Puyallup was yelling through blue-and-green confetti falling all around him just inside the home-plate gate.

A young boy was on his knees at a landing to the steps a few feet away. The kid was scooping up as much of the confetti as he could press against his little body.

Lackey and wife Lauri — “I’m the Mariners fan” who converted her husband from his native San Diego Padres, she said — were walking off the escalator that took them from the street entrance of the gate up to the main concourse of T-Mobile Park. It was just after 5 p.m. Thursday.

They were among the first fans into the park for what the Lackeys said was their 15th Mariners Opening Day. It was more than two hours before Logan Gilbert’s first pitch of the 2026 season, to the Cleveland Guardians.

For their latest Mariners opener, the Lackeys brought their 1-year-old grandson. They let his parents, their kids, come, too.

“First time,” Lauri said, proudly of her new grandson. “We are starting a tradition. We are going to bring him to the first game every year.”

Just a hunch what the first baseball words Grandpa may be teaching his grandson this spring into summer of massive expectations around Seattle.

“WORLD SERIES, baby!” Chad Lackey yelled again, this time to the first stadium usher that greeted him. “WORLD SERIES, baby!” he yelled to fellow fans behind him, also in navy-blue M’s gear.

A group of 20-something fans walking up the steps behind them began a chant: “Let’s go MAR-IN-ERS!”

Rick Mendez of Port Orchard walked off the escalator with his wife Lana. He was saying to everyone who could hear him: “Yeah! World Series!”

“It’s been a long time,” Rick Mendez told The News Tribune. “It’s our time!”

This time, it’s different.

This opening day to the Mariners’ 50th season was unlike any of the team’s previous 49 in Seattle. The fans, the talk, the vibe across the Pacific Northwest — heck, inside the M’s clubhouse — has undeniably advanced in the 12 months since the 2025 opener.

This time a year ago it was: Make the playoffs. Just “cautious optimism” among fans at the Mariners’ 2025 opener against the Athletics about the M’s making their first postseason in 21 years.

This time, it is: Expect something that’s never happened to the Mariners. Something Seattle, the Pacific Northwest, has never experienced.

The World Series.

Such is the result of Seattle’s thrilling 2025 season that captivated the region. Those Mariners won the American League West for only the fourth time in franchise history. Last October, they beat the Detroit Tigers in a pulsating divisional-playoff series, including with a 15-inning thriller that rocked this park.

Then they reached Game 7 of the American League Championship Series. They were leading 3-1, just eight outs from finally advancing to The Fall Classic. But the Toronto Blue Jays rallied from two runs down to beat Seattle 4-3 to win the American League pennant, instead.

Thursday night back at packed, roaring T-Mobile Park, the Mariners unveiled a banner in their stadium for only the fifth time in franchise history. It was for the American League West title, the team’s fourth in 49 years.

Inside the clubhouse — and, indeed, starting at the very top of the franchise — these Mariners know what the expectation is for this season.

It’s to raise a banner that represents so much more than a division title. A banner like no other in baseball.

As in, never before in Seattle.

John Stanton was on KJR-FM radio about five hours before pitch Thursday. The team’s CEO went right to what everyone inside the park Thursday night watching his team was thinking.

“We have to stay healthy,” Stanton told KJR’s Dave “Softy” Mahler.

“But I believe if we stay healthy, this is a team that should be able to compete for a championship this year — and should be able to win a World Series this year.”

No championship windows. No “we’re on the rise.”

Now. World Series-worthy, if not bound. This year.

“The goal is still winning a World Series. I really think it’s just, over time, it’s grown,” starting pitcher Bryan Woo said in the clubhouse this week, as he and teammates unpacked from spring training in Arizona.

“We feel the support and the love, everything from the fans. We really do our best to use that as fuel, as energy, going into a game, the season.

“It’s something we don’t take for granted.”

Mariners expectations: “Warranted”

Manager Dan Wilson played for what, before last season, was the best Mariners team ever. He was the catcher on the 2001 M’s that won an American League-record 116 games in the regular season.

Yet even that team with Hall of Famers Ichiro Suzuki and Edgar Martinez did not go as far as the 2025 Mariners did. They lost in the 2001 ALCS to the Yankees in five games.

“I think it’s extra special today. Starting a season coming off the season we had last season is exciting, in its own right,” Wilson said Thursday, a couple hours before first pitch.

“The expectations are obviously going to be there. There’s no question. You can’t avoid it. And I think there is a lot of expectation on this club, for sure — and warranted.

“Because of what were able to do last year, and, you know, how we stack up this year.

“But I think the only expectation that matters is what exists in that clubhouse. And those guys are determined. And those guys have the expectation internally that they want to get to where all of us want to go.”

Wilson didn’t say the words “World Series.”

His owner, the team’s fans, his players had already done that.

Opening Day scene

The pregame festivities included acknowledging the 41st and final season Mariners broadcaster Rick Rizzs began Thursday night. Wilson did the same thing in a classy start to his pregame press conference hours earlier.

The crowd of more than 40,000 roared for Seahawks Super Bowl champion Leonard Williams, a new dad, pumped them up from behind home plate. He raised the team’s gold trident. The fans loved that.

When public-address announcer Tom Hutyler announced the Mariners starting lineup, the loudest cheers were for Cal Raleigh, Julio Rodriguez, Josh Naylor and, yes, Randy Arozarena.

Roars for Cal Raleigh (readying in the bullpen), Julio Rodriguez, Josh Naylor, Randy Arozarena as Mariners’ lineup announced for first time for the 2026 season.

New leadoff man Brendan Donovan hugs manager Dan Wilson next to home plate.
⁦@thenewstribune⁩ pic.twitter.com/QiuEKtjkWz

— Gregg Bell (@gbellseattle) March 27, 2026

Arozarena basked in the cheers for him. He stood under the flashing blue lights and flames that accompanied his introduction with his arms folded, and a cool look on his face.

The silly “controversy” people manufactured of Raleigh as Team USA’s catcher not shaking Arozarena of Mexico’s hand in a first at bat of their World Baseball Classic game this month was long gone.

The stadium broke out in “MVP!” chants so prevalent in his 60 home-run season of 2025 as Raleigh received his Silver Slugger award from Stanton and team president Jerry Dipoto on the field behind home plate.

Raleigh was his full catching gear. He looked impatient to begin the game. And season.

The first fans enter T-Mobile Park after the home-plate gates open 2 hours before first pitch of a Mariners 2026 #OpeningDay with World Series expectations like no previous one.

⁦@thenewstribune⁩ pic.twitter.com/zS6kuP0X83

— Gregg Bell (@gbellseattle) March 27, 2026

A deeper (better) Mariners

Wilson said he and his player acknowledge the expectations, but will compartmentalize them.

“These guys are ready to roll,” Wilson said.

“Our guys understand that expectations can be somewhat of a distraction. I think the thing for these guys to really focus on is night to night. We have an expectation for ourselves, and that is to compete and go out every night at game time and fight. That is what we do. That’s the expectation we have.

“That’s what we tried to do last year. And these guys did it.

“That’s what we intend to do this year.” This time last year it was: Do they have enough offense to help their World Series-caliber pitching. Or, as Ken Stewart, a 58-year-old union warehouseman from Puyallup, aptly put it to the TNT on this night in this stadium 12 months ago: “We’ve got the greatest rotation in baseball. And we need some F-in’ bats.”

For this season, the Mariners have added 29-year-old Brendon Donovan. The All-Star from the St. Louis Cardinals is their the new leadoff batter.

Donovan is a high-contact, low-strikeout veteran. He has an on-base percentage of .334 while batting leadoff, in 182 career games.

He was primarily a second baseman and outfielder from 2022 through last season for the Cardinals. He won a Gold Glove in 2022 as an elite utility defender in the National League.

Donovan has played only 46 of his 501 career games at third base. This spring since his arrival in a winter, three-team trade, he has worked extensively with infield coach supreme Perry Hill to be the Mariners’ new third baseman. The new guy immediate caught the vibe in the park, the Mariners clubhouse and across the PNW Thursday night.

Donovan hugged Wilson after he was announced to Seattle’s fans as a Mariner for the first time, after he had jogged down a pink carpet from right-center field to near home plate. Then Donovan caught a foul pop up on Gilbert’s third pitch of the season to Cleveland’s Steven Kwan for the first out of the opener.

In his first at bat as a Mariner, Donovan got ahead of Cleveland starter Tanner Bibee in the count 3-1. Then he lifted a drive that dropped just over the wall and inside the right-field foul pole. That wiped out a solo home run the Guardians’ Chase DeLauter hit in the top of the first off Gilbert, and tied the game at 1 early.

The fourth leadoff homer of Donovan’s career was the first leadoff home run to begin a Mariners season opener in franchise history.

The 29-year old got his first Mariners trident, handed to him by Rodriguez near the on-deck circle. He saluted his new Seattle fans with the team’s gold home-run prop. Then he planted it triumphantly into the floor of the dugout as his new teammates mobbed him.

Hello, Branden Donovan!

Mariners’ new leadoff batter from St. Louis lifts a 3-1 pitch in his first at bat over the RF wall for a home run off CLE’s Tanner Bibee in his first Seattle at bat. Tied at 1, bottom 1.

And a first trident for Donovan.1st leadoff HR in an M’s opener. pic.twitter.com/I2iZyswaZz

— Gregg Bell (@gbellseattle) March 27, 2026

Donovan will allow Julio Rodriguez and other more run-producing hitters the Mariners tried at leadoff last season to move down a couple spots in the batting order, to drive in Donovan this season. Rodriguez batted third Thursday night. Cal Raleigh, the 60-home-run superstar last season, batted second behind Donovan in the opener.

“I think our lineup is deep. I think we are just a different-looking team,” Wilson said.

“We have some areas that we set up very well in, in terms of our lineup. I think we’re in a good spot.

“That’s, obviously, what brings a lot of hope for us (with) what we’ve talked about on the mound, and then a deep lineup offensively that’s going to be able to score some runs.”

The national Anthem before the Mariners 2026 season opener—with a new banner just unveiled in the top right corner high above right field.

⁦@thenewstribune⁩ pic.twitter.com/Q9Pv6HVBjN

— Gregg Bell (@gbellseattle) March 27, 2026