SEATTLE — This story was originally posted to MyNorthwest.com
As the Seattle Mariners prepare to open their 50th season Thursday night, longtime broadcaster Rick Rizzs finds himself savoring every moment of what will be his final year calling games for the franchise.
“I just heard their music, and I just got chills,” Rizzs told “Seattle’s Morning News” before the home opener against Cleveland. “It’s finally here, opening day, our 50th season. A sellout crowd on Opening Day is like a celebration, it’s a national holiday.”
The 41-year Mariners voice, now in his 52nd year in professional baseball and 44th in the majors, acknowledged the weight of beginning his farewell tour, but said he plans to approach it with measured emotion.
“I’m just going to take it as another opening day,” Rizzs said. “I’ve been thinking about this for the last couple of seasons, and now it’s here, and I’m just going to enjoy every drop of the season. Every play, everything is going to be heightened for me.”
Right-hander Logan Gilbert will take the mound as the Opening Day starter for the second consecutive year, a role Rizzs called “an honor.” Gilbert dominated in last year’s opener against Oakland, going seven innings in a 4-2 comeback victory.
“He retired 21 of 23 batters in the ball game,” Rizzs recalled. “If Logan Gilbert is anywhere near tonight what he was at opening day last year — seven innings, didn’t walk anybody, struck out six — the Mariners are going to be in good shape.”
The Mariners enter 2026 as consensus World Series favorites, a dramatic shift from the hopeful optimism that has defined previous campaigns. Seattle returns a pitching rotation built almost entirely through the draft — Gilbert (2018), George Kirby (2019), Emerson Hancock (2021), Bryce Miller (2021), and Bryan Woo (2021) — supplemented by three-time All-Star Luis Castillo.
“What it says is that Jerry Dipoto and Justin Hollander and the guys in the front office built this team around starting pitching,” Rizzs said. “It’s the hardest thing to cultivate in Major League Baseball, and the Mariners hit on every guy.”
Miller will begin the season on the injured list with an oblique strain suffered in spring training, but Hancock is expected to fill the void seamlessly.
The front office rebuffed all trade inquiries for its prized arms during the offseason.
“They said no to everybody that wanted any one of our five starters, because that’s the strength of this team,” Rizzs said. “You win with starting pitching and great defense, and now you’ve got an offense to go with it.”
Avenging last year’s playoff loss
The sting of last October’s American League Championship Series loss to Toronto — Seattle squandered a 2-0 series lead — still motivates the clubhouse.
“They got a bitter taste in their mouth,” Rizzs said. “They knew they should have gotten to the World Series for the first time. They know there’s unfinished business. They know they have the team to get back there. They know they have a team to win it.”
The veteran broadcaster drew a distinction between past seasons and present reality.
“This is about expectations,” he said. “They are expected to win the division, they are expected to get to the World Series, and everybody in that clubhouse knows it. They embrace it, and they’re ready to go get it.”
As for the Cheetos superstition that became a clubhouse phenomenon during last year’s late-season surge — when the team won 17 of 18 games after Dipoto delivered bags of the orange snacks — Rizzs confirmed the tradition will continue.
“You can’t mess with fate,” he said with a laugh.
When asked what a championship would mean, Rizzs’s thoughts turned outward.
“I want this team to win it for the fans in the Northwest, because the fans are the ones who deserve a World Series champion,” he said. “And they’ve got the team to get them there.”
Manda Factor is the host of “Seattle’s Morning News” on KIRO Newsradio. Follow Manda on X and email her here.
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