Seattle Mariners end playoff drought on Cal Raleigh's walk-off home run

SEATTLE — Cal Raleigh hit a winning home run with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning, and the Seattle Mariners ended the longest playoff drought in baseball with a 2-1 victory over the Oakland Athletics on Friday night.

Raleigh, pinch-hitting for Luis Torrens, hit a 3-2 pitch from Domingo Acevedo (3-4) just inside the right-field foul pole for a solo homer that sent the Mariners to the postseason for the first time since 2001.

Seattle's celebration on the field lasted more than 10 minutes as fans and players lifted themselves from the burden of two decades without seeing playoffs from their baseball team.

It indeed had been a long wait — the last time the Mariners advanced to play spotlight games in October, the team was led by rookie Ichiro Suzuki and Edgar Martinez and managed by Lou Piniella.

As has been the case for most of this season with the Mariners, their 86th win and the one that sent them back to the playoffs happened in the most stressful way possible. Seattle was unable to solve Oakland starter Ken Waldichuk and an assembly line of relievers for eight innings, held to only Ty France's RBI double that scored Dylan Moore two batters into the game.

Acevedo struck out Mitch Haniger and Carlos Santana to open the ninth, but Raleigh came through with his 26th home run of the season, the most ever by a Seattle catcher.

Aside from the clinching a spot in the postseason, Seattle stayed 1½ games behind Toronto for the top wild-card spot and one half-game ahead of Tampa Bay as the three continue to jockey for seeding.

But the place in the standings didn't matter on this night. It was all about punching the final American League ticket and ending two decades without playoff baseball.

Seattle's berth ended the