SEATTLE — The Seattle Mariners’ thrilling victory in Game 5 shook T-Mobile Park last week -- registering as a small earthquake on a seismic monitor.
The Pacific Northwest Seismic Network (PNSN) recorded significant ground movement at the stadium on Friday night. They got the call from the Mariners just a couple of days before to install a seismometer.
“Cal Raleigh, after game two, made this kind of offhand comment that around third base he felt like he could feel the whole place shaking,” said Harold Tobin, Director of the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network.
Tobin says the signals spiked all throughout the 15 long, nerve-wracking innings.
“Rivas got his birthday equalizer with the RBI to tie up the game and then things just go on and on, and the salmon race,” he said.
The biggest spike occurred during Jorge Polanco’s game-winning walk-off, dubbed the ‘Polanco P-Wave’.
“Was about what we would see as the level of shaking from an earthquake within 20 miles of Seattle of at least magnitude 3 or so,” Tobin explained. “A kind of earthquake that gets people’s attention and often makes the news around here would have produced about the same ground shaking, at least for those few seconds, as that big event at the end of the game.”
The M’s clinched their spot in the American League Championship Series, but fans now have some seismic competition.
“The biggest one spike we’ve got on here is kind of a similar value to the biggest spike in the Taylor Swift. Now Taylor Swift thing just goes on through every song, all through the whole concert,” he said.
Mariners fans will have a chance to try and raise the bar on Wednesday, Thursday and possibly Friday as the team returns to T-Mobile Park for the ALCS.
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