Seattle Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh's unbelievable season took another historic turn on Sunday when he hit his 53rd home run of the season.
Raleigh's shot, which was part of an 18-2 Seattle onslaught against the Atlanta Braves, moved him to within one home run of Mickey Mantle's single-season record for a switch hitter. Mantle famously hit 54 in 1961 amid his home run race with New York Yankees teammate Roger Maris. The 61 total that Maris hit that year stood as the MLB single-season overall record until Mark McGwire hit 70 in 1998.
It has been a season full of history-making moments for Raleigh. On August 26, he became the first switch-hitter in MLB history to hit 50 home runs before the calendar flipped to September. It also made him the first player in MLB history to hit 20 home runs from each side of the plate in the same season and only the second Mariner ever to hit 50.
“It’s a lot of fun to watch,” Ken Griffey Jr., the other Seattle player to accomplish that feat, told MLB Network Radio the next day. “Day in and day out, just putting the team on his back. There’s a lot of guys who are doing things but he’s having an unbelievable season and it’s really fun to watch.”
More importantly for the Mariners, their win on Sunday gave them a 1.5-game cushion over the Texas Rangers for the final American League wild card spot. They are also only 2.5 games behind the Houston Astros for first place in the AL West.
The Mariners outscored the Braves 28-4 over the last two games of that series, which followed a 1-6 stretch from Seattle that put its playoff hopes in jeopardy.
“At some point, you just say, ‘Screw it. Go out and play like we have been all year,' and that's kind of the mentality you've got to take,” Raleigh said, per MLB.com.
