Cal Raleigh's NSFW clinch speech will fire up Mariners fans even further

The Seattle Mariners clinched a spot in the 2025 playoffs on Tuesday, but they want more. Just ask Cal Raleigh, though be warned that his answer is liable to be an "earmuffs" situation for the kids.

As he is the team's de facto leader and potentially this year's AL MVP, it was inevitable that somebody was going to pass a mic to Raleigh as the Mariners were celebrating their playoff clincher over the Colorado Rockies. And when it happened, he didn't censor himself for the crowd at T-Mobile Park or for those watching at home. He went full NSFW.

“Might as well go win the whole f---ing thing," Raleigh said.

Is the message suitable for all audiences? Not quite. Is it also nearly a verbatim recreation of one of the most famous quotes from Major League? It is, so we can't give Raleigh points for creativity.

But is it precisely what basically every Mariners fan was thinking as the celebration was raging last night? Well, yeah.

Cal Raleigh says what every Mariners fan is thinking after postseason clincher

It's all well and good that the Mariners are back in the playoffs, but it's not 2022 anymore. Three years ago, simply making the playoffs — courtesy of Raleigh's bat, no less — after 21 years away was good enough. Yet that season still failed to produce what Mariners fans really want: a championship.

It hasn't been long enough. It's been too long, as the Mariners have been in existence for nearly half a century and they still haven't even made it to the Fall Classic. Three teams have longer championship droughts, but all three have at least won a pennant since the Mariners were born in 1977.

Leave it to Raleigh to pull no punches in expressing the mood of the moment. As David Ortiz knows, all it takes to get away with an F bomb for the whole world to hear is the right moment and whole lot of goodwill. "Big Dumper" had both boxes thoroughly checked last night, and his goodwill doesn't even stem entirely from the record-breaking 58 home runs he's hit this year.

He has been adamant about winning for years, to a point where he even challenged the organization to do better back in 2023. More recently, he wasn't prepared to agree to the club's $105 million extension offer without a commitment to pushing harder for Ws.

To this end, Raleigh stuck to his guns when he encountered Jerry Dipoto in the clubhouse last night. Adam Jude of the Seattle Times was on the scene and quoted Raleigh as telling Dipoto the same thing he told the crowd, albeit without the profanity:

There's never anything wrong with aiming high, and nobody can say Raleigh is aiming too high. The Mariners stand to enter the playoffs as the No. 2 seed in the American League. Baseball Reference has them as the World Series favorite on the AL side. FanGraphs has them as the World Series favorite for all of MLB.

The Mariners know what they need to do. As Raleigh said, they just need to go f---ing do it.