Mike Vorel: Cal Raleigh, Eugenio Suárez swings are biggest Seattle has seen

SEATTLE — As Bryce Miller took a solitary stroll from the bullpen Friday, he did so with an anthem serenading his steps. It was 3:04 p.m., six minutes before the Mariners’ most massive game in recent memory. A sellout crowd at T-Mobile Park applauded his arrival. With a blond mustache and a gritty glare, the Texan looked like a lone outlaw, sent to take a stand.

Miller against the Blue Jays. A playoff duel at dawn.

While he trudged toward immortality, or the opposite, Whiskey Myers’ “Bury My Bones” set a steely scene.

Now, don’t throw me no funeral, sister, don’t cry

Saw that fiddle, brother, pass that ‘shine

Deep down in the holler, pick the tallest pine

Dig it real deep where the roots touch mine

Miller and the Mariners would not be buried quietly.

As the series returns to Toronto, they may do the digging.

In a momentum-swinging, Blue Jay-jarring 6-2 win, Miller surrendered just four hits and one earned run in four-plus innings. He stymied a lineup that had stacked 29 hits, 21 runs and seven homers in its last two games. But he was not a lone outlaw for the Mariners.

The cavalry came.

Trailing 2-1 in the eighth inning, Cal Raleigh — who else? — extended his arms and sent a fastball screaming into the sky. It landed 348 feet later, beyond the left-field fence, plunging T-Mobile Park into pandemonium.

“It felt like Cal’s ball was in the air for, like, an hour,” Mariners manager Dan Wilson said.

For Toronto, it must have felt like the nightmarish eighth inning lasted 10 lifetimes.

After two walks and a hit by pitch, Eugenio Suárez upped the ante, rocketing a 99-mph fastball over the right-field fence. While 46,758 fans hugged and held each other, expelling 49 years of compounded pain, the 34-year-old third baseman found his family.

“When I crossed home plate, I just pointed to my wife, because I knew that she was praying, too,” said Suárez, whose go-ahead grand slam was his second homer of the game. “Because we’ve been waiting for this moment, and now we got it in our hands.”

The Mariners, and their fans, will hold on to this moment. But soon there might be more.

For now? The rye bread and mustard have never tasted better.

I know Edgar Martinez’s double saved baseball in Seattle. But that’s the biggest set of swings this city has ever seen. Because they beckoned a sentence that’s never been said before:

The Mariners are one win from the World Series.

“After Geno’s grand slam, I’m not sure I’ve heard that building any louder than that,” said Wilson, whose team returns to Toronto with a 3-2 series lead. “Again, just can’t say enough about the fans here in Seattle, just how much they support us, how they come out, how they turn out, how they give us the energy we need. Another phenomenal day from the people here in Seattle. It makes you emotional, just thinking about that and just how loud it was at that moment.

“Talking to a lot of people who have been around here since the 2001 days, they don’t remember a time that it was this loud before.”

The first World Series game in Seattle would be even louder.

But there’s still work to do, and one more game to win.

Friday’s game wasn’t won just because of Suárez’s and Raleigh’s seismic swings. It was won because first baseman Josh Naylor snared a third-inning Andrés Giménez liner and doubled Isiah Kiner-Falefa off second to instantly end a threat. Because Raleigh pounced on Ernie Clement’s swinging bunt, stepped on the plate and completed a double play to leave the bases loaded in the fourth. Because Matt Brash busted a 97-mph fastball past Vladimir Guerrero Jr. to strand two more runners in the fifth. Because Randy Arozarena brought an eighth-inning Clement fly back from the left-field fence. Because Andrés Muñoz needed just 11 pitches to work a scoreless ninth.

Because, after two lopsided losses, with their season disintegrating, the cavalry came.

Because Muñoz was right.

In a quiet clubhouse after Thursday’s 8-2 loss, Seattle’s smiling closer sat back and said: “I trust (the Mariners’ struggling hitters). I know how hard they work, and I know how much effort they put in, all the things they do. I know they’re able to do it.

“We had a really good two games in Toronto. We came here, and we’re having a hard time doing the same thing we did over there. But I trust them. That’s the only way I feel. I know they’re going to do it tomorrow.”

They did it in a way these fans will never forget.

As for Miller? After leaving the bases loaded in the fourth, he balled his throwing hand into a fist — unflappable, unbreakable — and exited the mound.

“I think he’s doing a great job of using all the pitches,” Raleigh said of his 27-year-old teammate, who has allowed just 10 hits and four earned runs in 14 1/3 innings across three playoff starts. “I think with this lineup and any team you’re facing this time of year, you have to mix. You can’t rely on one pitch, or maybe even two.”

You can’t rely on one pitch. Or one player.

Surrounded on all sides, the cavalry came.

In Toronto, the Mariners just might bury the Blue Jays.