Asked about the support from the home crowd after his team’s thrilling playoff victory on Friday, Seattle Mariners’ Leo Rivas said it felt like the ground was shaking every inning.
Technically, he wasn’t really wrong.
The Pacific Northwest Seismic Network, which monitors earthquakes and volcanoes in Washington and Oregon, installed a sensor inside T-Mobile Park to record seismic energy during the American League Division Series game.
“T-Mobile Park is a little too far away from our nearest regular seismic station, so we quickly made a plan to put one of our research-grade instruments, called a ‘strong-motion seismometer,’ into the ballpark so we could actually measure that shaking,” explained Harold Tobin, director at PNSN, in an email to GeekWire.
The device — nicknamed “Richter Rizzs” after longtime Mariners broadcaster Rick Rizzs — picked up bursts of ground movement after key plays during the Mariners’ 3-2 win over Detroit, a 15-inning epic marathon affair in front of 47,025 fans that sent Seattle to the American League Championship Series for the first time since 2001.
PNSN streamed a live feed of the sensor’s output to show real-time shaking levels. The biggest peak appeared to be after Jorge Polanco’s game-winning RBI single, nearly five hours after first pitch, that sent the home crowd into a frenzy.
PNSN isn’t doing actual research during games — it’s more just for fun and public engagement. Though structural engineers do use similar types of data to understand stresses and strengths of buildings, including stadiums, Tobin said.
PNSN has done monitoring during Seattle Seahawks games — including for the famous “Beast Quake” — and at concerts.
The idea to measure shaking at T-Mobile Park came after star catcher Cal Raleigh said he could feel the stadium vibrating during Game 2 of the ALDS earlier this month
Tobin said his “amazing” team pulled off the T-Mobile Park setup in just two days. “And now we are ready to ‘Seis The Moment’ when the ALCS games come to Seattle next week,” Tobin said, alluding to the Mariners’ late-season mantra of “Seize the Moment.”
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