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The ballpark’s brain is located behind home plate, on the 200 level, inside a door that requires a key card to open. It includes two rows of chairs, tables and computer monitors, facing a wall with eight televisions split into 99 smaller screens. A perpendicular row faces the field, where a blue banner obscures a plate-shaped plaque attached to the second deck in center.

More about that in a minute.

One hour and 44 minutes before Ichiro’s number retirement ceremony starts, the scoreboard control room at T-Mobile Park is already occupied. Mariners employees fill seats and stand in aisles — a technical director, a DJ, an audio engineer, seven camera operators, video engineers and editors, stage managers, at least one pyrotechnics operator. A team.

They face Tyler Thompson, the Mariners’ director of game entertainment and experiential marketing, who wears a crisp black suit to address his audience. In his right hand, he holds a 14-page rundown, a scrupulous script with 135 separate cues.

Video packages. Camera cuts. Audio elements. Birthdays and anniversaries. Sponsorship reads. Hydro races. Salmon runs. What Thompson terms “situationals.” The sparkle and structure surrounding a game.

The game, of course, cannot be choreographed.

Not so for the show.

“We’ve got ourselves a big show on our hands, just the third time in our team’s history we’re going to retire a number out there in center field,” Thompson says, kicking off the Mariners’ nightly crew meeting. “You can see [the number plaque] is currently covered, but shortly it will not be. Ichiro Suzuki’s 51 will forever be in center field of this ballpark.”

Forever takes time. The Mariners have been actively planning Ichiro’s 40-minute ceremony since last fall. They began receiving congratulatory clips from teammates and admirers as long as three years ago. Their first meeting to brainstorm his tribute video occurred in January.

That video, by the way, included a recreation of Ichiro’s record-breaking 258th hit in 2004. It was shot inside T-Mobile Park several weeks ago, made possible by the Mariners’ experiential marketing and video departments.

Plus, so many more.

“We were working with our ballpark operations staff to make sure we had access to the facility, the lights could be turned on and off the way we needed to, because we were shooting at 10 o’clock at night,” says Ben Mertens, the Mariners’ vice president of creative and content services.

“The grounds crew had to prep the field for us and chalk the base paths. We worked with our friends in communications to make sure we had all the elements from that moment exactly right, working with our archivist to look at what Ichiro was wearing that game, to our legal team for certain things. Everything we do, it involves everybody.”

That’s increasingly clear.

By 5:56 p.m., the crew meeting is over; the ceremony is set to start. Thompson stands facing the field, wearing a headset, where he can communicate with 25 to 30 team members at any given time. That includes seven or eight pyrotechnics specialists — who control fireworks beyond the fence, carbon dioxide cannons, fog machines and flames that blast from the bullpen when relievers Andrés Muñoz or Matt Brash enter the game.

It includes Mertens, who stares at the wall of screens, overseeing everything, directing camera and video board operators while flipping his packet of papers with each passing cue.

It includes Kristian Sanford, the control room DJ, who sits to Thompson’s right and artfully orchestrates the audio. Sanford faces a soundboard, where he adjusts his volume, as well as a pair of screens displaying a Spotify playlist and an encyclopedia of situational sounds.

It includes public address announcer Tom Hutyler, seated to Thompson’s left, beside a microphone and two red buttons with unambiguous labels:

MIC ON

COUGH

(The cough button, as you’d expect, momentarily turns off the microphone.)

It includes a stage manager tasked with relaying cues from Thompson to broadcaster Rick Rizzs, the master of ceremonies, who reads from a 17-page script; and another who sends Mariners Hall of Famers from the home dugout to their selected seats.

“Send Edgar!” Thompson says at 6:11 p.m., signaling for the franchise’s senior director of hitting strategy to depart the dugout and salute the sellout crowd.

“Cue Rick!”

“Send Randy!”

“Cue Rick!”

“Send Ken!”

As Rizzs rolls through Ichiro’s endless accolades, Thompson adds effects that amplify the introduction.

“Start your fog machine out there!”

“Start your gate! Open gate! Go, jets!”

On cue, the “cryo jets” — or carbon dioxide cannons — send streaks of smoke into the sky, as a gate opens and Ichiro bows on the warning track he patrolled for 10 consecutive seasons. While music swells and 45,249 fans hail the first-ballot Hall of Famer, he walks between a “5” and “1” etched into the outfield grass, a route designed to encourage photos and maximize the moment.

Every second of this ceremony is meticulously maximized.

Including the tribute video and congratulatory clips. Including speeches from Mariners manager Dan Wilson and managing partner John Stanton, the latter announcing an Ichiro statue in 2026. Including the eventual unveiling of his No. 51 plaque, framed by an explosion of blue streamers.

“Go banner! Go streamers! Launch pyro!” Thompson cues, following a customized countdown from five to one.

Ichiro ends the ceremony with a 13-minute speech, culminating in an emphatic: “Now, let’s play ball!” As the field clears at 6:53 p.m., Mertens offers fist bumps to team members throughout the control room.

But here is the unrelenting reality of a baseball season:

When one show ends, another is about to begin.

—â¶Ä”â¶Ä”

“Every time I get to put the headset on and produce one of our games, I get a little bit of adrenaline, especially if it’s a big event like opening day or an Ichiro number retirement ceremony,” Thompson says. “That adrenaline and those endorphins that we get from those events going well is what keeps me coming back to this ballpark day in and day out, all summer long, nights and weekends. That, to me, is enough.”

It's been enough since Thompson was 16, and he started selling $1 programs at Single-A Spokane games. It’s been enough since Mertens cold-called the Kansas City Royals as a senior in high school and somehow earned an internship, beginning 23 years in baseball.

It’s still enough on Saturday, when back-to-back homers by Cal Raleigh and Julio Rodríguez solidify the Mariners’ sixth consecutive win.

“Launch pyro! Launch jets!” Thompson hollers into his headset at 7:43 p.m., high-fiving Sanford after Rodríguez ropes his second homer of the game.

Turns out, the brain of the ballpark also has a lot of heart.

“I go back to my days as a kid going to a baseball game. I remember the video board. I remember seeing graphics and animations on there,” says Mertens, who joined the Mariners in 2012, on why this all matters. “I know there’s somebody in the stands who was like me 30 or 40 years ago, experiencing that for the first time.

“That moment we’re trying to create, or that experience, is going to be a lifelong moment for them. Because maybe they’re here with a family member or somebody who means something to them. They’re going to cling to that moment forever. Knowing we have that opportunity to make that impact or memory is something we don’t take lightly.”

They don’t take it lightly.

But they do keep it light.

Case in point: “Hot Dogs From Heaven,” a delicious downpour that first swept Seattle last season. And the mid-inning “Salmon Run,” which Thompson notes “was just a glimmer in my eye at one point, of these four large fish running around the warning track, each with different personalities.” And a video singalong with Rizzs, who cooly croons “That’s Amore” (and did so Saturday). And their recently debuted “Foul Ball Dance Party,” which is exactly what it sounds like.

It’s this marriage of originality, joy and silliness that separates the Mariners, who recently won a Golden Matrix Award for best overall game production throughout all sports.

But the ultimate approval comes after every pitch.

“You feel it when you sit in that chair, whether you’re producing or running a piece of content that you were involved in,” Mertens says. “I will never try to compare us to athletes, by any means. But we get immediate response on the work we do. Based off how well the video played, whether it’s trying to get a laugh or applause or maybe some of them feeling emotional, we know right away if we’ve had success.”

Saturday, by any measure, is a monumental success. But like the Mariners’ 7-4 win over the Rays, it isn’t perfect. Ichiro’s ceremony runs seven minutes long. The roof, which was partially extended to shade the video board for the pregame festivities, becomes temporarily stuck. The rundown is revised and rewritten, as it always is.

“From a live production standpoint, we are moving things around, changing things, switching order all the time,” says Thompson, who produced football and basketball games as a student at Eastern Washington before joining the Mariners. “We are all [SNL executive producer] Lorne Michaels up in our control room — scratching elements, rewriting scripts, doing all the little things to improve the show in live time.”

The show can always be improved.

But that, too, is the beauty of baseball.

At 9:48 p.m., after launching pyro to punctuate Rodríguez's postgame interview, Thompson thanks his team and says into his headset: “We’ll see you tomorrow.”