SEATTLE — They watched atop the dugout railing with the same knotted emotion as everyone else. Will Vest bit his nails, Tarik Skubal clapped and cheered. Players looked away in disgust or shielded their eyes from the stress, the pressure, the uncertainty. This was baseball at its October best. Like playing with fire, or dismantling a bomb, or watching someone toe the high wire without a net to break their fall.

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“It felt the whole game like whoever made a mistake was going to lose,” Detroit Tigers shortstop Javier Báez said after it finally ended.

The Tigers and Seattle Mariners battled for 15 innings Friday night. The T-Mobile Park crowd — so loud that scientists brought in a seismograph to measure its impact — was standing and busting eardrums and bringing down the house every step of the way. The Tigers finally lost 3-2, on a Jorge Polanco RBI single that finished the marathon, decided the series and ended Detroit’s roller coaster ride of a season.

In the end, this game was all too analogous of the year the Tigers endured. They were MLB’s first team to 30, 40, 50 and 60 wins. Then they limped toward the playoffs with the worst September winning percentage of any team in postseason history.

In Friday’s classic for the ages — the type of game the MLB Network will replay during gray Novembers and fans will tell stories about a decade or two from now — the Tigers showed every side of themselves and their season.