SEATTLE — Since 1983, Rick Rizzs has been the soundtrack of summer in the Pacific Northwest, the relentlessly upbeat voice of the Seattle Mariners who turns routine fly balls into poetry and losses into temporary setbacks on the way to brighter days. On air, he radiates optimism, celebrating victories with his trademark rundown of the “happy totals” and delivering even the bleakest ninth inning with a smile you can practically hear through the radio. To generations of fans, Rizzs sounds like the happiest man in baseball. But what listeners never heard was the silence in his car before first pitch — the nights he drove to the ballpark fighting back tears, terrified that his son might not be alive.

For more than two decades, while chronicling the Mariners’ highs and lows, Rizzs was trapped in a private battle that drained him physically, emotionally and spiritually. His son, Nick, was spiraling deep into drug addiction. What began gradually metastasized into a full-blown nightmare of heroin, meth, lies and late-night phone calls that made a father’s heart stop. “I didn’t get a good night’s sleep for 20 years,” Rizzs has admitted. “I worried about Nick all the time. Where was he? Was he safe? Was he even alive?” Those questions haunted him inning after inning, season after season, even as he kept his voice steady for millions of listeners.

Nick Rizzs was born in Memphis on February 12, 1980, a joyful, athletic kid who loved baseball, soccer and football, always laughing, always outside. When Rizzs’ marriage to Nick’s mother ended after his move to Seattle in 1983, life shifted dramatically. Custody arrangements changed, and before long, Rick was raising Nick largely on his own, building a support network of friends and neighbors while chasing his dream job in broadcasting. Colleagues remember his devotion. They also remember how seamlessly he separated the chaos at home from the magic on the air.

The first signs of trouble came subtly. Nick decided baseball “wasn’t cool anymore.” New friends entered the picture — the wrong friends. Marijuana and cocaine gave way to heroin and meth. Arrests followed. Debts accumulated. Lies became routine. Inside the radio booth, Rizzs could be heard describing a double into the gap; moments earlier, he might have been whispering urgently into his phone, “Nick, I can’t talk right now. I’ve got a ballgame.” Producer Kevin Cremin recalls those calls vividly — the emotional pivot from father in crisis to broadcaster in command happening in seconds. “He had to do baseball games, and he had to take care of Nick,” Cremin would later say. And so he did, often pulling out his wallet to settle debts or pay bail, clinging to hope that this would be the turning point.

But addiction is ruthless. Conversations followed a painful script. “Are you still using?” Rick would ask. “No, Dad,” Nick would insist. Yet distance grew. Guilt flickered in Nick’s eyes, but the cycle continued. Rizzs wrestled with self-blame, wondering if his travel schedule, the long road trips and late nights, had cost him precious time with his son. “Any parent going through this asks, ‘Could I have done more?’” he has said. The greatest job in the world came with sacrifices he never imagined.

Then came the day in 2014 that nearly shattered everything. Rizzs was in the booth preparing for that night’s Mariners broadcast when he received chilling news: Nick had barricaded himself inside a drug dealer’s house in Maple Valley. Police surrounded the home. Nick, paranoid and terrified of returning to jail, refused to surrender. By the time Rizzs arrived, his son was already in an ambulance headed to Harborview Medical Center. In a moment of despair and delusion, Nick had taken a box cutter and slit his own throat.

As Rizzs rushed toward the hospital, he spotted a blood-soaked Seattle Seahawks jersey on the ground — his son’s. Nick underwent more than two hours of surgery. Alone in the waiting room, the voice that had narrated countless Mariners comebacks trembled. He called his pastor, asking for prayer, pleading for another chance. Faith, love and baseball — the three pillars that had carried him through 20 sleepless years — were all he had left to cling to.

Against staggering odds, Nick survived. Recovery was neither instant nor easy, but there were stretches of sobriety that Rizzs calls the best years of his life — nine precious years when father and son could laugh again, when the shadow of addiction briefly loosened its grip. Through it all, Rizzs never abandoned the microphone or his message of hope. If anything, the ordeal deepened it.

Today, when fans hear Rick Rizzs cheerfully recount the “happy totals,” they are hearing more than a broadcaster celebrating runs and hits. They are hearing a father who understands despair and redemption, a man who knows that even in the darkest extra innings, the game is not over. His story is not just about baseball. It is about endurance, unconditional love and the fragile miracle of second chances. And perhaps that is why his voice still carries so much light — because it has survived so much darkness.