This story was excerpted from Daniel Kramer’s Mariners Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

SAN FRANCISCO -- The game had been over for nearly an hour and just about all of the ticketed 40,691 viewers had left, even after a fireworks show for the Fourth of July. 

Yet the crowd that awaited Bryan Woo on Monday night at Oracle Park after he twirled six brilliant innings against the team he grew up rooting for took up a massive portion of the bleachers down the right-field line. When Woo’s mother, Hilary, estimated that more than 100 friends, family and former teammates of his at Alameda High School across the Bay and from Cal Poly State University were in the house, it was not an exaggeration.

“For the last couple days, we've all been looking at each other, like, is this real?” Hilary said from a very crowded concourse. “Is this really happening?”

Most special among that group was Woo’s paternal grandfather, John Woo, who inspired the young pitcher's passion for baseball. John is 93 years old, has Type 1 diabetes and struggles with mobility. But he wheeled himself, quite literally, to the ballpark to see his grandson play baseball for the first time at any level on Monday, purchasing a luxury suite for roughly 30 people. 

“He hasn’t been too mobile the last couple of years, so it’s kind of tough for him to travel,” Woo said after the Mariners stormed to a 6-5 win. “He was like, ‘I’m not going to miss this one for the world.’ I’m really glad that he was able to come.”

Hilary, however, needed to be closer to the action, watching intently from section 107 with a large group of Woo’s childhood friends. 

“I love the game,” she said. “I could sit here and watch three games back to back to back. I could watch 27 innings and not get bored. I love this game. And so to have my kid competing like this is absolutely one of the best things that you can imagine.”

Her studious acumen turns into awed tension when watching her son. She was in Arlington for his MLB debut on June 3 and again in New York for his impressive performance at Yankee Stadium on June 22. But it didn’t come close to matching the surreal energy in San Francisco on Monday, where she and her husband, Clayton, brought Woo to games throughout his childhood. 

“It's more like excitement, but it's also, he's my kid,” Hilary said. “And I want him to do well. And that's the parent thing, and a lot of his friends and family get excited. But as the mom, you know what he's invested in this sport and you know what he's put into it. And you just, it's pretty simple -- you just want them to succeed.”

The sheer volume of Woo’s support system on Monday underscored how much that group means to him, and vice versa. Any big leaguer will tell you it took countless people to help them reach this point, and for Woo, it tangibly showed by his crowd.

Work ethic and deliberation got him here, too. Woo played virtually all sports as a kid before carving out a more baseball-tailored career path that led to a scholarship at Cal Poly, one of the few schools that offered. 

And it goes all the way back to Little League. Like most parents, Hilary and Clayton would delegate responsibilities on Woo to ensure that he could prepare himself -- from tasks as simple as remembering to pack his uniform and gear, which Woo outlined with a hand-written checklist.

“He even would lay them out on the floor like a dead person, so that he could get up in the morning and just put them on,” Hilary said. 

It’s evident that guidance has carried into his blossoming MLB career. At only 23 years old and after only six starts, Woo has impressed his teammates and coaches with his preparation and adjustments. Facing a lineup with six lefties in consecutive outings, and having to toy more with secondary pitches, is a prime example. He surrendered just two runs in San Francisco and showed composure in spite of the huge personal moment and pitching in one of the league’s more animated environments. 

“He was really focused all night,” Mariners manager Scott Servais said. “He’s pretty calm, cool and collected. He’s California cool. I’ll go with that. He handled it great tonight.”