Here, in the stretch run of a grueling journey his peers can barely comprehend, Cal Raleigh shot down the idea that he’s accomplishing anything extraordinary.“Catchers usually are pretty tired at this point in the year,” he said on the phone last week, “but you could say the same thing for everybody.”Lately, that’s been the standard line from the Seattle Mariners’ star slugger, even though it’s clear that he is not everybody. On Wednesday, he became just the seventh player ever to hit 60 home runs in a single season. He joined an exclusive club that includes Babe Ruth, an impressive enough feat on its own. But within the game Raleigh has drawn another level of admiration. That’s because none of those who came before him have faced a greater degree of difficulty.Raleigh is the only member of those select few who is a switch hitter, meaning he must deal with the quirks and intricacies of maintaining two swings over the course of a long season. And, even more notably, he is the only player in that class of elite sluggers to ply his trade as a catcher. He reached his latest heights in his AL-leading 120th game behind the plate, the most mentally draining and physically demanding position on the diamond.No player is more vulnerable to the bumps, bruises, aches and pains that can derail an entire season. Yet, Raleigh has crafted a year for the ages, one that has lifted an entire franchise, assaulted the record books, and added a splash of intrigue to this season’s race for the American League’s Most Valuable Player.The MLB home run leader has posted 9.1 fWAR, second in the majors behind only Aaron Judge. He has won the Home Run Derby, smashed Salvador Perez’s single-season record for most home runs by a catcher (48) and cruised past Mickey Mantle’s record for most home runs by a switch hitter (54). He has helped his Mariners clinch the American League West for the first time since 2001, and he has put himself back on pace to match Judge’s single-season AL home run record of 62 homers with four games remaining in the regular season.Raleigh has been the team’s fulcrum, its most dependable and most prolific player. Between the homers and the title and even the T-Mobile commercials, he’s done his best to deflect all the acclaim and attention and “M-V-P” chants that have rained down on him in Seattle.When asked last week whether he ever envisioned a season like this, Raleigh replied, “I don’t think so. I mean, I just try to be the best I can be.” That night, he eclipsed Mantle’s record.Three years ago, Raleigh was a burgeoning Seattle folk hero who hit a blast that broke the Mariners’ 21-year playoff drought. “They should’ve, if they haven’t already, given him the keys to the city,” former teammate Robbie Ray said this summer.Now Raleigh has become a full-fledged superstar, the aww-shucks son of a college coach who perfects two swings between meetings with pitchers and acts like it’s no big deal.Others in the game will tell you otherwise. They say over and over that what Raleigh is doing as a catcher is special, unprecedented, worthy of both praise and end-of-season hardware.The Big Dumper is, indeed, a big deal.“I’ll show you how tough it is — look how many times it’s been done,” Texas Rangers manager Bruce Bochy, a former major-league catcher, said of Raleigh’s season. “It’s pretty incredible what he’s done. He’s a workhorse. It’s kind of an old-school thing. You look at Johnny Bench and Carlton Fisk and those guys. I’m sure he’s been beat up at times, too. Foul tips and things that go with catching every day. And to be able to do what he’s doing, it’s really incredible.”