‘Boy Wonder’ simply wonderful

SEATTLE – The Boy King? No more.

When he next takes the mound for the Seattle Mariners on Sunday, Felix Hernandez will be an all-grown-up 21 years old – it will be his birthday, as it happens. It will make for a tidy point of demarcation, a handy tick on the timeline of a career that figures to be long and productive.

But in fact whatever remained of the wild child in him, those troublesome and yet enthralling rough edges, were sanded off inning by inning on Opening Day until he was no longer a boy wonder, but merely a wonder.

“Today’s game,” said manager Mike Hargrove as Monday afternoon married the evening, “was all about Felix Hernandez.”

Well, not all.

It was about Richie Sexson coming up with the clutch home run he has too rarely delivered since he was lured to Seattle two years ago to do just that. It was about the Mariners exploiting an opponent’s fatal mistakes and not being the exploited, as has been their recent habit. It was – Hargrove’s bleatings to the contrary – making a statement to a captive sellout crowd of 46,003 and to themselves with a 4-0 zitzing of the Oakland A’s, whose 2006 mastery of the M’s (17 wins in 19 meetings) was one of the more humiliating chapters in Seattle baseball history.

But yes, it was mostly about Felix.

It would be nice to think it was also about where he might navigate them, but he only takes the tiller every fifth day.

In between, it gets turned over to Jarrod Washburn, Miguel Batista, Horacio Ramirez and Jeff Weaver, otherwise known as the crew of Free-Agent Fizzle, Inevitable Decline, Chronically Brittle and What’s His Story?

But Opening Day is always about hope.

“This team has a little extra edge to it,” insisted left fielder Raul Ibanez, “a little something going on internally where you feel you’re capable of anything. We lacked that last year.”

Among other things.

What it certainly doesn’t lack is a star quality No. 1 starting pitcher, a seat-filling flame thrower they haven’t had since Randy Johnson tanked his way into a trade back in 1998 – but one, like Johnson, who has more going for him than sheer heat.

In a three-hit, 12-strikeout performance against the A’s, Hernandez crystallized all the promise he’s flashed off and on since his August 2005 promotion to the major leagues. He thwarted Oakland’s ever-patient – maddeningly patient – plate approach by continually throwing first-pitch strikes, mixed in off-speed surprises in hitter’s counts and showed uncommon poise in what passed for jams. He blew down Jason Kendall and Shannon Stewart with Richland’s Travis Buck camped on third base with one out in the sixth, and did the same to Nick Swisher and Bobby Crosby with two on in the seventh.

“You didn’t see any panic in him,” Hargrove gushed. “He got the ball, got on the mound, didn’t rush himself and threw strikes. It didn’t surprise me at all.”

Of course it didn’t. Hernandez showed the same poise his first month on the job, and in a number of occasions last year. But he struggled last April and May – from not being in shape, it’s presumed – and almost anytime he pitched away from Safeco.

But he arrived at spring training 20 pounds lighter, and with a vision.

“He expressed to me at Fanfest, through (pitching coach) Rafael Chaves, that he wanted to be the Opening Day starter,” Hargrove recalled. “I’d already started thinking along those lines. I just needed to see how he went about his business and how hard he worked and paid attention to what was going on – to see if he slacked off two days and worked hard two.

“He didn’t. He worked hard from day one and enjoyed himself doing it. He did nothing at all to make me think he couldn’t do that.”

If anything concerned the Mariners, it was that Hernandez might be too amped for his big day – he was the youngest Opening Day starter since Dwight Gooden in 1985. And complicating matters was that Oakland’s Dan Haren, if anything, looked even sharper over the first three innings.

It was a game in which it seemed one run might beat you. Except that Hernandez looked at it the other way.

“I tell the team, ‘Get me one run and let’s win,’ ” he said. “I was throwing darn good pitches today.”

Hargrove admires the confidence, but appreciates more that Hernandez has absorbed the lessons of his stumbles and setbacks.

“The 20 is chronological,” he said of Hernandez’s age. “I hope you can spell that because it’s hard for me to say it, but it has nothing to do with a person’s maturity. I’ve seen a lot of young people who are very mature and older people who are immature. Felix is that rare breed that seems to have grasped that concept and really taken to heart how to pitch winning baseball at the big league level. And obviously the fact that he has great stuff doesn’t hurt.

“But he ‘gets it’ about as quick as anybody I’ve been around in this game for a long time.”

He got it in every way Monday afternoon, and possibly even imparted some of the wisdom to teammates – both the new ones and those who have been beaten down a bit by the losing of three long seasons.

Then again, maybe it was all about Felix. But the M’s had better hope otherwise.