Bedard’s Baltimore return causes little fuss

SEATTLE – Erik Bedard knows there will be a fuss upon his return to Baltimore this weekend and his start there Sunday.

“Obviously. You are here asking me about it, aren’t you?” said the ace of few words, for whom the Mariners traded five players to the Orioles just before spring training.

“Yeah, I’m pitching there. But even if I wasn’t pitching there, it’s not a big deal.”

See, Bedard doesn’t do fuss, even if he was Baltimore’s best prospect-turned-ace since Mike Mussina. Doesn’t do public speaking, either.

He really doesn’t do anything he’d rather avoid.

“If I don’t want to deal with it, I won’t deal with it. It will happen that I won’t even talk to you guys,” Bedard said even before this season of huge expectations for the Mariners – and specifically Bedard – began.

“If I don’t feel like it, I won’t do it.”

He will throw strikes. He broke Baltimore’s season record with 221 strikeouts last season. He will go home to Navan, Ontario, outside Ottawa, every winter to train and disappear.

He misses his Orioles pals, especially starters Jeremy Guthrie and Adam Loewen, plus outfielder Nick Markakis.

It’s about the only subject on which Bedard gives more than a one-sentence answer. Barely more.

“Yeah, well, I’ve been there my whole career,” Bedard said. “Guthrie, Loewen, Markakis … I text pretty much everybody. Talk to everybody.”

He said upon arriving in Seattle that he might have stayed in Baltimore, through the losing and rebuilding. That is, if the Orioles had made any effort to keep him.

“Oh, if they had put in a serious offer maybe I would have considered it,” Bedard said.

Baltimore president of baseball operations Andy MacPhail said in February that Bedard never wanted to stay long term.

Seattle gave Bedard a $7 million contract for this season – the midway point between what he had been asking for in arbitration with Baltimore and what the Orioles were going to offer. The Mariners want to sign Bedard to a long-term deal soon so he won’t leave as a free agent following the 2009 season.

Until then, Seattle is learning what Baltimore already knows: You get splendid pitching and little else from Bedard.

The way he talked about his second spring start in Peoria, Ariz., last month is already Northwest baseball lore.

His ground rules for the session: “You’ve got four questions.”

Why four?

“That’s one,” Bedard said.

He then made himself available for 78 seconds.

After answering four questions, he marched into the clubhouse training room.

When asked after Monday’s opener how he would rate his debut – three hits and an unearned run in five innings – Bedard offered two letters: “OK.”

Then again, English is his second language. The 28-year-old learned it upon walking on to the baseball team at Norwalk, Conn., Community College.

“When I got to community college, I didn’t have anyone to speak French to,” he said.

“Erik has grown up tremendously the last couple of years. You all haven’t seen it here yet,” Sam Perlozzo said.

He would know more than anyone else in Seattle.

The Mariners’ new third-base coach was Bedard’s manager for almost two years, until Baltimore fired him last June.

“He just doesn’t like talking about himself,” Perlozzo said. “And that’s not such a bad thing.

“He doesn’t need people smothering all over him. I kid around with him, laugh. The thing about Erik, you’ve got to have patience to get to know him.”