Big Unit a ray of sunshine on cloudy opener

SEATTLE — Hopefully when you remember the Mariners 2010 season opener, your recollection of the day stops just before the start of Monday afternoon’s game.

Because for nine innings of a 4-0 loss to Oakland, the Mariners displayed most of the flaws that have haunted them during the first week of the season.

Before another loss gave fans a chance to fret over the team’s 2-6 start, however, a nearly perfect scene provided at least one happy memory for the 45,876 fans that packed Safeco Field.

Randy Johnson, the most dominant pitcher in Mariners history and one of the game’s best left-handers of all time, made a slow walk from center field to a prolonged ovation. As he approached the mound, he first put his hand over his heart, then rolled his left shoulder in a feigned warm up attempt.

Johnson took the mound and tossed a strike to Dan Wilson, the catcher who called most of Johnson’s 130 wins as a Mariner, then the former M’s battery was greeted in the infield by Edgar Martinez, Ken Griffey Jr. and Jay Buhner, setting off a 1995 love fest for a fan base that can’t get enough of the organization’s most memorable season.

“It’s real special when you get a chance to see old teammates, guys who have done so many things in this game,” said Griffey, the only one of the group still in uniform. “Randy, you can’t say enough. Look at his resume. I got a chance to see him last year when he came in and today, so it was real special.”

Unfortunately for the current version of the team, however, nostalgia doesn’t win ballgames. And as much as the team — rightly so — likes to honor players from the ’90s playoff teams, fans with high expectations for this season are ready for some new memories. So far, this team isn’t producing much to get excited about.

But enough about the sad state of the current team. Let’s focus on the happy part of Monday’s opener. The part of the day just after the roof rolled open to overcast but bright sky (and only in Seattle is this considered good weather), and just before the Mariners started making Justin Duchscherer look like a Cy Young candidate.

For someone who left Seattle under less-than-ideal circumstances 12 years ago, Johnson seemed genuinely touched by his appearance in Seattle Monday. Before the game, he spent 35 minutes answering questions, rambling on with tangents as long as his mid-90s mullet.

He covered his mid-season departure and the speculation that he tanked in Seattle that year, and did so with grace: “It was unfortunate that people maybe had thought that I wasn’t trying my hardest. Well those people don’t know me that well. Surely it could have looked that way, and admittedly the six inches between my ears were a little clouded back then in ’98 being caught up in the trade talk and all of that.”

Johnson even went as far as to say he understood why Seattle was hesitant to sign him to a long-term deal, leading to the trade: “I was 35, 36 years old, about two years removed from a back surgery, and at that time it was pretty unheard of to give me a multi-year deal. Junior was still here, Alex was still here, what are you going to do with a 35-year-old pitcher who at that time maybe could have been viewed as ‘How many more good games does he have?’

“So it’s all water under the bridge. I’ve always enjoyed coming back here, and been well received. The fans have always been great. It’s always just been a joy pitching here.”

Johnson talked repeatedly about the joys of retirement, of spending time helping coach his son’s eighth-grade baseball team, or of embarrassing himself on the ski slopes with his youngest daughter.

Johnson was hardly the intimidator that won 303 games and five Cy Young awards, but he was still enough to make Mariners fans stand up and cheer one more time.

Now about the actual game itself … Nah, let’s stick with forgetting about that.

Herald Writer John Boyle: jboyle@heraldnet.com.