Future Looks Sunny From Safeco Field

The shadows already have crept past the pitcher's mound and cover most of the infield as the Mariners leave the dugout and jog to their positions for an afternoon game with Texas.

The wind insistently is blowing in from center field, the sky is Carolina blue and playing right field, the sun field, seems as dangerous as Russian roulette.

This is what baseball will look like at Safeco Field on a two-mountain-range day as perfect as this.

We sit inside the new stadium, our Walkman tuned to Dave Niehaus and Rick Rizzs and imagine an afternoon, 91 days from this day, that could feel this good.

Even in an empty, unfinished stadium, sitting alone, as solitary as Greenland, we see the future of baseball in this town.

Seventy degrees. A pitcher's duel between Seattle's Jeff Fassero and Texas' Rich Helling. A bag of peanuts. A soft drink.

You can imagine the sounds. The scratchy static of anticipation in the stands.

The basso profundo of the concessionaires. The crack of the bat. The groans. The cheers. The boos. The "Looous."

A day this good, in a stadium this lush, makes baseball feel like a newly discovered form of theology.

This is almost heaven.

We stand in the box-seat section behind home plate as Luis Alicea scores the game's first run in the top of the first.

The gray, oafish Kingdome stands like a mausoleum behind the left-field wall. All of the M's anguish in that building, across the street, seems time zones away.

Here the senses blaze. You can taste the marine air. You can smell the sunscreen. You can hear the anticipation as David Segui leaves the batting circle and walks toward home plate.

This is the way baseball should look in the next millennium.

As the game moves into the second, we move to dead center field and stare back into the sun toward home plate.

Workers' hoses hiss, knocking the dust off the concrete walls. The outfield is as gray as the Mojave Desert. The grass won't be installed until May 24, but you can imagine the green as perfect as Augusta's.

The dirt of the basepaths is down and the pitcher's mound rises underneath a green tarp.

Butch Huskey lines a single to left, and it doesn't stretch your imagination to see the ball rolling softly on the lawn, like an easy 6-iron.

Today you don't think about the half-billion-dollar price tag for this building. Today the stadium is a park and sitting inside it is priceless.

By the third inning, the infield is entirely in the shade. The flag in center field hangs limply. The sun in right remains blinding, and you empathize with the struggles Jay Buhner will have on days this delicious.

David Bell hits a two-run homer in the bottom of the third and, from the front row of the box seats along the right-field line, we can almost follow the ball as it rises into the sun and carries back and back and back, before disappearing over the left-field wall.

We can hear the cheers that will pour out of the stadium and down First Avenue toward Pioneer Square.

From this seat, we can see the Columbia Tower and the Kingdome roof and the high sky.

This stadium is all nooks and crannies, different venues and various perspectives. It is a triumph of geometry. The seats are angled toward the field. You won't need a chiropractic adjustment at the end of every homestand.

We spend the fourth inning in the picnic area behind the upper-deck stands. You can't see the game from here, but you can see Mount Rainier.

Gentle whitecaps ripple Puget Sound, and the Olympic Mountains look like a mural in the light afternoon haze.

This is the perfect place to linger before the game, or to seek asylum when the bullpen is blowing a save.

Martinez scores on a game-tying double by Huskey. We're standing in the barbecue pit area in left field. A burger and a brew and a 3-3 tie.

Ivan Rodriguez draws a two-out walk in the sixth. The sun is playing dodge, a thin line in front of the right-field wall, another along the third-base line.

A seagull swoops inside the stadium and perches on a railing above the first base (Mariners') dugout.

We sit in the last row - the Bob Uecker seats - in right field, to the foul side of the foul pole. We can see the Space Needle and Magnolia.

The breeze kicks up again, but the afternoon air is warm and the right-field porch still is bathed in sun.

It is the seventh inning now and a Texas rally ends when Giomar Guevara collides with Lee Stevens, but holds onto the ball as Stevens tries to get to second on a wild pitch.

We can hear the crowd roar and ride the wind all the way up to this section.

Helling retires the last 14 Mariner hitters he faces. Reluctantly we walk out of Safeco Field and head across the street to watch the last innings inside the Kingdome.

It feels like descent into Dante's Inferno.

The eerie echo of the public-address system bounces off the concrete walls. The over-amped sound system begs the crowd for noise.

The Rangers score one in the 10th, and Texas' closer John Wetteland overpowers Tom Lampkin for the final out of a 4-3 Mariner loss.

The familiar plastic clapping of the seat bottoms as they snap back breaks the quiet. It is a sound that has become synonymous with losing inside the Kingdome.

We file quickly into the early evening sun and stare back at Safeco Field and count the days until the gates open and we no longer have to use our imagination.