SEATTLE — Win or lose, up or down, with a lead or without: Aaron Sele’s always on the run to and from the mound.

The Poulsbo native and current Seattle Mariners’ starting pitcher never lolls his trek from dugout to the hill and hill to dugout. To do so would be a sign of weakness to teammates and opponents alike — it would be a lapse in the poise he’s developed over his youth, college and 11-year professional baseball career.

“As a pitcher, you run on the field to get loose and keep your blood flowing,” said Sele, the morning after he’d shouldered the burden of 6-2 loss to the Texas Rangers July 1. “And you run off the field to get your team back in the dugout and show energy.”

Talking in the M’s locker room at Safeco Field, he added one subtle yet significant reason he makes that habitual jog inning after inning during a start.

“That’s how I was taught to play.”

There’s no doubt that Sele, a 6-foot-5-inch, 230-pound right hander, was graced with natural talent. However, the work ethic he gained, the skills he learned and the mental toughness he developed were earned, piece by piece, over the course of the 35-year-old Poulsbo product’s baseball career.

“It’s kind of like a plant,” Sele said.

His own “plant” grew to be the mightiest of all North Kitsap athletes, perhaps the greatest baseball player to come out of the area. But he’ll be the first to tell you his career blossomed with the help of his parents, the community, and the many coaches who fostered and nourished his game along the way.

One of those coaches was 32-year veteran North Kitsap football skipper Jerry Parrish, who once wrote the word “poise” on then Viking senior and team quarterback Sele’s helmet.

“Sometimes Aaron would be a little volatile and he’d lose his sense of well being,” Parrish said. “I asked him what the word poise meant.”

It is a lesson Sele has never forgotten.

Parrish, who watches his former quarterback on TV and even made a trip to Mariners’ spring training this year, said he’s still amazed to see just how well Sele’s learned to maintain his composure.

“It makes me very proud to see a first class kid performing as a professional athlete,” he said. “I know that on the inside, Aaron’s going 100 miles an hour (when he’s pitching). But he masks his feelings so well and on the outside, he’s so very collected.”

The town where Sele’s seed was sown as a baseball player is less than 15 miles from the place he currently throws his fastball: Safeco Field.

Following a shoulder injury a year ago that derailed his pitching career for the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Sele was snatched up on a $700,000 Minor League contract by the Mariners in January. Earning his way back into the starting rotation, Sele has compiled a 6-8 record with the team, posting a 4.70 ERA. It is the third year overall he’s pitched in an M’s uniform, having been in the Seattle rotation during the 2000 and 2001 seasons.

He does admit that his career may well be in its twilight phase. But pitching in Seattle has given the veteran big leaguer a chance to be a little closer to his wife, Jennifer, and their three young daughters, Katherine, 5, Claire, 2, and Caroline, 1, in the family’s Bellevue-area home.

When the time comes to retire, Sele said he’ll welcome the chance to spend more time with his family — and perhaps on a different diamond.

“Fastpitch softball might be my future,” he said with a grin, mimicking the large looping form of a different kind of pitch. “I might have to go take some lessons, because I have no idea how that motion works.”

Then, it will be his turn to do the coaching.

A childhood

of good natured

competition

Aaron Sele’s love of baseball began with a general devotion to competition he had amongst his neighborhood friends in Edgewater Estates, near Hood Canal.

“We did everything,” he said of his childhood posse, the likes of which included many other eventual college-bound athletes. “We played tennis. We created games. We just had fun.”

Whether it was Nerf football, tennis, fishing, hiking, hunting, or “building forts and climbing trees,” Sele and his friends were competing against one another for as long as he can remember.

“We did everything competitively,” he said. “We even played horse competitively.”

Like all NK baseball athletes, Sele’s first experiences with baseball were at the North Kitsap Little League fields at Snider Park. He reflects fondly on his memories there, especially of the coaching he received.

“I can’t imagine a better place to grow up,” he said.

The “plant” of his baseball career sprouted under his father, Galen Sele, who helped him learn the fundamentals. From there, many coaches influenced his young game, including Ed Moon, who was instrumental in developing Sele’s signature curve ball. There was one pitch, however, that he said must be learned first and foremost.

“When you’re growing up, kids need to learn how to throw a fastball for a strike,” he said. “That’s the ultimate basic.”

As a youth, and even as a major leaguer, there’s still one pitch Sele still has a hard time with.

“The change up, probably the greatest pitch in baseball, and I still struggle with it today,” he said. “I know what I’m supposed to do, how I’m supposed to do it, and for some reason, I can’t repeat it as I need to up here (in the majors).”

Sele’s high school career in North Kitsap involved three sports, sticking with the competitiveness he so enjoyed with his Edgewater neighborhood friends. The height of his high school athletic prowess was senior year, 1987-88: he went to state in football as the quarterback, in basketball as a forward and won state as the pitcher in baseball. Many of the same guys on the diamond also played on the North Kitsap-Bainbridge senior Babe Ruth team the summer thereafter that qualified for the national tournament.

His three high school sports head coaches — Parrish in football, Jim Harney in basketball and Virg Taylor in baseball — each instilled in Sele intangible skills that would have helped him in any sport he picked to play in college.

And the two men in high school who helped him develop composure in the sport he’d make a major league career out of — Taylor and Steve Frease — were also the ones who taught him that nothing less than running to and from the mound when pitching was acceptable.

“No coach ever goes into the profession with the idea they’re going to have a professional player come out of program,” Taylor said. “But it’s certainly an added bonus to get one, especially of Aaron’s character.”

Sele went on to pitch three seasons at Washington State University before heading out to the Bigs, where his first stint was with the Boston Red Sox in 1993, when he was just 23 years old.

Taylor, however, knew that Sele was always going to accomplish his goals at a younger age than expected. He remembers the shock on Sele’s mother, Phyllis’ face, in the North Kitsap High School main office, when as a freshman, he told her he was starting for the varsity.

“He’s going to play with the big boys?” Sele’s mother asked.

“He is one of the big boys,” Taylor replied.

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An inside look at Sele’s return to the Mariners in 2005 will be in the July 13 Herald.