There was no postseason to celebrate, no 2009 World Series, so the Seattle Mariners turned the end of their 162nd game Sunday into a celebration of Ken Griffey Jr. – not for what he’d done on the field, but for the team he’d helped make them.

Once the Seattle Mariners had won their 85th game, once David Aardsma had saved a 4-3 victory over Texas that made Felix Hernandez a 19-game winner, manager Don Wakamatsu asked his team for one more thing.

“He asked us to give back to the city, to the fans who’d believed in us,” Aardsma said. “It was easy to do.”

What followed produced tears in the stands, and tears on the field – where the Mariners hoisted Junior atop their shoulders and paraded him around the field.

For the last part of that lap of appreciation, Carlos Silva bent down, scooped Ichiro Suzuki up on his shoulders and carried him alongside Junior.

“At first, I thought it was too much, what was happening,” Ichiro said. “But coming in from left field with Junior, I will never forget that.”

Griffey, the 39-year-old former Seattle wunderkind who returned to the Mariners this season and helped a 101-loss team improve by 24 games, made a manly admission afterward.

“Was I crying? Oh, hell yeah,” he said. “It was the most emotional roller coaster I’ve ever been on. You never know if it’s going to be your last time.”

It was that kind of day at Safeco Field – what Wakamatsu called the perfect ending to a tremendous year.

“Felix Hernandez carried us all year, so it was fitting that he won his 19th game today,” Wakamatsu said. “David Aardsma got his 38th save, and I don’t know where we’d have been without him.”

“Junior getting a single in the eighth inning, then coming out to that standing ovation …”

At which point Wakamatsu’s postgame interview was interrupted by Mike Sweeney, who shouted “We love you, skip” – and hit him in the face with an ice cream pie.

Wakamatsu didn’t miss a beat.

“Now,” he told the assembled media, “you’ll have to excuse me. I’m due for a beer shower.”

And off he went, with a couple of coaches in tow, so the entire roster could crowd into the shower area and poor brewskis all over the rookie manager they credit with the turnaround season.

“It started with the skipper. He was balanced, calm,” Ichiro said. “If you have a shaky manager, the team feeds off that. This skipper was never shaky. He was as calm in September as he was in spring training.

“He was focused and we were focused.”

“All I asked of these guys was to prepare and play hard every day, and they did it right to the end,” Wakamatsu said.

Franklin Gutierrez had two RBI – his 69th and 70th of the season. Jose Lopez had two more, his 95th and 96th of the year.

And behind Hernandez, a bullpen-on-fumes used Randy Messenger, Miguel Batista and Aardsma to hold Texas at bay.

“This was a team I felt part of from the beginning,” Gutierrez said. “Don gave me the opportunity to play every day and this team embraced me. It’s a special season.”

Of all the changes in personnel brought on by first-year general manager Jack Zdurienck – whose trades and acquisitions turned the Seattle roster over – none may have had the impact of veterans Griffey and Mike Sweeney.

Ahead in the eighth inning, 4-3, Junior’s 387th at-bat of the season produced a line-drive single to center field.

To give fans one extra chance to acknowledge the moment, Wakamatsu pulled him from the game for a pinch runner.

Griffey walked to the dugout doffing his batting helmet to another standing ovation, walked through the dugout where teammates embraced or touched him.

“A lot of guys teared up in that dugout, including me,” Wakamatsu said.

Afterward, Sweeney was hugging everyone, and took Ichiro aside for a private moment.

“I told him, ‘I hope this is the end of a chapter, not the book,’ ” Sweeney said. “For me, too. We all got a taste of winning this season, we all want more.”

“We’re not done,” Aardsma said. “We want the playoffs. We want the ring. Wak told us all in spring training this season would be about learning to believe in ourselves, learning to win again.

“Tell the truth, if anyone had promised us 85 wins in spring training, wouldn’t you have taken that and run? I look at myself in spring training now and think, ‘Who was that guy?’ That’s how much I’ve changed. That’s how much this team changed.”

Griffey was a big part of that, a future Hall of Famer who went from legend to teammate during the season.

It was in that role – as a teammate – that Junior got emotional after the game.

“When I saw my guys, the guys we have on our team, it got to me,” he said. “Everybody’s a good guy and they mean so much on and off the field to one another. You’ve got guys setting up vacations together, hunting trips and fishing trips, guys going to other guys’ charity events.

“There’s not one guy on this team that guys didn’t like. You can tell by how many beer showers we had.”

Ichiro was asked if he thought Junior had enjoyed playing with him for the first time.

“I think I enjoyed playing with him more than he appreciated playing with me” Ichiro said. “He is the heart of this team.”

larry.larue@thenewstribune.com

blogs.thenewstribune.com/mariners

SEE YOU NEXT YEAR

Information for the 2010 Mariners:

 • Pitchers and catchers are tentatively scheduled to report to Peoria, Ariz., on Thursday, Feb. 18.

 • Position players are scheduled to report to Peoria on Tuesday, Feb. 23.

 • Seattle’s first spring training game is scheduled for Wednesday, March 3.

 • Seattle will open the season at Oakland on Monday, April 5.

 • The Mariners’ home opener will be Monday, April 12, against the A’s.