Hayward High sits 10.1 miles from the Oakland Coliseum. If all is clear on I-880 North, the commute should take less than 15 minutes.

It took Jack Del Rio almost 34 years. But at long last, the East Bay native, whose father worshipped Raiders stars like Ken Stabler and John Matuszak, will be working for his home team.

The Raiders hired Del Rio, 51, on Wednesday to serve as their next head coach. Among the first to hear the news were Del Rio’s old pals from Hayward High. Andy Miller, a friend since the fifth grade, said he got a text from Del Rio early Wednesday morning.

Miller declined to read the exact contents of the exchange but said the message was, essentially: I’m coming home and I’m proud to be leading the Silver & Black.

“It’s almost impossible to believe. It’s something I’ve been dreaming about since he got into coaching,” Miller said. “To have him come home to the Raiders just boggles the mind.”

Del Rio, who graduated in ’81, was a three-sport star at Hayward High — football, baseball and basketball — and remains closely connected to the school. His former teammates include Don Wakamatsu, the Kansas City Royals bench coach and former Seattle Mariners manager, who said Wednesday that he was “thrilled for him. I think it’s the perfect place.”

Del Rio, previously a head coach with the Jacksonville Jaguars, is the second Hayward High graduate to coach in the NFL. Bill Walsh, a Hall of Famer with the 49ers, played running back at the school.

Wakamatsu, like others who knew Del Rio growing up, recall a player who was good at whatever sport he tried. But they stressed that Raiders fans should know their new coach has brains, too.

Miller, now an attorney in Pleasant Hill, remembered playing alongside the linebacker on the freshman football team. The coach had a “very simple defense,” he said, so Del Rio sometimes shrugged off one of the three blitz packages being signaled from the sideline.

“Jack would look over at the coach and get the call and then he would ignore what the coach said and then call his own defense,” Miller said. “That was as a freshman.”

Around that same time, Miller said Del Rio would come over to his house sometimes and sit there drawing up X’s and O’s on binder paper. He’s hoping he still has a few of those schemes in his boxes of childhood souvenirs.

Wakamatsu, who also grew up to coach at the Coliseum — as the A’s bench coach in 2008 — said Del Rio “had a great feel for whatever game he played. That leads to where he is now. I think he understood defenses. He understood the bigger picture in whatever he did. It’s no shock to me that he’s doing all this now.”

‘We can beat anybody’

Del Rio, who was born in Castro Valley, played 11 seasons as an NFL linebacker and made the Pro Bowl in 1994 while with the Minnesota Vikings. In his previous stint as a head coach, he went 68-71 (.489) for the Jacksonville Jaguars from 2003-11.

Along they way, friends say, he’s demonstrated an attitude his father taught him in Little League. Jack Sr. — even the other boys called him “Pops” — was a Raiders fan who admired the way John Madden’s teams embraced the underdog role.

“That’s really where that mindset of, ‘We can beat anybody’ came from,” said Jim Gurule, who was two years behind Del Rio at Hayward High and grew up to become a distinguished rugby coach. “That’s very much from the Raiders days and the Super Bowls that they were winning at that time.”

Del Rio remains so grateful to his Hayward High mentors that when he coached against the 49ers at Candlestick Park in 2009, he invited former coaches to the game. That included Jim Bisenius (baseball), Charley Kendall (basketball), Joe Fuccy (basketball) and Jeff Rankin (football).

“There’s no question the man I am today, the type of coach I am, they all have shaped who I am,” Del Rio said at the time. “I definitely appreciate that. I’m talking about Little League coaches, youth coaches, high school coaches, all the way through.”

Del Rio had a lot of coaches because he played a lot of sports. He was a sensational shooter in basketball who once hit a turnaround jumper at the buzzer to beat powerhouse Berkeley High. Wakamatsu said he thinks his friend once topped 50 points in a game. (“He was the prototypical 6-foot-4, 240 guard,” he joked.)

Del Rio was also a power-hitting catcher/pitcher/first baseman who went on to spend some time behind the plate at USC. His teammates included a wild-armed left-hander named Randy Johnson, who was recently elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

“Randy had wicked movement. He crossed me up once and got me right in the cup,” Del Rio once told The Denver Post. “At UCLA’s baseball stadium. And, of course, they all delighted in that.”

The Toronto Blue Jays liked him enough to draft him in the 22nd round out of Hayward High in 1981, but his high school teammates knew all along that his future was in football. Del Rio proved that on the same field where he’ll soon be coaching.

In the NCS 2A championship at the Oakland Coliseum in 1979, the Hayward High Farmers were being tormented by the brilliant short passing game of Miramonte High quarterback Bryan McKeen.

The Miramonte game plan was smart enough to keep rolling away from Del Rio’s side of the field. But early in the third quarter, Del Rio solved the riddle, blasted through the line and delivered a clean but potent hit that left McKeen with a broken collarbone.

Hayward went on to beat the Matadors 12-10 for the title.

Miller, who also played in that game, can’t believe Del Rio will now be calling NFL plays from the same sideline.

“It’s such a Hollywood story,” said Miller, a Raiders season-ticket holder since 1995. “I’ve been imploring him to come save this franchise for a long time. Now, it’s a remarkable day today. And my phone has just been blowing up.”

Contact Daniel Brown at dbrown@mercurynews.com.