SECTION 150 — Bill Tidwell was at the Kingdome in 1977 for the first game in Seattle Mariners history. Two years ago, he attended a Mariners fantasy camp. As a lifelong fan, he’s seen the highs of Edgar and Griffey, the lows of Ayala and Sexson.

And just like any diehard fan, Tidwell was especially pleased when the team’s marketing staff rewarded him at Wednesday’s game with the most sought-after prize at Safeco: an enormous turkey leg, of course, given to him for dressing identically to a character from a Mariners television commercial.

Tidwell is 63 years old, by the way.

And if you’ve ever sat in the King’s Court section of Safeco Field, tucked into the left-field corner just inside foul territory, you would know that there is nothing abnormal about a grown man wearing prosthetic sideburns and fashioning the name “Bernandez” across the back of his replica jersey top.

“Everybody’s been wanting to have their pictures taken with me,” Tidwell said just before first pitch. “I’m just waiting for somebody to buy me a beer. That would be the icing on the cake.”

I sat in the King’s Court for the sole purpose of penning this column, an attempt to look at what makes sections 150 and 149 so appealing to all those yellow-clad, K-card toting crazies who lead the stadium in chants and have turned that left-field corner into the place to be on days Felix Hernandez takes the mound — although it appears his fictional alter-ego, Larry Bernandez, might be even more popular than Felix in these parts.

How else to explain why Kristian Sanford, a 23-year-old University of Washington graduate, has been dressing like Bernandez since the inception of the King’s Court?

You’ve probably seen Sanford before. He’s the guy toting the giant, blown-up photo of Bernandez’s face — “any print shop will do it for you if you ask them to,” he tells me — and was also the first-ever recipient of the celebratory turkey leg, given to the craziest or most spirited fan in the section.

(By the way, I’m told the turkey leg idea came from the front office. The wife of assistant general manager Jeff Kingston thought it’d be fun to try, and, apparently, the marketing people agreed.)

Some insight into Sanford’s costume: “So I had the hat (old-school true blue with the yellow S). I thought it looked good with the colors of the design. I went to Champion Costume and Display and bought the hair and some spirit gum (used to adhere the sideburns to his face), popped the lenses out of some cheap glasses, and here I am.”

He said his girlfriend, Sherika Brooks, first had the idea to dress like Bernandez. But Sanford insisted that he do it instead. Now, he’s a fixture in the Court, along with other grown men and women who dress in royal apparel. At least three jesters were spotted on Wednesday, including a rather strange man who spoke in Olde English and could have passed for a circus character.

And you know what? Good for him. As Cody Hertenstein, a 20-year-old Bernandez impersonator from Bremerton who was sitting two seats to my left, said: “At noon on a Wednesday, what else is going on? Pretty much nothing, other than coming to sit in King’s Court and watch Felix pitch.”

Said Hertenstein’s buddy, Connor Jackson: “I usually end up sitting back in the bleachers, and nobody ever wants to do anything. Everyone here is pretty much down for whatever.”

This is Seattle fandom at its finest. The Seahawks have the 12th Man. The Sounders have the Emerald City Supporters. The Huskies have the Dawg Pack.

And that’s what I kept thinking of as I spoke with fans on Wednesday — the folks in the marketing department have done something here that hasn’t been seen in Major League Baseball before (or, at least, not in Seattle): Watching a game from Section 150 (demand for tickets forced an expansion into Section 149, too) when Felix is pitching has the feel of watching a college basketball game. Minus the bogus halftime entertainment.

“I think this is really great,” Tidwell said. “This is really getting people energized.”

Think about it. Everyone’s in those yellow “King” T-shirts that come free with the $30 ticket. Everyone’s into it. People stand, yell, chant, stand, drink, stand. They’re becoming increasingly organized, standing and holding up their yellow “K” cards and chanting “K! K! K!” each time Felix reaches a two-strike count against a batter.

Heck, it wouldn’t surprise me if they start camping out on Edgar Martinez Drive the night before games.

“I think that Safeco has a little bit of a reputation of being a quiet, family-oriented place, and I think that’s baseball in general,” Sanford said. “Go to Sounders games, Seahawks games, it’s crazy all over the place. But Mariners games have never really been that way. But in the King’s Court, it’s like a college section, basically. People understand that if they sit here, it’s going to be loud. People are going to be standing, chanting, even to the point of a little bit of heckling, which we kind of see at Safeco but not too much.

“It’s exactly what I was hoping, because I graduated from UW last year, so I’m kind of used to that football, basketball-game Dawg Pack atmosphere. When I thought that this could be kind of a similar atmosphere, I jumped all over it. It’s pretty cool how it actually turned out better than expected.”

People are taking notice. Take J.T. Menard, for example. The 17-year-old and three of his friends were decked out in King garb — crowns, tridents, King-themed signs on poster boards — and came all the way from Yakima just to sit in the King’s Court.

“We just kind of wanted to go all out, because we live pretty far away so we don’t do this a lot,” Menard said. “So we wanted to come over and do this.”

Among the funniest characters I met on Wednesday: Q Dequina and Nima Rahgozar, a pair of Nintendo employees who pasted some fabric to their lips in an attempt to replicate Mariners manager Eric Wedge’s handlebar/Fu Manchu mustache.

They call themselves “The Wedgies.” There were five of them total, but Dequina and Rahgozar positioned themselves on the concourse atop the section for maximum exposure.

“This is going to be the next big thing,” said Rahgozar, 30, before attempting to track down ROOT Sport’s Angie Mentink so he could be seen on camera. “They’re going to make the playoffs, and this is going to catch on.”

The Mariners lost the game, 5-3, and Felix was banged around for five runs in 7 2/3 innings. Win or lose, though, the King’s Court has made Mariners games fun again. It’s the place to be, period, if you want to let loose without fear of angry ushers telling you to hush up, damn it.

Now pass me that turkey leg, Bill. I ain’t paying a week’s salary for garlic fries.

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