Tag Archives: MLB

It figures that Ken Griffey Jr, the best pure* slugger of our time, would end his career as a controversial subject was sweeping Major League Baseball.

*= We really don’t need to get into the asterisk.

After 22 seasons, Ken Griffey Jr called it quits and everyone was too busy looking somewhere else and its a shame. When he came up he was THE phenom. Nineteen years old, getting asked questions by reporters, hat turned backwards and smacking homeruns like it was a video game. That is quintessential Junior.

No one in baseball was cooler. No one since Willie Mays was more athletic. No one had his talent oozing from his pores. He was going to dominate baseball for a long time.

But something funny happened. His career took a tragic turn. He aged like you and me. Heroes aren’t supposed to decline at the “prime” of their career. Heroes aren’t supposed to be injured the way Grifffey was. His signing with the Reds was supposed to be the homecoming of all homecomings. His father after all played for the Big Red Machine and Griffey grew up in the Cincinatti area where he played baseball and football.

But it didn’t happen like that. Griffey’s knees began to hurt, his back began to ache, his legs gave way and his career did the same. From 2002-2004, Griffey missed 260 of a possible 486 games. He missed significant time during his tenure as a Cincinatti Red, something that diminished his reputation.

But it shouldn’t have. For all his injuries, for all the decline there is something heroic and just in the decisions that he DIDNT make. For instance, while its impossible to absolutely know for sure whether he did or did not do steroids, given his injury history, he either took the worst kind of steroids out there or he didn’t take them.

While his peers were dabbling in steroids, Griffey got by with natural talent and allowed nature to take its course. He wasn’t going to allow himself to cheat and disgrace the game his father had taught him. He wasn’t going to go back on his responsibility as an ambassador to the game and a role model to kids everywhere, like me.

I was a young 9 year old the first time I ever saw Griffey on tv. The good thing about TV for a sports beginner is that the camera always fixates on one player and thus the viewer is able to immediately recognize the star. Naturally it was fixated on Griffey and eventually covers of magazines, Wheaties boxes and Nike shoe-lines only confirmed what I learned that day.

More so, I remember 1995 during the ALDS, I was a New York fan back then*, and my favorite baseball player was Don Mattingly so naturally I was rooting for the Yankees. As you know the Mariners rallied back to tie the series after being down 2-0 and they won the fifth game in 11 innings when Griffey scored on a double by Edgar Martinez, all the way from 1st. It was one of those iconic moments that you will always remember because it was the final game as a Yankee for Mattingly and it shouldve marked the beginning of a Mariner dynasty, but it never came to be despite fielding a team with Jay Buhner, Edgar Martinez, Randy Johnson and a young Alex Rodriguez over the next few years.

*= how far I’ve come as a human being don’t you think?

Let’s not forget how important that ALDS was to the overall reputation of Major League baseball which was recovering from the strike in 1994.
A team that was constantly on the list of teams for contraction, Griffey saved Seattle from the fate its basketball team suffered. Griffey and the Mariners overall emergence made Seattle-ites (yeah I know), ok a measure to raise funding to build Safeco Field which is widely known in the greater Seattle region as the “House that Griffey Built.”

In the end when his career didn’t go the way he liked in Cincinatti, a place he got traded to so he could be closer to home and raise his kids (who could argue with that logic), Griffey came back to the franchise that made him famous. Last year during their final game after finishing with an improbable 85-77 record, they took laps around the stadium and even hoisted Junior on their shoulders in tribute. Griffey always had the reputation of being a wonderful clubhouse presence and many Mariners vouched for him in that respect.

He had gracefully aged with the game. He never sought steroids to make him be the best he couldve been. Perhaps in a moment of absolute honest he will look back at his career and think, what if I never had terrible luck with injuries? What if I were healthy?

He leaves the game with 630 homeruns but not the home run title like many had assumed he would. But, he leaves with so much more than that. He leaves the game with his head held high and honor intact. His career headstone and hall of fame plaque should read: Here lies Ken Griffey Junior, the real Ken Griffey. Never a cheater, gave his all to the game and all the fans who ever cared for its sanctity. Though nature robbed him of his peak years it never robbed him of his integrity.

Thank you Junior.