From the voice of hall of fame broadcaster Dave Niehaus:
“Right now, the Mariners are looking for the tie. They would take a fly ball.
They would love a base hit into the gap and they could win it with Junior’s speed.
The stretch and the 0-1 pitch on the way to Edgar Martinez…… and swung on and lined down the left-field line for a base hit!
Here comes Joey, here is Junior to third base. THEY’REGOINGTOWAVEHIMIN! The throw to the plate
will be late! The Mariners are going to play for the AMERICAN LEAGUE CHAMPIONSHIP! I dooooon’t beeeeelieve it!
It just continues. My ohhhhhhh my!”
That was 1995 in the American League divisional series against the New York Yankees. That was the game that put the Seattle Mariners on the baseball map. That was Ken Griffey Jr. The Man, The Myth, and The Legend in Seattle sports history. Flash forward 15 years to what we all knew would be Griffey’s final season in baseball. We in the northwest all had the dream prior to the season starting that somehow this was going to be the season. That the addition of SP Cliff Lee would be enough to get us there. That somehow Griffey had just enough left in the tank to maybe hit .260-25-100 and go out on top. That just maybe, just maybe he would hit a walk off home run in the bottom of the ninth inning of game seven of the world series against—-against WHOEVER!
Alas, we all have to wake up at sometime. We were all in the middle of the dream turned nightmare when were suddenly jolted into reality that the Kid was done. He goes now to the halls of great men like Honus Wagner, Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, and Tedd Williams, among so many others. Griffey can stand shoulder to shoulder with the best of them knowing that he belongs. More importantly he can enter into the hall of fame in 5 years knowing he did it the right way. In an era of players getting busted left and right for performance enhancers, Nay was ever Griffey’s name mentioned among them.
I know that it’s easy to wonder if he should of been the all time home run king. All those years of playing on the concrete floors of the kingdome finally caught up with him in his years in Cincinnati, where he spent most of his time of the disabled list. He gave the Reds fans only a small taste of what we in the pacific northwest became spoiled to seeing year after year; a generational player who had no peers during his glory days.
Ken Griffey Jr played in 2671 games and retired on the same day that the Mariners selected him #1 overall 23 years ago. He had a .284 batting average, 630 home runs, 1836 runs batted in, 1662 runs scored, and 184 stolen bases. Make no mistakes, if Cooperstown could punch his ticket today, they would.
Ken Griffey Jr won 10 gold gloves, 7 silver slugger awards, and was named to the American League ALL-STAR team every year from 1990 to 2000. He won the American League MVP award in 1997 by hitting .304 with 56 home runs, 34 doubles, 3 triples, 147 runs batted in, 125 runs scored, and 15 stolen bases. He was a fantasy baseball stud.
Ideally, we would of loved to of heard an announcement that he was going to retire after the Cincinnati Reds visit town. It would of been a grand party sending off one of the greatest players of all time. However, in the end Griffey did it his way – And it was a pretty damn good career to go out on.
