I am not ashamed to admit that I was not born into Seattle Mariners fandom. I grew up in the South during the mid and late 1990s; ergo, my loyalties used to lie with the Atlanta Braves and the New York Yankees. It’s a pair of contradictory devotions, I know, but two of my three favorite players – then and now – were Derek Jeter and Chipper Jones. Rooting for their respective squads came with the adoration. The third played on the opposite end of the country, and yet, he still managed to captivate the hearts and minds of me and countless young baseball fans around the United States. Finally, this past Tuesday, Ken Griffey, Jr. was elected to the Hall of Fame, shocking precisely nobody. He enters baseball’s promised land after being listed on 99.3 percent of the ballots, breaking Tom Seaver’s record of 98.8 percent, which is also unsurprising.
In fact, everyone could see this coming from the moment Junior was selected first overall in the 1987 amateur draft. It was June 2nd, and the hapless Mariners found themselves holding the first pick thanks to an abysmal 95-loss season the year prior. In fact, the M’s had not compiled a winning record in any year to that point, stretching back to their inaugural campaign in 1977. Although there were a handful of notable names who would become solid major leaguers (including Craig Biggio, who punched his own Cooperstown ticket last year), two things were clear: The Mariners needed a franchise icon, and there was only one kid amongst the group who fit the bill.
The son of Ken Griffey, Sr. would not wait long to hear his name called, as the Mariners pounced without a moment’s hesitation. It would be another four years (during Junior’s third season) before the team finally broke the 81-win barrier, but fan excitement became palpable watching the mammoth homers and stunning catches Griffey hit and made with the greatest of ease. The rest is history, but as long as we’re rehashing the past…
- 630 career homers, sixth all time, many of which came in the power-sapping Kingdome
- 1997 AL MVP, a year in which he hit 56 homers (a figure he would reach again the following season), knocked in a career high 147 RBI, provided 9.1 bWAR and took the Mariners all the way to their second ALCS in three years; speaking of,
- Game 5 of the 1995 ALDS, also known as the game that saved baseball in Seattle, during which Griffey scored the winning run to defeat the pre-dynasty Yankees and reinvigorate an entire fanbase
- Ken Griffey, Jr. Presents Major League Baseball, the single greatest baseball video game of all time
- The question is “Who is the only MLB player in history to win the Home Run Derby three times?” The answer is “Ken Griffey, Jr., you idiot.”
This fun fact means very little, but it’s long been my favorite bit of baseball trivia: Two MLB players were born on November 21st in Donora, Pennsylvania, both were power-hitting outfielders in the majors, and both are now enshrined in the Hall. The younger of the two is Griffey; the older, St. Louis Cardinals legend Stan Musial. The Man actually played a season of high school baseball with the Kid’s grandfather, Buddy, intertwining their destinies decades before one of them was even conceived. You can’t make this stuff up.
It wasn’t always accolades and All-Star selections for Junior, however. There were low points, since no career is completely devoid of trouble. The Cincinnati years immediately spring to mind – an eight year span in which Griffey hit more like his father than himself and missed nearly 475 games due to various injuries – as does the 2010 debacle when the Kid was found snoozing in a rocking chair like an old man during a game. The latter actually led to his hasty retirement announcement, Griffey presumably having decided that playing in four consecutive decades (something that only a few before him had done) was long enough.
We’ll always be left to wonder how much greater Junior could have been if not for those miserable seasons with the Reds. It’s not unreasonable to say he could have easily blown past the home run record, although it might be a stretch to say he alone could have delivered the Mariners to the World Series. If he couldn’t do it with Randy Johnson, Edgar Martinez and a pre-steroidal Alex Rodriguez, he couldn’t have done it with Ichiro et al.
Either way, the career he had was legendary despite the drawbacks. There may be men more deserving of enshrinement in baseball’s hallowed Hall, but few of them inspired the kind of fervor caused by Ken Griffey, Jr. Congratulations, Kid. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have the strangest urge to find my Game Boy…
Stats courtesy of Baseball-Reference.com
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