New York Newsday
June 23, 2008
Cincinnati Reds Ken Griffey, Jr. hits a solo homerun in the eighth inning off New York Yankees Kyle Farnsworth. (Newsday / Audrey C. Tiernan / June 22, 2008)
He's working on his 20th season in the big leagues, and he's not what he was. But Ken Griffey Jr. still has that sweeping home run swing and he still has a terrific hold on people's imagination.
He stepped up to the plate in the sixth inning yesterday at Yankee Stadium just as the sky was darkening and the wind started whipping. A game-delaying cloudburst was about to cut loose and something striking, something right out of the movies, happened in the rapidly dimming light.
For the first time all afternoon, it was possible to see the camera flashes firing - dozens of them - when Griffey stepped to the plate.
Griffey ended up hitting into a forceout that time up. But in his next at-bat in the eighth, he turned on a fat pitch from Yankees reliever Kyle Farnsworth and lined home run No. 601 of his career just over the rightfield fence.
This time, fans didn't just take photos. Knowing the 38-year-old Griffey might never be back for a regular-season game at Yankee Stadium, they gave him a standing ovation that finally coaxed a little wave from him once he was back in the dugout.
Asked later if he thought the fans were saying goodbye to him, Griffey said: "Nah. No. No."
But it was a sentimental gesture, all right - the kind Griffey studiously tried to avoid all weekend on his first trip back to play the Yankees since 1999.
Back then, he and Alex Rodriguez still were teammates in Seattle. And Griffey was almost exactly at the career juncture that A-Rod is at now.
Griffey was supposed to be the player of his generation who would break the all-time home run records, not Barry Bonds or Mark McGwire. When Griffey joined the Reds in 2000 at age 30, a little younger than Rodriguez is now, Griffey was the superstar who was supposed to hit so many more home runs, he'd not only go flying past Mantle and Mays, Ruth and Aaron, he'd reset the records so high that no one could touch them.
Maris' single-season record of 61, Aaron's career mark of 755? They all seemed possible. Even 800 career homers didn't seem out of the question for Griffey. Then the injuries hit.
Now all that's considered A-Rod's destiny instead.
"If he stays healthy ... I don't see why not," Griffey agreed.
And that's as far as he went.
NEW YORK - JUNE 21: Ken Griffey Jr. #3 of the Cincinnati Reds talks with Alex Rodriguez #13 of the New York Yankees on June 21, 2008 at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx borough of New York City. (Photo by Jim McIsaac/Getty Images)
Griffey could've gone on to stress how injuries turned his own career into a cautionary tale, or how a lot of so-called "sure things" can go wrong on the way to Cooperstown. He eventually had so many physical problems that some wise-guy comedian came out one year and said he was looking forward to the start of another major-league season, "especially the traditional National League opener featuring the Cincinnati Reds and Ken Griffey Jr. throwing out the first hamstring."
It was sarcastic. But it also was true. In four of his first five seasons with the Reds, Griffey missed 331 games - an average of 83 in those four years. Entering this season, he was averaging a home run every 14.9 at-bats. If you do the math, he really might have passed Aaron before Bonds did.
But Griffey won't go there. He seemed determined this weekend to fight off even the slightest suggestions of sentimentality or what-ifs, even on the day when Babe Ruth's 91-year-old daughter was in the house to give A-Rod a home run award.
You can ask him, all right. But Griffey doesn't do serious or traffic in regrets.
Though he's never been accused of using steroids, Griffey won't even confess to sharing the pride that Mets pitcher Pedro Martinez expressed earlier this season about having the ability to dominate during baseball's steroid era despite being clean himself.
Griffey just laughed yesterday and said: "Nah. Pitchers have five days to sit around thinking about things like that. I play every day. I hit my 600th on a Sunday. Had a flight back to Cincinnati that night, got in at 3:30 a.m. And it was back to work on Monday."
Of course, what Griffey omitted is what he actually said the day he hit No. 600: that he didn't even remember running the bases. "I think I floated around."
Getting to 600 meant something to him, all right. Simply being able to play at all seems to make Griffey grateful. Yesterday, it felt familiar to watch him slap his cap on backward, same as he did when he was the effervescent 19-year-old kid who everyone called Junior, then head out for some pregame batting practice, ribbing a couple of teammates as he went.
When a clubhouse guy complimented Griffey on his remarkably good mood, Griffey smiled and said: "You know me, man. I'm always happy."
Now it's A-Rod's turn to deal with What Could Be.
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