In the fall I wrote a piece about why the state of sports in Seattle, and really the entire state of Washington, was crumbling to the ground.
Today, I write that it just might be back because The Kid is back.
Ken Griffey, Jr. played in Seattle from 1989-1999 in a Mariners uniform before being traded to his hometown Cincinnati Reds nine years ago.
All of his 10 Gold Gloves for being the outstanding defensive centerfielder in Major League Baseball came when he was a Mariner. Ten of his 13 All-Star selections came out of this time, and yes, his 1997 Most Valuable Player award for the American League and all seven of his Silver Slugger awards came in the Emerald City.
He was the standard for everybody else in major league baseball during those years. If he wore his hat backward, everybody else followed. When he broke his wrist by jumping into the outfield wall while making a leaping catch in 1995, it made me look at the fence in my Little League park a little bit different.
Ken Griffey, Jr. is the reason I got into baseball and became a Mariners fan to begin with. During my first Mariners baseball game, he hit a home run – and that pretty much sealed it.
Could the return of a legend come at any better time for Seattle?
We all know about the state’s problems last year. The Mariners had a promising season in 2007 by winning 88 games and were picked to win the AL West last season by Sports Illustrated, only to bumble their way into the second-worst record in the entire league, winning 61 games.
There’s nothing to think Griffey, a 39-year-old with knee and hamstring and hip injuries all coming in the past nine years, can resurrect the team alone. Seattle lost one of its only power hitters, Raul Ibanez, to the Philadelphia Phillies in the offseason.
But if Seattle isn’t exactly going to be contending for the AL West title, then there’s nothing to say we can’t hope for a little of the Junior magic again.
After all, Griffey, Jr.’s magic is the entire reason Seattle still has a team.
Baseball in Seattle had been contentious the minute the city landed a major league team. The Seattle Pilots played for one year in 1969, then packed up and left for Milwaukee. They became the Brewers, and Seattle was without a team again. Its next shot at a team came with the Mariners in 1977.
Their stadium, the Kingdome, was terrible. The baseball wasn’t much better. Then they got Griffey, who began playing and immediately starring. Why do I remember him as my favorite player? During the 1995 season, after he’d missed 73 games with the broken wrist, he took over the playoffs, scoring the winning run in the American League Divisional Series on a headfirst slide into home plate. Few plays are more sacred in Seattle sports lore.
The image of an incredulous Griffey on the bottom of a team dogpile on home plate looking out with a smile was so iconic that the Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper plastered it on the front page, which turned into T-shirts of the front page, which I got as a birthday present for my ninth birthday.
The highlights of that season are still on a VHS tape at my parents’ house called “My Oh My,” which I still count as one of my favorite movies of all-time.
Griffey was the cool, hip lynchpin of the Mariners’ roster. He wore his hat backward when he hit the ball off the warehouse outside Baltimore’s Camden Yards during the Home Run Derby of 1993.
I still count the memories of Griffey’s Mariners days as the best in team history, even that of the 116-win season in 2001 that tied the major league record for wins.
So here he returns. He’s older. He’s not going to slug 40 home runs again, likely won’t try to break his wrist on a wall catch and probably shouldn’t be counted on to look like his 20-year-old self again. He’s no longer The Kid.
Who cares? He’s a Mariner.
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At age 39, Griffey is still “The Kid” up in Seattle
Daily Emerald
February 25, 2009
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