King Griffey

A few weeks ago Ken Griffey Jr., the greatest baseball player of our generation returned back to Seattle to finish his career. Griffey returning to Seattle meant something special to me. I’m about 90% positive that Junior is my favorite athlete of all time. Even though basketball has always been my favorite sport, back in the 90’s I was trying to be the next Ken Griffey while everybody else was trying to be like Mike. Not only was he was the best player in the game, he was black, and he was left handed (just like me and all other great people) which put together made him an easy choice to be my sports hero.

Walking into Yankees Stadium with my Mariners hat on, No# 24 Griffey jersey on, and my Ken Griffey Jr. edition baseball mitt on my right hand and watching Jr. hit home runs against the hated New York Yankees on not one but two different occasions are two of the 10 greatest moments of my childhood. He single handily made baseball cool in my eyes.

By the end of the 90’s Jr. was named to the All Century Team and was named player of the decade in the 90’s. At the age of 30 he was on pace to be one of the youngest players ever to hit 500 home runs. Everybody knew that it would just be a matter of time before Hank Aaron’s Home Run Record would be his. Before the 2000 season Griff was traded to the Cincinnati Reds to be closer to his family. This meant that I had to change team as well and jump on to the Reds bandwagon.

Being a Reds fan lasted maybe a month or two at the longest. By the time school was out that year I was off the bandwagon and was just a Jr. fan. I just couldn’t get into the team at all. Ever since then things have been rough for Griff. He played in over 140 games once do to injury, after injury, after injury which was terrible to watch because it was clear as day that he wasn’t the player of old anymore.

During this same time Barry Bonds was going bonkers!!! In a 4 year period when Griffey couldn’t catch a break if it landed in his glove Bonds was having the 4 best years that any player in the history of the game has ever had in row. The man hit over 200 hundred home runs and won BACK to BACK to BACK to BACK NL MVP AWARDS!!!!!!!!!!!!! To the casual baseball fan Griffey was pretty yesterday news at this point. He could have run around kissing the starting pitchers wife before games and nobody would have cared about him. And to be honest, I wouldn’t have been mad at them.

Now we all know the problems that Barry Lamar Bonds is going through due to the popular opinion being that he was on the roids during those years. And personally I don’t know or care about what he was doing. But, one thing I do know is that Ken Griffey Junior was clean as a whistle and still put up numbers that some of baseball greatest players could only dream about which will easily make him a First Ballot Hall of Fame whenever he decides to hang them up. And that is why is the G.O.A.T. of our generation. Congrats, you did it the right way.