It Should Have Been Junior

I will always picture Ken Griffey Jr as "The Kid", the nineteen year-old phenom wearing Willie Mays' number, blowing bubbles in the outfield in Seattle and slugging home runs with the most perfect swing the game had ever seen. Before Balco, before the strike, before my Yankees won four World Series and damn near took the fun out of winning - before all that, when baseball was pure, there was Junior. He was  baseball's answer to Michael Jordan: the game's perfect specimin. Junior was a five tool player who hit baseballs like they were golf balls, won a gold glove every year of the nineties, and was a legitimate, scandal-free role model in the era of Barry Bonds and Albert Belle. By the turn of the century, Griffey had piled up 432 home runs, and at age 30, he was prepared to make a run at Hank. For a decade, Griffey might have been the best the game had ever seen. And then, suddenly, he wasn't.

Griffey getting hurt in 2000 was like Mantle getting his foot caught in a Yankee Stadium storm drain in 1951 and blowing out his knee. Both began chains of injuries that prevented perhaps the two greatest talents in history from living up to their potential. In a game in which a player's greatness is measured by numbers, Mantle's 536 home runs short-change him in history's eye. I'm not saying Mantle was better than Mays - he probably wasn't - but a healthy Mantle would likely have eclipsed Mays' 660 career homers and been in the running for the "best of all time" title. Griffey hit 432 home runs in one decade and then hit 168 over the next eight seasons, finally reaching the 600 milestone this week. He hasn't played a full season in this century. People talk about him in the past tense, like they talked about Jordan when he played with the Wizards. There's a definite before-and-after effect with Junior, "The Kid" of 1989-2000 and the hobbled veteran of the present. The most upsetting thing about Griffey, though, isn't the lost possibilities of his own legacy. It's what he could have meant to the game. Injuries robbed him of the role of savior and robbed baseball - and its fans - of being saved. 

Every scandal in baseball history has had a hero to help the sport rise above it. The Black Sox scandal of  1919 was eclipsed by the emergence of Babe Ruth as the game's first superstar. Jackie himself helped the game overcome the initial shock of integration. After the strike in 1994, Cal Ripken's class and iron will brought baseball out of the shadows and Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa cemented its revival in 1998. But then it was McGwire and Sosa who helped bring the game down. The steroid scandal has shaken baseball and with its biggest stars - Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, McGwire and Sosa - as the offenders, baseball lacks a good guy to help it rise from the wreckage. Griffey should have been that man. If Griffey, never so much as suspected of steroid use, had stayed healthy, he could have beaten Bonds to Aaron's record and been chasing 800 by now. Hank Aaron called Griffey last week to help him relax as he chased 600. Imagine if Griffey had been chasing the record! Hank Aaron might have celebrated the chase instead of displaying the same tongue-in-cheek disapproval he showed toward Bonds last year. A Griffey-Bonds rivalry would have been sports' ultimate showdown of good vs. evil. Junior could have been the game's all-time home run leader as well as the game's savior and resident good guy. He could have been Ruth and Ripken all rolled into one. The toughest part of it all is that he was that guy. Right man. Right place. Right time. He was that man. And then, of course, he wasn't. 

Ken Griffey, Jr. is no longer "The Kid". He's a 38-year old man with his best playing days a decade behind him. Injuries robbed him of an immortal legacy and robbed us of the greatest race in the history of  sports, perhaps the most clear cut good/evil rivalry any of us have ever seen. In the end, Griffey will probably retire short of 700 home runs. He'll likely eclipse Sosa (609 and counting) and possibly edge Mays (660), but it is all but certain that he will never challenge Bonds for the all-time record. And it's a shame. In fact, it's the most disappointing thing I have ever seen in sports. I'll always remember Griffey as the best pure baseball player I have ever seen. That perfect swing - the sweet, smooth, uppercut - is etched in my mind as the example of what baseball should be, and he - the smiling picture of youth - is the best definition of "baseball player" that I have ever witnessed. In the end, Griffey's legacy will be just that: what we remember of his youth and what we imagine he could have been. His injuries robbed him. His injuries robbed us. Barry Bonds' name stands above Hank Aaron's, but Griffey's should have stood atop them all. In the dark years of the steroid scandal, it should have been Griffey to help baseball rise from the wreckage. It should have been Junior, for his sake and ours. 

Comments

[SG]

Excellent article.

Could not have been expressed any better.