Ken Griffey Jr. was and is my favorite baseball player. His first major league game was April 3, 1989. I wasn't even 2 years old. His first Major League home run came just seven days later on April 10, also the first time the Seattle Mariners won a game with Griffey on the field.
My first baseball memory is a hazy, unclear shot of a tiny television showing the Cincinnati Reds winning the World Series in 1990. My next memory is of Joe Carter crushing a 2-2 pitch from Mitch Williams way over the left field wall in Toronto to win the World Series in 1993. The only other thing I remember about the 1993 MLB season was constant coverage of this 5th year center fielder in Seattle everyone kept calling "Junior" or "the Kid."
By all accounts, 1993 was Griffey's breakout year. He blasted 45 home runs, 1 shy of the leaders in both American and National Leagues (Juan Gonzalez, TEX; Barry Bonds, SF; 46 home runs each). He played for his 4th straight (out of a total 13, 11 straight) All-Star team, won his 4th Gold Glove award and won his second Silver Slugger award. Griffey was the complete player.
He then rattled off consecutive seasons of 40, 49, 56, 56, 48, and 40 home runs; four of those season were AL-HR leading seasons (and 1995 doesn't count). That last season, my dream came true. After the 1999 season, the Cincinnati Reds acquired Ken Griffey Jr. and I immediately started begging for season tickets. He had the most beautiful swing in baseball, you'll never convince me otherwise. A Griffey home run was a piece of art.
One day during high school, I was driving in downtown Cincinnati near the ballpark with two friends. We were stopped at a red light, and a gleaming silver Dodge Viper pulled up next to us. In the driver's seat, wearing a white t-shirt, sunglasses, and a backwards fitted Reds cap was Ken Griffey Jr. We froze. The light went green, and he took off, leaving us looking at his license plate: "GRIFFEY."
He will always be remembered as the guy who produced on both sides of the ball, playing rock-solid defense and crushing home runs for so many years. I repeat, in case you haven't noticed, Junior was and is my favorite baseball player of all time. In an era that featured wide-spread scandal and rampant use of steroids, there was never a question about Griffey's integrity. He will always be "the guy who did it right."
Injuries and age set him back late in his career, but he was still great to watch. In the summer of 2008, I took my girlfriend (a Yankees fan - I know, don't get me started) to a game during the last year of the old Yankees Stadium. Luckily for me, the AL East was playing the NL Central that year in inter-league play. Reds-Yankees in NYC on June 21, 2008 - the last time I saw Ken Griffey Jr. play live. He went 2 for 4 in a Reds shutout of the Yanks, 6-0.
I will always remember playing backyard baseball and pretending to be Griffey, trying to get my swing just right; I will always remember watching him hit his 500th and 600th home runs; and I will always remember almost choking up the day he retired.
Ken Griffey Jr., thanks for the memories.
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