Ken Griffey Jr......

I just read over the news wire that my favorite baseball player over the past 30 years has retired. I am devastated because this man needs an N.B.A. style send off. He needs to be hailed as a hero and needs to be paraded around all of the major league parks on everyone's shoulder. Ken Griffey Jr. had a legendary career that should have been "Ruthian" and "Jordanian". He was as great a baseball player as Jordan was on the basketball court and as big as Babe Ruth in baseball. When he left Seattle the first time, I was so certain that he was coming to New York and was going to lead the Mets to titles. Instead he went home to Cincinnati and the baseball gods were not kind to him. He never cheated the game. Some of his greatest moments were moments when he crashed into walls catching balls breaking his wrist. He robbed home runs, he ran the bases well, and his swing is still the prettiest swing I have ever seen. When McGwire and Sosa were going nuts with home runs in 98, he sat back and simply gave the spotlight to them.. He watched in awe as Barry Bonds supplanted him as the premier left handed hitter in the game. He never criticized those guys for what they were doing. He just couldn't stay healthy. If he would have stayed healthy, he would no doubt would have passed Aaron and more importantly Mays and Ruth. Every player wants Mays because, most people believe that Mays is the greatest player of all time. Ruth is the goal for most as well because he is considered to be either the second best or the best of all time. Plus Ruth was left Handed and his legend and status in the game dwarfs everyone. Griffey had that talent. He made watching west coast baseball a happening. I cannot count how may times I would stay up just to watch a Griffey Jr. Highlight. He had so many.
I could list his achievements and they are so many. His proudest achievement was hitting a home run in the same game as his father in back to back at bats. Kirk Mccaskill gave up a shot to both dad and Jr. He scored the biggest run in Mariner History when he dashed home on a double hit by Edgar Martinez that scored both A-Rod and Griffey eliminating the Yankees in a divisional series in 1995. He also at that time had hit 5 or 6 home runs in that 5 game series that were epic and announced to the world that he was not afraid of the big stage. He hit a home run that many people don't know about when he promised a family of the Gulf war who had lost their father in combat that he would hit a home run in a game to his son. I met him once at a night club and he was pretty quiet. I did not ask him for an autograph because I was in awe. He was not big or anything special so when i saw him I could not believe that he was the guy hitting all of these home runs. I will never forget how mad I was when I went to see the Angels play the Mariners and he hit a ball into the mountains that the Angels had in center field and no one to this date has ever found that ball. One of the two bad memories I have in sports. I went to see Gretzsky play against the Kings in his first game out here as a Ranger and he scored 10 seconds before we arrived to our seats. I missed Griffey hitting that monstrous home run in Angel stadium.
I could write about people criticizing him for wearing his hat properly or that he did not like to sign autographs and some players did not like that. I could talk about how he did not succumb to the steroid or H.G.H demon of his generation. To me that is not important. If you polled players who have played baseball since 1995 most of them will tell you that he was their favorite player. He mentored Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez. Not Bonds.. All of the players may have loved Sammy Sosa, but Ken Griffey Jr. was the player that everyone tried to be. I am choked up a little because I feel today that my generation of baseball may finally have come to an end. I ha three posters in my room when I got my first single place here in L.a. Micheal Jordan was two of the posters and Ken Griffey Jr. was the other. I may have loved Darryl Strawberry and Doc Gooden more because they were on my team, but other than Tiger(who calls Griffey his big brother), Ali, Jordan, and Bonds, Agassi, no one made me pay attention to ports like Griffey. Boy I wish that his career could have ended with the fan fare that it deserved. He is the most complete baseball player I have ever seen. The photo of the pose and swing says it all!!! Today is a sad day....