Ken Griffey Jr., Zachary, And Me
Griffey’s Hall of Fame credentials were never in doubt. Nor was how he played the game: honestly, heroically, and with more than a little inspiration to share.
Goose Gossage famously said, “You don’t leave the game. The game leaves you.”
Well, I had news for Goose. I left the game in 1994. I’d had enough.
I was once the quintessential 10-year-old boy, rising every Saturday morning, my stirrup and sanitary socks at the ready, knothole baseball tee-shirt and perfectly shaped cap neatly laid out at the foot of my bed, hoping against hope that a rainy day hadn’t wrecked my weekend baseball dreams.
As the years unwound, I would find myself at Riverfront Stadium at every opportunity, circling the concourse for nine innings, the field always in view. I was there on a memorable hot July day when the Cincinnati Reds were heading to another loss and a 12-game deficit to the front-running Dodgers, before Hal King slammed a three-run, walk-off home run that sparked an improbable run to the division title. I was there for Game 2 of the 1976 World Series, loyal witness to the coronation of the Big Red Machine.
In 1981, the Reds had the best record in the majors, but didn’t qualify for the postseason because of a strike that split the season in half and was resolved by declaring arbitrary first- and second-half winners, of which the Reds were neither. Thirteen years later, with another season shut down by labor strife amidst the August heat and my Redlegs leading the National League Central with a 66–48 record — well, let’s just say I’d seen this movie before.
“Great is Baseball. The National Tonic. The Revival of Hope. The Restorer of Confidence.”
So said The Sporting News, circa 1930. It felt like none of those things to me in the summer of 1994. This fan walked. I was done with baseball.
In the spring of 1996, I was blessed with the birth of my first child — a son. By 1999, three-year-old in tow, I once again stood at the nexus of boy and baseball. That iteration of the Reds had been a revelation, and despite the unhappy ending in what would turn out to be the 163rd game of the season, the combination of father, son, and national pastime —had to borrow from Michael Corleone — pulled me right back in.
Then, mere months later, the damnedest thing happened. Ken Griffey Jr. became a Cincinnati Red.
The pull of fatherhood is planetary in its force. The Mariners offered Junior $148 million to remain in Seattle. The New York Mets thought they had a deal in place to bring the superstar to Gotham. But in the end, young Griffey only wanted to be home. The place his father had made his name, where the son had toddled through the clubhouse, making memories.
At the press conference introducing Griffey Jr., COO John Allen asked the new, richest Red if he was nervous.
“Nervous?” Griffey replied. “Yeah. The last time I put on this uniform, I was eight.”
After years of watching the game succumb to the greed of owners and players alike, here was a player — nay, the player — who chose memories over money. Home and hearth over ducats and dynasties.
Zachary embraced him the way young boys do their heroes — completely and without hesitation. Living in Brooklyn, a solid 650 miles from Cincinnati, meant the games were few and far between. But each time my son saw Junior play, the Red hero homered — or so Zack said. I began paying attention, and sure enough, Griffey Jr. was doing just that. Coincidence to be sure, but a beautiful one. One that echoed from Riverfront Stadium to Shea Stadium and back again. Zack passed through the turnstiles, and Junior went yard. The ordained arrangement.
Spring meant Little League, and when school let out was when the real fun began. Trips to Shea. The annual summer pilgrimages to Cincinnati, exiting the Lytle Tunnel into the bright sunlight, downtown stretched out before us; the words, ROUNDING THIRD AND HEADING FOR HOME emblazoned on the side of Great American Ball Park, warmly welcoming us like our old friend Joe Nuxhall would through the airwaves.
It was a perfect August evening in the summer of 2005, a shirsey-cool 72 degrees at game time. It was one of those nights that makes baseball special, even if your favorite team is playing out the string with no hope of fall glory. Junior was as healthy as he’d been since 2000, his first in Cincinnati. He would go on to play in 128 games and post a WAR of 3.5 for the season, only the second productive campaign he would have in nine years wearing red pinstripes. Zachary and I were there, with Griffey sitting on 27 home runs for the year. Junior had homered in each of his previous two games, and in four of the last seven. Only the certainty of a nine-year-old mind devoid of skepticism and overflowing with devotion would expect HR No. 28.
With each passing game this improbable streak — the intersection of future Hall of Famer, son, and dinger — was inching closer to its end. On this particular night, I began to mentally rehearse the words I’d use to soothe the disappointment, a meteor forged from the hard rock of reality, surely about to crash into his little universe.
Four previous at-bats had passed. Two hits. But no tater. The father kept imagining the mantra: “It has to end sometime.” The son, as sons so often do, remained resolute.
Griffey strode to the plate in the ninth, dug in to the batter’s box, then did the most confounding thing.
He squared to bunt.
A plaintive wail of disbelief escaped from the child beside me. “You’re bunting?!?!”
I inhaled sharply. Now, to fully understand the drama playing out here, you have to know the circumstances at play. The announced attendance was 16,954. As the game approached the three-hour mark, I’d guess fewer than half the crowd remained. We were sitting just off home plate not far from the netting, back 20 to 25 rows. In other words, Junior almost surely heard my son’s complaint.
I waited for Griffey to turn in our direction, to fix his gaze upon the voice from the peanut gallery that had the temerity to question him. Instead, he stepped back into the batter’s box, ignoring the callow rebuke.
At the time, I didn’t know who was on the mound. Baseball Reference tells us it was a hail and well-met fellow named Tyler Walker. I will always love Tyler Walker for what he did next: throw a very hittable pitch —a meatball, even— over the plate to one of the great hitters in the history of the game.
I needn’t tell you what happened next. As the ball disappeared into the gloaming, I turned to see my son, now standing on his seat, the folks around us grinning in celebration and disbelief. I picked him up and held him above my head, shaking him, all his joy spilling out, washing over me.
Six months later, my car-wreck of a marriage finally burst into flames, a sudden conflagration I was wholly unprepared to even acknowledge, much less deal with. I was cut adrift in a lifeboat built for one, frantically rowing in all directions with no land in sight. Friends and acquaintances stopped dead in their tracks seeing me walk down the street, struck dumb with embarrassment for words. I mostly quarantined myself from couples around me, lest I contaminate them with my awful disease — divorce.
With no terra firma to steady me, staying afloat meant getting up every morning and keeping to my daily routine. Mere hours after the decision to split up, I was to head to Prospect Park in Brooklyn to pick up the uniforms for the little league team I was coaching for what was now my fourth season. It was all I could do to get to work each day. The idea of taking on another season, all the hours of practice, scheduling, and games suddenly seemed overwhelming and impossible. But, in the end, I couldn’t let go.
We had 13 boys, plus my son. Many had played for me in previous years. The league mandated that everyone play. I had an unspoken pact with the parents that not only would everyone play, every boy would thrive. The less athletic would not be relegated to the outfield, or buried at the bottom of the batting order each game. We would win and lose together. There would be time later for life’s necessary lessons. Little league was a time to dream.
The view out my window that year was in grayscale. But the weekends with my two children were Technicolor. My then eight-year-old daughter, wise beyond her years, would trudge along with brother and father, never a hint of complaint. Januaries were spent digging out the artificial turf field from underneath a foot of snow so Zachary could practice for the upcoming season. Maria would dutifully bring her glove. He would teach her the fine art of pitching, tenderly echoing the very same words I had drilled into his baseball-addled brain seasons ago.
And always there was Cincinnati Reds Baseball. And Griffey Jr. He and my son’s streak would continue for a bit longer, although I’m sure the centerfielder felt little pressure. Maria would attend the games, nonplussed, a book in her hands, closing it only to watch a high fly ball drift into the outfield and whisper knowingly in my ear, “can of corn.”
As anyone who cares about baseball can tell you, Griffey Jr.’s Cincinnati years were a profound disappointment. He’d never live up to his first season as a Red, when he hit 40 home runs, tallied a .942 OPS, and amassed a Wins Above Replacement score of 5.2. Owner Carl Lindner spent a considerable sum to bring the erstwhile Mariner home, but never managed to build a viable team around him. Moves like the one GM Dan O’Brien made, unwisely throwing $25 million at Eric Milton, or counting on Austin Kearns to develop into an impact player, never panned out. As Griffey Jr. fell victim to injuries — in his own words refusing to take steroids as his competitors did, so he could look clearly into the eyes of his children — the game left him behind. Unlike Barry Bonds, Junior could live with that. Some fans grumbled, feeling betrayed. If he didn’t hustle enough down to first base to perhaps protect an injury prone hamstring, that was just too bad. As frustrated as the rest of the city was, the hometown hero could be thin-skinned, barking at the media.
None of this mattered in my household. While others celebrated milestone home runs 500 and 600, we were less interested in such prosaic numbers. For us, every home run was a celebration. An affirmation. Baseball had gotten under my skin at moments in my life when I absolutely needed it to. I may have quit baseball, but it wouldn’t quit me.
“Great is Baseball. The National Tonic. The Revival of Hope. The Restorer of Confidence.”
It was the tonic my life needed. It gave me hope. And a bit of confidence. It brought clarity where doubt once reigned. I had a hole inside of me. But I figured out a way to patch it. My daughter and son were the bricks. Baseball turned out to be the mortar. Ken Griffey Jr. would be a tiny part of that.
George Kenneth Griffey Jr. stands at the entrance of the Baseball Hall of Fame with 99.3% of the vote. I’m 99.3% sure I’ll be there in Cooperstown this summer, standing in an open field, far from the stage, celebrating My Kid and The Kid one more time.
