Remembering Griffey

With the MLB Draft happening last week, I thought I’d share a bit about myself and my love of baseball, by explaining how one of my favorite baseball players helped craft part of my love for the game.  He’s the player who was the first to make me love baseball from an individual player standpoint and someone who most definitely will become the first #1 MLB Draft pick to make the Hall of Fame, Ken Griffey Jr.

 

Junior Griffey was the first player to make me love baseball for many reasons, but most importantly for this reason; he made everything look so cool.  Making a routine catch in center? No problem; he’d just jog underneath the ball, see it into his glove one handed (which completely broke the first rule we’re all taught in Little League: catch the ball with two hands!), and then whip a throw to the cutoff man like he was just playing catch with the batter.  Pressure filled at bat against a top pitcher?  Child’s play.  He’d step into the box with that same subtle swagger, with a wiggle of his hips before uncorking that beautiful swing of his, and 400 feet later somebody was leaving the game with a souvenir.

 

I spent large portions of my childhood baseball life trying to imitate him, trying to master that same majestic swing, trying to emulate that cannon arm he possessed.  I finally realized right before high school, 8 years into my baseball playing life, that I would never have his arm (I played first base), nor would I have his flowing swing (I had a short, compact swing).  There’s one thing that I did take from him however that stayed with me; his unflappable confidence. Griffey never seemed fazed by the opponent.  He treated game 7 of the ALCS like game 58 of the regular season, with one singular goal: to win.  That’s what I took with me into my high school days when I became an all-city player…to not let any situation get the best of me.  I ended up having a solid high school career as Griffey was tearing the covers off baseballs in the mid and late 90s.

 

When Griffey was becoming a rising star in Seattle during the early 90s, I used to grab the newspaper and find out what Seattle did the night before.  My favorite team is the Brewers (Sadly, that’s quickly racing to was…I can’t sit through another 90 loss season.), (EDITORS NOTE: Hey remember that time you had CC?)but my attention after seeing the Brewers box score immediately switched to Seattle’s to see if Griffey homered or had another stellar moment.  I can still remember the first day Ken Griffey Junior presents Major League Baseball released for Super Nintendo.  I played that game mercilessly. (On a side note, I won a title in that game with the Chicago White Sox, hitting 47 HRs with Frank Thomas.) I didn’t play as the Mariners just out of respect for Griffey. I wanted to face him and beat him, even if it was just in a video game.

For realsies, this game was the shit

As my life has moved on past adolescence, I still hold onto the innocence of watching baseball and thinking, “So-and-so looked so cool making that catch…just like Griffey.”  Since he left the game, the title of “my favorite player” has passed through many hands (currently residing with Detroit’s Prince Fielder), but Griffey was always the first…and I’ll always keep that quiet confidence with me.

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What players did you emulate?  Tell us in the comments.

 

 

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