On April 10, 1989 I saw Ken Griffey, Jr. hit his first major league home run. The news of his mid-season, but not unexpected, retirement last week still came as a shock. In my life as a baseball (more on my life through baseball) fan no player captivated me the way Griffey did. If I were at home listening in the background to a game on radio or TV, I’d always stop what I was doing if Junior came to bat… as much out of expectation that something special would happen as out of respect.
Even when he was young… and he came to the big leagues when he was 19… he carried himself with an easy confidence and expressed a joy of the game that just made you watch him. And he delivered. Not just through his hitting, but with extraordinary feats in the field and on the base-paths. He simply did things I had never seen before.
Every Mariner fan (and I assume Cincinnati Red fans who rooted for Griff when he went there as a free-agent) has those moments locked into their memories… the Spiderman catch or the Wetteland home-run or the dash from first to home on Edgar’s memorable double. These are events so well known that any resident of Puget Sound recognizes the meaning and significance of those iconic images at first glance.
My son Matt and I were privileged to have a great view of Griffey’s daring race to home in the fifth game of the ’95 Yankee play-off. On October 8, he and I were sitting up a little ways behind third base… high enough to see Edgar’s line drive hook down the left-field line and then look back to catch Junior already around second bearing for third.
Griffey was fast and I’ve seen plenty of runners make that cut, but I have never seen anything like Junior as he turned. He ran with a power and urgency, a resolve and focus… every part of his body seemed to be pumping hard. He flew more than ran and Griffey, who was a bigger man than he looked, resembled the biggest most powerful running back I’d ever seen. He reminded me of a thoroughbred race horse, every muscle and sinew stretching to its limit.
As Junior closed in on third, the realization emerged that he wasn’t going to stop and I remember yelling to Matt through the din of the crowd’s upraised voices, “he’s coming home!” A glance to left, to see if the outfielder, Gerald Williams, had started to throw home, then back to Griffey who blew through third. The throw, the slide, the euphoria! He was safe, the Mariners won, there was more October baseball in the offing. It was a moment.
It was the moment and in that second every Mariner fan felt what fans felt when Thompson belted Branca’s pitch or when Don Larsen threw his last strike or when Mays tracked down Wertz’s line-drive deep in the centerfield of the Polo Grounds. All the “next years”, the promising Aprils turned into galling Augusts, the missed pitches, errors, passed balls and zeroes were replaced by the elation of winning when it really counted.
Remember, before and since, the Mariners have been a pretty dismal team and until 1995 they had never made the play-offs, much less contended for them. Quickly down 0-2 in a five-game divisional series the fresh thrill of winning was about to be replaced with the familiar taste of disappointment. Somehow the team, under the gruff leadership of Lou Pinella, fought its way back. They won games three and four. So, as Griffey hurtled towards home, he truly carried the hearts of every dedicated M’s fan with him.
Many claim that he saved the franchise and that may not be hyperbole. The team’s winning at that moment turned the tide of public and political opinion, which led to a new ball park and conditions that motivated ownership to stay in Seattle. If he didn’t save baseball, he surely got enough people to feel the team was something they wanted to keep in their city.
Later photographs show Griffey with a huge smile at the bottom of a pile of celebrating players (who were surely as astounded at Martinez’ double, Griffey’s dash and the team’s extraordinary comeback as Matt, I and everyone else who watched). That image of “the kid” captures the contentedness that anyone who has ever played baseball, at any level, knows to be found in a game that takes place on open green fields in the soft twilight of a late summer afternoon.
I have another, personal memory of Griffey, one I can’t be document, but remembered clearly. I know it happened and while I am sketchy on the details, the image is clear in my memory and, once again, rich in meaning about Junior, the Mariners and baseball. A few days before the M’s improbable comeback against the Yankees, the Mariners had been involved in an even more unbelievable series of events: a pennant race. They crawled back from seven games behind to catch the Angels and force a one-game play-off for the division lead (and the right to play the Yankees for the division championship).
A one-game play-off! Again as a baseball fan, living under the gloomy skies of the Pacific Northwest, our first foray into any kind of baseball post-season play turned out to be a wonderous gift: a dramatic, winner-take-all contest… the stuff of legend… 1951, Bobby Thompson, Ralph Branca… could we be any more blessed?
And the day was perfect… sunny, crisp. True October baseball. Dreamed of but never seen in Seattle. I’d managed to get three tickets and Matt and I along with my teaching buddy, Chuck Nisbet, joined the throngs headed into the Kingdome. A domed stadium is not an appropriate venue for an outdoor sport, but this is what the Gods of Baseball meted out to long-suffering, dedicated M’s fans. This over-size, mushroom-shaped cement palace was what we got and it was home. At least the domed acoustics amplified the crowd noise. It was loud.
We entered the stadium, way back beneath the second-deck overhang on the first level, between home and first. Here’s the hazy part. I don’t know when this occurred. Was there infield warm-up before the game? Was it as Junior ran out to the center before Randy threw his first pitch? I know it was before the game started, I’m sure of that.
The dome was packed and there was an electric feel to the moment… a heightened anticipation that often surrounds a big game, elevated by the fact that this was a new experience for all of us, expanded by the astonishment that the Mariners, a joke of a baseball team for many previous seasons, were actually playing for something. Everyone was tense, all of us were waiting to see what would happen next.
I looked down and saw Griffey trotting out of the dugout across the infield (on his way to center?). When he reached the pitcher’s mound he stopped. He turned around and stood there. He looked toward home (was Dan Wilson there?) and he went through the motions of throwing a pitch! Here it is minutes before the biggest game in Seattle’s dim baseball history and Griffey (who was fully aware of the tension everyone, most likely himself, felt) breaks the ice by suggesting he’s ready to pitch the game! He shrugged and gave a hearty body-shaking laugh, as he would, then turned and continued on his way, but in that moment he let everyone know… this is just another game and the kid is here to win it.
And the funny thing? I am certain that if Griffey had taken the mound, he could have pitched a winning game.
No comments:
Post a Comment