{"id":1233,"date":"2016-07-27T08:10:29","date_gmt":"2016-07-27T04:10:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/?p=1233"},"modified":"2016-07-27T08:10:29","modified_gmt":"2016-07-27T04:10:29","slug":"cooperstown-adds-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/?p=1233","title":{"rendered":"Cooperstown adds two"},"content":{"rendered":"

This past weekend two storied players of my youth were inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Ken Griffey Jr. and Mike Piazza, as many have noted, began their careers at opposite ends of the spectrum\u2014Griffey was the first overall pick in the 1987 amateur draft and Piazza was the 1,390th<\/sup> pick in 1988\u2014and ended their careers together in Cooperstown. That pretty much sums up right there why you don\u2019t bet on baseball.<\/p>\n

With apologies to Piazza, perhaps the greatest catcher of all time, this post will be about Ken Griffey Jr., the greatest player I ever saw.<\/p>\n

Yup. No question about it. Of anyone who\u2019s put on a major league uniform from 1989 to the present day, Ken Griffey Jr. was the best. He played his first 11 seasons on a team I hated, and he broke my heart in 1995, but sometimes you\u2019ve just got to tip your cap. Oh, that I could have seen the man in pinstripes. After all, there is only one thing more beautiful than a lefthanded hitter hitting an upper deck home run to right field in Yankee Stadium\u2026 Ken Griffey Jr.<\/i> hitting an upper deck home run to right field in Yankee Stadium.<\/p>\n

Nicknamed \u201cThe Natural,\u201d \u201cThe Kid,\u201d or simply \u201cJunior,\u201d it\u2019s amazing to think that after 13 All-Star Game selections and 630 home runs (among a million other stats) you still think to yourself what could have been<\/i>. When Griffey came up you were sure he\u2019d hit a thousand home runs and win 20 Gold Gloves. Well, that didn\u2019t happen, as like Mantle before him injuries limited his lifetime stats. Still, though, 630 home runs? And pretty much the only power hitter (if you need to call him that) of the Steriod Era not tinged by any steroid claims. (As far as I know the only drug Griffey ever used was that mysterious brain tonic provided to him by Mr. Burns on a classic episode of The Simpsons<\/i> in which Griffey plays a ringer on the old man\u2019s company softball team.)<\/p>\n

Ken Griffey Jr. made his major league debut on April 3, 1989. Coincidentally that was the exact date I became a fan of this thing called sports. (The two events were unrelated; Griffey\u2019s debut came the same day as the 1989 NCAA Tournament\u2019s final game, the one that hooked me for life as a sports fan.) One might say Griffey and I grew up together. That day in \u201989 Griffey was only 19 and could have been my older brother. Now at 46 he\u2019s barely older than I am. How did that<\/i> happen?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s said that those who grew up in the \u201950s and \u201960s idolizing Mickey Mantle would tell their dads he was the best there ever was. Nope, Dad would say, you never saw DiMaggio, you never saw the best. That\u2019s how I\u2019m going to feel someday when Franklin tells me about up-and-comer I\u2019ve never heard of. I\u2019ll smile a Dad-like smile and say mm-hmm, yup, but sorry, kid. You never saw the best. You never saw Griffey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This past weekend two storied players of my youth were inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Ken Griffey Jr. and Mike Piazza, as many have noted, began their careers at opposite ends of the spectrum\u2014Griffey was the first overall … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1233"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1234,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1233\/revisions\/1234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikeoconnelljr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}