Chances are one of your first crushes was Kelly Kapowski, getting on the Internet required some weird noise coming from your modem and you and your friends were all asking for Starter jackets for Christmas.
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In the final few weeks, it was Mooney who spent a day at the Griffey household issuing a pre-draft, cognitive 160-question test – similar to the Wonderlic test given to National Football League draft prospects. It was because his father had a size 7½ hat and he had a 6¼, he said. I said I would interview him in the auto, and did. “I was 18. I was just looking at him. It wasn’t like I was trying to be a tough guy or change the way that baseball is played”.
Soon, though, Griffey will have a Hall of Fame ring – and that won’t be lost on his father. “I’m here to be supportive”.
“I still remember that because it was the mid ’90s, back when the Cleveland Indians had really good teams, pennant winners with a bunch of All-Stars”.
Ken Griffey Jr. greets fans before the game on ‘Picture Day, ‘ Sunday, July 20, 1997, in Seattle. Cameron was a key cog on Seattle’s 2000 wild-card team, and an All-Star for the 2001 powerhouse that won 116 games.
Cameron said that spring, scouts showed up to games mostly to “figure out … whether (Griffey) would sign, and for (how) much”.
“My father has always told me there are more second, third, fourth and higher (picks) in the big leagues than the first-round pick”, said Griffey, who played with his dad, also named Ken, with the Mariners in 1990 and 1991. “As I got older and I started playing and I stopped playing and I started coaching, I found out a lot of kids were in my same boat and I wanted to do my best to help them out”.
Ken Griffey Jr. waits his turn to bat before a 1998 game against the Chicago White Sox at Comiskey Park.
No one had a sweeter swing than Ken Griffey Jr.
With that in mind, here is a by-the-numbers look at some more Hall history, for those who might not have had reason to be familiar with baseball’s most hallowed ground prior to Griffey’s election into this exclusive club.
At about the same time, Griffey came across the radar of a young Adam Lind growing up in Anderson, Ind. Like so many other young teens at the time, Griffey’s play – and his shoes – caught Lind’s attention. My job was to play ball and provide for the family, which I did. One of the entrants, Ken Griffey Jr., was the top pick in the 1987 draft. “I am very happy for him and I am blessed that I even got to meet him”. It’s totally different. I praise him because he has always been so close to his kids and I try to be close to my three. “But I told him he has the big ring now”.
As morning was breaking on June 2, 2010, some 14 hours before he was expected to be in uniform for a Mariners game against the Twins in Seattle, Griffey turned the ignition key of his Infiniti QX56 and headed for home. Trey Griffey is a wide receiver at the University of Arizona and was a redshirt junior this past year. Thanks to advanced statistics, his place in such a ranking is fodder for one of those bar-stool debates that ultimately conclude with the words “Last Call!”
There’s the double off Dave Stewart in his first major-league at-bat, and the homer off Eric King on his first Kingdome swing. And he recalled how his traveled 402 feet to center field and Griffey Jr.’s went 388 feet to left. “All the pressure was on him”.
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“I knew he felt uneasy”, Cameron said. And at the same time he had all the pressure on him. But at the same time, he still had all the pressure on him to hit it. At 3-0, I didn’t think he was going to get a shot, (but) he hit a low and away fastball – a sinker – and he hit it out to left field. A player can tick every box on the imaginary MVP checklist (extraordinary production, winning team, sterling reputation), and see his MVP hopes dashed on the rocks of voter vicissitudes. Then, I sat and watched as grown men and women came unglued with joy as Griffey crushed a home run to deep right field and threw out a base runner at second base.
