There really was only one way Ken Griffey Jr. could go into the Hall of Fame, and always the fan favorite, he didn’t disappoint. “You are a great hitting coach, but the biggest lesson that you taught me was how to get through the game of life, and to never quit”, Piazza said, thanking Smith. There are so many great things that I could talk about, but we’d be here all day.
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Griffey Jr said out his 22 years playing, he leaned that a player’s first team will treat him the best, before taking a Mariners hat out from under his podium and proudly putting it on, backwards of course.
“I want to thank my family, my friends, the fans, the Reds, the White Sox and the Mariners for making this kid’s dream come true”, Griffey said.
Selected by the Dodgers in the 62nd round of the 1988 amateur draft with the 1,390th pick, ahead of only five other players, Piazza is the lowest-drafted player to reach the Hall of Fame. “He knew my dad and knew who his friend was (Hall of Famer and Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda), yet he still made me work to earn a place on the varsity team”. Since then, this time every July has made me feel pretty old, even if that’s not actually the case.
Here is a look at Piazza’s Hall of Fame plaque, which was unveiled during the induction ceremony. He was selected to the All-Star game 13 times and won 10 Gold Gloves. “Nope. Not me. You know what they said when you’re a kid?”
Griffey’s mom, Birdie, and his father, former Cincinnati Reds star Ken Sr., both cancer survivors and integral to his rise to stardom, were front and center in the first row.
“If he looks at me and we make contact, we have a couple of routines, a way of us expressing love for one and other”, Buhner told me last week.
Mike Piazza said it best at Sunday’s induction. “Now it’s time to smell the roses”, said Piazza to cheers and applause.
Piazza, who delivered the first speech of the afternoon, grew most emotional when discussing his most famous home run – the game-winning shot he hit in the first NY sporting event held following the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. We won’t be confusing him for Johnny Bench, but we also shouldn’t act like he was made of teflon back there.
“Talking to 50,000 people I didn’t have anything in common with, I’d have been all right”, Griffey said 30 minutes after his speech.
Though the Dodgers gave him his start, Piazza found a home in NY when he was traded to the Mets in May 1998.
Boasting a career batting average of.308, Piazza will long be remembered for hitting a game-winning home run for the Mets in the first sporting event played in NY after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
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Piazza paid tribute to that moment. While he spent about the same amount of time with his first team, the Los Angeles Dodgers as he did the New York Mets, it is with the latter team that he will be enshrined. No one can argue that he has the most home runs ever among catchers, because that’s a fact.
