“I didn’t get it until after, and I started crying again when I read it”, Griffey said afterward. “Everything about it was awesome”.
Advertisement
So while Piazza was a rarity in the sport as an offensive juggernaut and Griffey was a fun, wildly exciting and incredibly gifted athlete, the two couldn’t have had more divergent beginnings on their paths to Cooperstown. “I pray we never forget their sacrifice and work to always defeat such evil”.
In addition to Piazza and Griffey, a trio of players narrowly missed out in 2016, and a handful of others gained momentum in the voting.
That it did, culminating a momentous event more stressful than Griffey envisioned.
More than 50,000 people showed up Jr’s induction day. I dragged a cooler and carried a lawn chair.
Griffey, a 13-time All-Star and 10-time Gold Glove Award victor, hit 630 home runs and 1,836 RBIs, as he was just three votes shy of becoming the first unanimous selection into the Hall.
He was considered the most popular player of his generation.
“The actual talking part wasn’t too bad”, said Griffey.
But it wasn’t just the numbers.
It capped a weekend celebration that also honored Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy with the J.G. Taylor Spink Award for baseball writing and the late Graham McNamee with the Ford C. Frick Award for broadcasting.
COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. As a young man growing up in baseball, Neil Herman always liked the Los Angeles Dodgers as his favorite Major League Baseball team. I don’t believe it!
When they were drafted nearly three decades ago, one was on everybody’s baseball radar, the other a blip at best, picked almost as an afterthought in the final round thanks to a recommendation by an important family friend.
Piazza recalled the first game played in NY after the 9/11 terror attacks when his eighth inning home run lifted the Mets to a 3-2 win over Atlanta, electrifying the crowd and the city as it was struggling to recover.
He also thanked Hall of Fame manager Tommy Lasorda.
Advertisement
He said he hopes he’s remembered for how hard he played – both as a Silver Slugger at the plate and a 10-time, wall-crashing Gold Glove center fielder. But when you go through adversity, when a couple goes through frustrations, or they go through a bankruptcy, or they have bills-all these things, you see a person’s true colors. “One problem: How come when you won, all my friends knew about it, and we didn’t even have cellphones back then?” From 2001-04 he averaged fewer than 80 games played per year while suffering through hamstring tears, knee problems, a dislocated shoulder, and ankle tendon ruptures. “But at 19, all I wanted to do was survive”. “Just because I made it look easy doesn’t mean that it was. From the first pitch until the last”.
