Catcher Mike Piazza was also elected Wednesday and will join Griffey in the July 24 induction ceremony near the National Baseball Hall of Fame museum in Cooperstown, N.Y.
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Griffey’s number is the first player number that the Seattle Mariners will retire.
It would be hard to say that the 170-pound Eckstein looked or played like one of the ones guilty of PED use-or Griffey and Piazza for that matter.
But Junior Griffey – despite playing most of the final years of his career in his hometown of Cincinnati – is Mr. Seattle Mariner. After 8 1/2 seasons with the Reds, he was dealt to the Chicago White Sox, went back to the Mariners for his last season-plus.
Two days after being voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame by the highest percentage in history (99.3 percent) and a day after confirming that he would go into the Hall of Fame as a member of the Mariners, Griffey returned to Seattle and Safeco Field. I did most of my damage here. Now I’ve got great friends who are from Japan to Australia, guys I get a chance to play with and meet and I call and text when they do great things.
Griffey was arguably the best player in baseball during his time in Seattle, including his only MVP award in 1997 when he hit 56 home runs, and 10 Gold Glove awards.
Still… Griffey injected some intrigue into the process Friday when asked, again, whether he wanted the cap on his plaque to face forward or backward in the style he made famous.
Piazza, who commuted from Cresskill, reinvigorated the fan base and their franchise for the more than seven seasons he donned the blue and orange.
NEW YORK (AP) – On their first full day as Hall of Famers, Ken Griffey Jr. and Mike Piazza talked about their dads.
As I stood there with a crowd of fans in Phillies garb, Philly fan favorite Garry Maddox walked up. “To be at the right place and the right time and come through, I can only think it comes from above”.
Piazza going in as a Met was a foregone conclusion, but there were still some who thought the Hall of Fame might step in try to prevent that.
Wearing a jersey with the date of the terror attack sewn on his shoulder between two American flags, Piazza stepped up to the plate at Shea Stadium and ripped a two-run, eighth-inning blast that gave the Mets a game-winning 3-2 margin.
The older Griffey played 30 more games in 1991 before retiring.
“We’ve got big plans, ” Mets chief operating officer Jeff Wilpon said. Griffey announced on Thursday that he would enter the Hall as a Mariner. “For me, I always sort of enjoyed reconnecting here in NY”. Manny Ramirez, Ivan Rodriguez, Vladimir Guerrero and Magglio Ordonez are eligible for the first time.
With 75% of the vote required, Griffey Jr.’s entry was not even close while Bonds, McGwire, and Clemens will need to trend upward in the years to come.
Suspicion by some that Piazza may have used PEDs might have kept the slugging catcher from winning election until his fourth year as a candidate.
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Griffey received 437 out of the 440 votes and surpassed Tom Seaver’s 98.84 percentage when he was voted in back in 1992.
