What Should Have Been: Ken Griffey Jr.

I was going through some of my old chests today where I keep things from my youth and I came across my Ken Griffey Junior collection.  There were cards, old articles, posters, starting line-up figurines , I even had his old Super Nintendo Game in there.  Coming up, like the rest of America in the early ‘90’s, “The Kid” was one of my favorite players.  How could you not be drawn to him?  He made the game fun again, everything about him was so easy and casual, down to his backwards hat and the cocksure smile that constantly adorned his face.  It wasn’t just his swagger, though.  Griffey was well on his way to becoming the best baseball player that ever lived.

I almost had forgotten how great Junior was.  There’s no doubt that his accomplishments will allow him to cut past the line and waltz into the VIP section of Club Cooperstown, which is the highest honor that can be bestowed upon any baseball player.  His career line of .290/.374/.553, as well as his 593 home runs (sixth all-time) and 1,701 RBI (20^th all-time) place him alongside the game’s greatest hitters.  He’s had one of the greatest careers of all time, yet in Griffey’s case it seems disappointing.

We’ll forever be left wondering what could have happened if he could have circumvented the injuries that plagued him throughout his career.  What if he wouldn’t have chased down fly balls with reckless abandon?  What if he wouldn’t have played on the Kingdom’s harsh artificial turf for the first decade of his career?  What if all those surgeries wouldn’t have slowed his bat speed?  These are the things we’ll never know, issues that will forever be left to ponder while we’re perched on bar room stoles or in the cheap seats.

His career marks certify his greatness, but they also fuel the ‘what if’ debate to a higher level.  We have the evidence to prove everything we’ve been speculating since he came into the league as a brash 19-year-old, just two years removed from being selected first overall in 1987 draft, yet it doesn’t go far enough to cement his legacy as the greatest pure hitter of all time.  From the time he hit his first home run in just his fifth game as a major leaguer, everyone had him pegged as the future of the sport.  But not in the way that we think Justin Upton, Ryan Braun, and Evan Longoria are the future of the game, no, Griffey was going to be Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, and Mickey Mantle all rolled into one.

As I flipped through my archive of magazine clippings from the early day of Griffey’s career, I was almost shocked at how high the bar was set for him.  Griffey has been pegged as a whiner and a crybaby at times throughout his career, but with an unsatisfied nation always pushing him it’s easy to understand why he got a little snippy from time to time.  The Sporting News captured the essence of his this perfectly in their article following his 1997 MVP.

“Junior could be better.  The Mona Lisa could use a brightening, Pavarotti’s high F-sharp could be smoother and Haagen-Dazs chocolate swirl could be easier to scoop.  No doubt Junior feels nitpicked, but greatness nit-picks the great.  Though he wears his hat backward, he is measured against those whose pants went on two legs at a time—Ruth, Gehrig, Williams, Musial, Aaron, Mantle and Mays.  He could become the Michael Jordan of baseball by taking it up a notch.  Or he could remain the Drew Bledsoe (note:  Bledsoe was widely considered one of the premier quarterbacks prior to being unseated by Tom Brady) of his sport by remaining merely excellent.”

Mind you, this was following his one and only MVP season, a year in which he hit .304 with 56 homers and 147 RBI.  Alex Rodriguez puts up similar numbers and he has one of the greatest seasons of all time, Griffey does so and he gets lambasted because supposedly he didn’t achieve enough.  That’s just how good he was, though.  Everyone knew he had the stuff to be the greatest of all time, the problem was, they wanted the end result now.  They didn’t want to watch him become the fastest to 400, they wanted him to be at 756,  Yesterday.

“All my life in pro baseball, people have said, ‘He can be better.’  There’s always a ‘but’ at the end of anything I’ve accomplished.  You get tired of people saying, ‘He hit 49 home runs, but he could do more.”
Ken Griffey Jr.

He had the talent, he still does, but we now know he will never achieve the things that his talent should have afforded him.  He was supposed to win the Triple Crown, break the single season home run record, and unseat Hank Aaron as the all-time leader.  Instead we still don’t have a triple crown winner, but the rest of these marks have been stolen by away puffed up, artificial athletes, that defy the natural capabilities of the body.  Most importantly, time, something that has been harsh on Junior, maybe even too harsh.

If fate wouldn’t have dealt Griffey a tainted hand the biggest story in baseball wouldn’t be the Mitchell Report, Roger Clemens, or Jose Canseco’s book.  The steroid scandal would still be at the forefront, but we’d have the poster boy for what could be accomplished by playing within the rules.  If Griffey could have played in 155 games each of his 19 seasons, this would have been the year that he broke Hank Aaron’s record if he continued on his career path of hitting a home run once in every 14 at-bats.  Bonds would already have Aaron’s crown, but who cares, The Kid would have been the people’s champ.

Yet, in a way, he still is, regardless of the certification that the records bring.  He doesn’t nearly get the recognition that he deserves.  To any high schooler he’s the guy that his dad always talks about that gets hurt every spring, but to the rest of us who know, who saw, who experienced the swing in its short prime, he’s the man that did it right.  In a way he’s heroic, he’s what we love about the game, an oddity straight out of generations past.  He’s what’s right about baseball.  In past decades he would have been likened to some tragic Shakespearean figure that fell short despite having all the god-given gifts.  It still is tragic that he didn’t accomplish the things the baseball gods intended him too, but he’s heroic for not falling victim to the temptations of the era. 

He could have taken steroids to get healthy, in essence flipping the bird at fate and taking back what his gifts entitled him to and no one would have blamed him, but he didn’t.  He sat aside as Bonds jealously marched by him on the leader board, as McGwire’s muscles popped the buttons off his shirt as he transformed into Paul Bunyan and stole the single season record, then again as Bonds stole another mark.  It would have been an easy decision to make, most people would have said screw it, Griffey didn’t, and for that I commend him.

Now at 35, Griffey still has his swing, which was once described as perfect by Willie Mays.  It will certainly bring him the seven homers he needs to reach 600, despite missing 700 games throughout his career.  He’ll continue to regress in an era where players ‘catch’ their second prime at his age, his brilliance will continue to be lost on the new generation of fans, and eventually he’ll fade to black, leaving all befuddled at the lost possibilities.

Even though his numbers may not certify him, those in the know, know.  We know why Lou Pinella referred to him as a “gift from the baseball gods.”  He’s the greatest player of the last 20 years.  Barry Bonds might have better numbers, but Griffey was more talented.  Alex Rodriguez is the only one that can compete, but Junior was gifted on both sides of the ball, as evidenced by his 10 straight Gold Gloves from 1990-99.  We’ll forever be left to wonder what could have been, but at least what could have been didn’t turn into what shouldn’t have been.  Thanks for doing it right Griff.