Griffey’s Casual Grace Drives Growing Legend

The following story was published in our Hall of Fame commemorative magazine, which you can purchase here.

SEATTLE—Standing in the rear of the press box at the Kingdome, a cup of peach frozen yogurt in his very well-tanned left hand, Jeff Smulyan is attempting to quantify exactly how much Ken Griffey Jr. means to the only team in the major leagues that never has had a winning season.

This is no simple task, for baseball in Seattle is no simple equation. Smulyan, head of Indiana-based Emmis Broadcasting, conducted a plethora of research on the Mariners and the Seattle market before buying the club last September. Yet now that people are coming out for Mariners games in record numbers, Smulyan plays the part of the perplexed millionaire.

“There’s no question that Ken puts fans in the seats,” Smulyan says. “But exactly why they’re coming to the games is something we haven’t determined. Is it him? Is it ticket prices? Is it something else? We’re very research-oriented, so I’m sure we’ll find out.”

A starting point, Jeff: It’s not the Mariner Moose. For all the fresh gimmicks your radio people have dreamed up, the single most compelling reason to step inside Seattle’s cement anti-pleasuredome may be a certain 20-year-old center fielder who persistently draws comparisons to Willie Mays.

The Mariners held a Ken Griffey Jr. Night recently, and passed out posters. Almost none were turned into paper airplanes, a hobby of bored M’s fans. That is the kind of pull, the special legend-in-the-making feeling, that Griffey evinces. He hits for average, he hits for power, covers center field as well as anyone in the game and runs the bases with the nonchalance of a stroll along the boardwalk.

And, almost always, in dramatic fashion.

On the day Smulyan was putting down frozen yogurt, the Mariners were celebrating the first nationally televised game from the Kingdome in the franchise’s 14 years. Griffey, hitless in his last 11 at-bats, stroked two singles in his first two trips to the plate, scoring both times as the Mariners went up 5-0.

Then once the Yankees had tied them, with a chance to go up 7-5, Don Mattingly hit a ball to right-center that appeared to be headed for the bleachers. The singles gathered—it was Singles Night at the dome—near the front rail, but the ball fell shy, hitting high off the blue wall and ricocheting toward left field. Griffey, grabbing the ball off-balance, turned in one motion and nailed Roberto Kelly at home with a throw from 350 feet that took one hop just shy of the left side of the plate.

The Yankees scored no runs that inning.

“I hope people can fully appreciate how great that throw was,” Yankees reliever Dave Righetti said. “That was a rocket.”

The top overall pick of the 1987 draft, Griffey actually was destined to be a wide receiver in the National Football League. That’s how Righetti and his Yankees teammates saw Griffey before he was The Kid, as an adolescent following his father Ken Sr. around the New York clubhouse. The hands that helped him to a league-leading six double plays last season—tops among outfielders—previously were used to menace the Yankees regulars in whatever fun-seeking way Junior could conjure.

On the way to the mound before the bottom of the ninth inning, Righetti passed by Griffey, who made some cute comment and giggled. Righetti, notoriously serious when pitching, did not acknowledge Griffey but proceeded to load the bases.

“I was waiting for him to punch me in the ribs or something, like he used to do,” Righetti said. “He’s such a young kid, he thinks he’s playing at the park.”

That pressure-free attitude is part of Griffey’s appeal—and his success. The American League player of the month for April, when he hit .388 with five home runs and 17 RBIs, has shown none of the anxieties that come with instant success. He may not be old enough to do some of the things most Kingdome patrons can, such as drink beer legally, but he has made a habit of eclipsing one phenomenal play with another.

“The kid is a natural,” Mariners catcher Scott Bradley says. “Guys like (Wayne) Gretzky, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird play the game in slow motion. The Kid is like that.”

More aptly, Griffey is the David Robinson of baseball. He plays casually, as if the game is less than an ultimate challenge. As with Robinson, the ingenious rookie of the National Basketball Association’s San Antonio Spurs who promises to be the best center of the 1990s, survival is not the issue with Griffey.

Since Griffey chooses baseball as his pursuit, his dominance is even more remarkable. In a game where the best players succeed only one-third of the time, Griffey has shown the uncanny ability to do what he wants. Eighteen of his 23 career home runs as of mid-May have been tying or winning run, including five this season. He doubled in his first big league at-bat and homered in his first Kingdome at-bat.

Critical situations—where, say, a team needs a hit or a run—tend to evoke a sense of nervousness. But at the Kingdome, with Griffey at the plate, it’s a sense of delight. The tension is of another amplitude, as if waiting to find out whether the illusionist will pull a rabbit or a bird out of the hat. This might be an overstated emotion, but consider the Mariners’ thorough history of disappointments, and yanking an animal from a hat just one out of three times seems downright electrifying.

“The great thing about being on this team is that every game you know you’re going to see something that you’ll have trouble believing,” Bradley says. “He never ceases to amaze me. He makes what me call ‘you-gotta-be-kidding-me catches’ all the time.”
Many of his highlight-film catches, perhaps not oddly, have come when the media glare is most intense. There was that acrobatic snag and crash into the Fenway Park wall last season, and the one in April at Yankee Stadium where he robbed a stunned Jesse Barfield of a home run while on a dead sprint. And, ah yes, the over-the-shoulder catch with the bases loaded in Oakland that reminded fans there of another Bay Area legend.

“My hero was Willie Mays,” Smulyan says. “I was 4 years old when he came into the league. I used to live and die with the Giants, so as far as I’m concerned, he was the greatest player of all time.

“Can Ken be as good as Willie Mays? There’s some similarities. The night he made that over-the-shoulder catch, that’s the kind of thing superstars do. They make the big play. But only the test of time will tell about Ken.”

Mariners manager Jim Lefebvre concurs: “He’s accomplishing so much right now, with such ease, that it comes down to how much he pushes himself. And that is a question.”

As early as his first days with the Mariners’ short-season club in Bellingham, Wash., reservations have been expressed about Griffey’s seeming nonchalance. On the farm, Griffey hustled with about as much vigor as the ferries do in the part of the country, leisurely catching fly balls with one hand when a two-handed approach might have impressed the manager more.

Part of being a natural, of course, is looking natural. But Lefebvre has begun to convince Griffey that even the best players find reason to fine-tune their game.

“I can honestly say the man has started to develop good work habits,” Lefebvre says. “He’s taking extra batting practice, and loves it. I remember last year when we asked him to do that. He said, ‘What did I do wrong?’ He saw it as punishment, extra batting practice. He never practiced before. He just played.”

Griffey, 6-foot-2 and 190 pounds when he finished third in rookie-of-the-year balloting last season, has added an inch and 15 pounds to his frame. The endorsement offers and boxes of fan mail are growing as well. The latest giddy note to Griffey is scribbled on a football in front of his locker. It reads, “You’re great. Hope to meet you. Eric Dickerson.”

Lefebvre is concerned with the adulation and predictions of greatness will turn into burdensome expectations for Griffey. Lefebvre, perhaps baseball’s reigning amateur psychologist, refuses to mention Griffey in the same context as Mays or Roberto Clemente or any of the others Junior has only heard about.

Griffey gives no indication, though, that he’s afraid of his stark potential. Baseball people may marvel about Griffey Sr. and Jr. playing at the same time—aside to Smulyan: C’mon Jeff, how about a trade on Father’s Day to get dad from the Reds?—but the whole experience seems to be just how the younger one figured it would be.

“It’s not really been stressful on me,” Griffey says. “I’ve learned to deal with it. I have no choice but to deal with it. I’ve been around baseball all my life, and I know you can’t let one pitch, one umpire’s bad call ruin your whole at-bat.”
Especially when another 10,000 or so trips to the plate probably are ahead of you.

Tom Farrey is a sportswriter for the Seattle Times.