Griffey should be a shoo-in for Comeback Player of the Year. Andy Lyons/Getty Images

Ken Griffey Jr., is on a roll, so good luck shutting him up.

It is a balmy afternoon in Atlanta, and the Reds center fielder, a born raconteur, is immersed in one of his rambling monologues, which on this day bounces from topics ranging from the troops in Iraq to the 2014 Heisman race to his cooking skills. At this very moment, Griffey is talking about how his 11-year-old son, Trey, plays on the same Pop Warner team with Barry Larkin's son, Shane, since they live in the same Orlando neighborhood, just down the road from each other -- in the same hood where pals Shaq and Tiger have homes.

Suddenly an Outback Steakhouse commercial flashes on a nearby television set. "Ahhhh, that's how I make my steaks," he says. I ask Griffey if he cooks. Griffey's eyes widen. "You ever had deep-fried turkey?" he asks. "I make the best deep-fried turkey. Once you have it, you'll never want to have turkey any other way. I'll tell you what, one of these days I'm going to cook up some deep-fried steak in the clubhouse. There's a trick with making it, you gotta ..."

And off goes Griffey, suddenly channeling his inner Iron Chef. It is a rare and beautiful thing to hear Griffey's voice booming in his team's clubhouse in September. Not since 2000 has the injury-cursed future Hall of Famer played this deep into a season.

Griffey -- ranked fifth in the NL in homers (35), fifth in slugging percentage (.576), and seventh in OPS .946 -- is baseball's no-brainer Comeback Player of the Year (you can vote for the award on MLB.com). Still, his health status remains tenuous.

On Sept. 4, the day he stroked his 536th career homer to tie Mickey Mantle for 12th place on the all-time career home run list, Griffey hobbled into third base in the 12th inning and left the game with a sprained right foot. The injury caused Griffey to miss more than two games in a row for the first time in the season and now have many wondering if he'll be back for the rest of the year.

One of baseball's best (and overlooked) stories this year has been Griffey, and here's hoping he returns to finish his season. His Reds are lousy and long out of contention, but Griffey, after four injury-riddled seasons, isn't ready to shut it down. This season Griffey has been happy, healthy (until his ankle injury), and -- most of all -- hungry.

"What people don't realize in this story is how hard Junior trained this off-season to get to where he is," Reds general manager Dan O'Brien says. "The injury that he had last year, [the hamstring injury in which he tore part of the tendon off the bone], was a very, very serious injury.

"People don't understand how remarkable it is that Junior came back from it. What he went through was a surgery [having three titanium screws attach his hamstring] that had never been done before on a baseball player. We weren't wondering what level Junior would be playing at. We were wondering if he'd even be back at all. That he's been playing at such a high level this season has been truly a wonder."

Griffey's resurrection has only intensified the persistent speculation that the mid-market, pitching-starved Reds, who are on pace for their fifth straight losing season, will trade their franchise player, who has three years remaining on the $116.5 million contract he signed with the Reds in '00. This summer, reports swirled that the White Sox were close to a deal for Griffey, but O'Brien insists a trade was never imminent.

"The bottom line is that Griffey is a 10-and-5 player [who can veto any trade], so he controls his destiny," O'Brien notes. Says Griffey, "All I know is that me or my agent were never approached about anything. Other than that, I'm not worried about it."

With Adam Dunn, Austin Kearns and Wily Mo Pena in their outfield, the Reds will try to move one of their outfielders for pitching help in the offseason. It would be tempting for them to deal the maddeningly erratic Kearns and field an outfield of Griffey, Dunn and Pena every day, but trading Kearns wouldn't bring in the kind of package that would come with trading Griffey.

Yet a Griffey trade is unlikely, given that he's an aging, expensive risk only a few teams could afford to take. With the Reds franchise currently up for sale, ownership would be reluctant to trade away the player who remains the best draw on Cincinnati's roster.