Thumbnails | Next player Joltin' Junior: Ken Griffey Jr., in the Bronx no less, joins Joe DiMaggio with 361 career home runs and rolls toward the halfway point of a trip to Hank Aaron's 755. Ken Griffey Jr. was completely fooled. The greatest home run hitter, at his age, in the history of baseball didn't have a clue. A soft-throwing New York Yankees rookie reliever named Jay Tessmer made him look clueless. It wasn't Tessmer's pitches that fooled him, mind you. It was only the mention of the name Tessmer by a reporter last Saturday afternoon that twisted Griffey's mug into a brow-furrowed knot. "Who?" Griffey asked. Jay Tessmer. "Who is that?" Uh, it's the guy off whom you just hit your 361st home run, which gives you -- even though you're still seven months shy of your 30th birthday -- as many homers as Joe DiMaggio hit in his entire career. Jay Tessmer is the guy who made possible this wonderful convergence of Junior and Joltin' Joe at 46th on the alltime home run list, on the very grounds of DiMaggio's own heroics, Yankee Stadium. -- Tom Verducci Issue date: May 17, 1999 Photograph by John Biever Sports Illustrated on Baseball | Team-by-Team Reports Rookie of the Year Watch | SI's Inside Baseball Archive

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