George Kenneth Griffey Jr. is born in Donora, Pa. He is the
first child of Alberta and Ken
Griffey Sr. The senior Griffey will play right field for
Cincinnati's Big Red Machine of the
1970s.
1981
When you grow up hanging around major league clubhouses and
playing father-son games against the Big Red Machine,
expectations can run high. After an entire season of Little
League, 11-year old Ken Griffey, Jr. makes his
first out. "I cried so hard they had to take me out of the
game," Griffey
recalled.
1983
After a game at Yankee Stadium, Junior and his younger
brother Craig are
horsing around with other Yankees' offspring. An
irate Billy Martin, then manager of the Bombers, tells a
coach to have
Ken Sr. remove
his children from the clubhouse. Years later Griffey still
finds the Big Apple hard to swallow. "I hold a grudge.
Any time I get a chance to hurt them, I try a little
harder." In 1993, Yanks skipper Buck Showalter criticizes Junior, saying his
backwards cap and untucked shirttails are signs of
disrespect for the game.
1986
At Moeller High in Cincinnati, Griffey emerges as the next
great baseball talent. Junior sets a school mark (since
broken) of 11 homers in a season, and winds up with a
then-record 20 for his career. "He has more natural
power than any high school kid
I've ever
seen," says Moeller coach Mike
Cameron.
June 2, 1987
The Seattle Mariners make Griffey the No. 1 pick in the
1987 draft and learn he's a quick sell: 20 minutes after
the announcement, Griffey signs with the club
for a $160,000
bonus.
June 17, 1987
The Kid works quickly. Fifteen days after he is drafted,
Griffey hits his first minor league home run with the Class
A Bellingham
(Wash.) Mariners. He whacks three homers, drives in eight runs and
steals four bases en route to being named Northwest
League Player of the Week. "When he does take over in
center," says Seattle manager Jim Lefebvre,
"it will be for the next 20
years."
January 1988
What price stardom? Racial slurs hurled at him by Bellingham teenagers and disagreements with his
father
prompt 18-year old Griffey to swallow over 200 aspirin in a
suicide attempt. His stomach is pumped and he is placed in
intensive care. "It seemed like everyone was yelling
at me in baseball, then I came home and everyone was
yelling at me
there," Griffey told The Seattle Times when he revealed the story in 1992.
"I got depressed. I got angry. I didn't want to
live."
March 29, 1989
So much for best-laid plans. Despite the Mariners' desire
to slowly move him up to the majors, Griffey sets team
spring training records for hits (32), total bases (49) and
RBIs (20), while hitting in 15 consecutive games and
batting .360. Lefebvre
finds himself telling a 19-year-old he's the Mariners' starting
centerfielder.
April 3, 1989
Ken Griffey Sr., age 39, signs a one-year deal with the
Cincinnati Reds, just as Griffey Jr. secures a spot in
Seattle's outfield. It is the first time a father-son duo
has played simultaneously in the bigs. Junior doubles off
Oakland's Dave Stewart in
his first
major
league at-bat. Senior admits he cried after seeing the
replay.
May 17, 1989
The Ken
Griffey Jr. Milk Chocolate Bar debuts on shelves
in the Pacific
Northwest. More than one million bars are sold, and dentists
everywhere argue that leaping, over-the-wall catches are a
leading cause of
cavities.
July 25, 1989
In the midst of a stellar rookie campaign (.287, 13 homers,
45 RBIs), Griffey slips -- literally -- in the Rookie
of the Year race. He breaks the pinky finger of his right
hand exiting a hotel shower, and hits only .214 after
returning from the DL on August
20. He ends up finishing third in the rookie balloting behind
runaway winner Gregg Olson of Baltimore and Kansas City's
Tom
Gordon.
August 30, 1990
Cincinnati asks
Ken Sr. to retire. He instead seeks a release, gets it, and
latches on
with Seattle. Two nights later, history is made again when
Ken Sr. and Ken Jr., father and son, bat in the same lineup.
His first time up, Senior singles. Junior
comes up next and singles, too. The following month
Junior and Senior hit back-to-back homers off
California's Kirk McCaskill. Ken Sr. doesn't hang 'em up until November 1991.
January 7, 1991
Both Griffeys appear in an episode of
Harry and the
Hendersons. Their shtick is teaching Harry -- Bigfoot, if you
will -- the fundamentals of baseball. By the show's end,
the audience cheers Harry's newfound ability to hit the
cutoff man. Junior also appears in a February 1992 episode
of
The
Simpsons, doing the voice of a ringer for the nuclear plant
softball team, who is unable to play after suffering acute
gigantism from drinking too much nerve
tonic.
July 14, 1992
Junior launches an All-Star Game home run at San Diego's
Jack Murphy Stadium off Chicago's Greg Maddux. It marks the
first time in history a father and a son have smacked
All-Star round-trippers -- Senior hit one off the
Yankees' Tommy John on July 8,
1980. After becoming the first Mariner elected to start the
All-Star Game, Junior takes home the game's MVP
award.
