Griffey interrupted

Junior's golden career goes green in Cincinnati

Think what you will about Ken Griffey Jr. Whether you sympathize with his four-year run of misfortune or take delight in it, know this: He is not on the cover of Sports Illustrated this week as an admitted adulterer and accused rapist.

Ken Griffey Jr., for all his faults, is still one of the good guys in sports. That’s "good guy" in the real sense of the word, not the superficial sports definition of how much time he gives to sportswriters and television cameras. In that sense, Griffey isn’t perfect. Far from it.

But considering that he goes home to the same woman every night, has never spent a day in rehab and doesn’t have a mugshot on thesmokinggun.com, he deserves a little credit. If not for his 481 career homers or his breathtaking defensive plays, for being a family man. Home run hitters are as common as sea gulls, anyway. The family man is the rara avis.

Insults and Injury Griffey's Cincinnati Timeline Eliot J. Schecter/Getty Images Feb. 10, 2000 Seattle trades Griffey to Cincinnati for Mike Cameron, Brett Tomko, Jake Meyer and Antonio Perez. Griffey signs a bargain nine-year, $116 million contract, which is heavily deferred and absent of incentives. Says Reds GM Jim Bowden: "Feb. 10, 2000 will go down in Reds history, major-league history, as the day the Michael Jordan of baseball came home to Cincinnati."  April 7, 2000 Even though Tony Perez's No. 24 is scheduled to be retired after the season, Griffey asks if he can have it. The Reds say no, fans get upset and Griffey sticks with his father's No. 30.  July 1, 2000 A dugout argument breaks out between Griffey Jr. and Griffey Sr. when Junior comes out of a game after twisting his knee.  July 5, 2000 A published report claims Griffey called ESPN to complain about the number of highlights the station was showing of other centerfielders, most notably Jim Edmonds. Griffey denies the report.  July 11, 2000 Citing tendinitis in his knee, Griffey sits out the All-Star Game in Atlanta. Fans question the injury, especially when Griffey participates in the Home Run Derby the night before. In that event, Sammy Sosa ends Griffey's two-year reign by a 9-2 margin in the final.  August 22, 2000 A profanity-filled argument erupts in the clubhouse between Griffey and Hall of Fame broadcaster Marty Brennaman, who questioned Griffey's hustle on the air. Says Brennaman: "I was here before you and I'll be here after you." Says Griffey: "Ten years from now, who's going to remember what Marty said? Half the people don't even know who Marty is."  Sept. 11, 2000 A collision at home plate results in a partially torn hamstring that limits Griffey to three pinch-hit appearances the rest of the season. He finishes with a .271 average, 40 home runs and 118 RBI.  March 26, 2001 Griffey aggravates the hamstring injury during a spring training game.  April 29, 2001 Placed on the DL after aggravating the hamstring, is out until June 14.  July 27, 2001 Griffey makes a veiled threat to retire if the Reds don't start spending some money to help the team.  Feb. 20, 2002 Former Red Pokey Reese says Griffey's special treatment hurt clubhouse chemistry. Former Red Dmitri Young says: "Once Junior got there, the team broke off into cliques. There were guys who kissed his butt and guys who didn't care to hear about all that materialistic stuff."  Feb. 22, 2002 Griffey Sr. resigns as first base coach, claiming he was "treated like dirt" by the organization.  April 7, 2002 During a rundown play, Griffey dislocates his kneecap and tears his patellar tendon. Reds fans boo as Griffey lies in a heap between home plate and third base. He is out until May 23.  June 25, 2002 Back on the DL with a strained his right hamstring, out until July 21.  Winter '02-03 Word gets out that the Reds had traded Griffey to San Diego only to have Phil Nevin block the deal. Griffey is most upset by the fact that Reds manager Bob Boone called Nevin to urge him to take the trade. Says Griffey's agent Brian Goldberg: "My only problem with the Reds is the lack of courtesy and protocol."  April 5, 2003 Griffey dislocates his right shoulder trying to make a diving catch. He is out until May 13.  July 17, 2003 In the first game after the All-Star break, Griffey completely tears a tendon in his right ankle. He is out for the season.

"The one thing people don't seem to understand," said Griffey's agent Brian Goldberg, "is that the baseball decisions are all secondary to Kenny. I know what the truth is, and that is that any person should be committed to their family first and their profession second. So many athletes are products of and continue on in broken families, and their families become secondary or third priorities. And in my opinion, that's just plain wrong.

"Without trying to point fingers or name names, what you're never going to see from Ken is criminal activity or scandal with another woman or questionable behavior. And those things are so much more important."

Griffey’s not getting much credit these days. Look further into this week’s SI, on pages 50-57, where there are portraits and bios of eight “no doubt” Hall of Famers. None of them is Griffey, who four short years ago would have been the headliner.

Are we to believe that Griffey has played his way out of the Hall of Fame, that he could be the first player with more than 450 homers not to make it? Is he being re-evaluated on the basis that his body has decided to come unglued? Or worse, has he pouted and brooded his way out of Cooperstown? Will Johnnie Cochran and Alan Dershowitz someday hold a mock trial on whether Griffey should be in the Hall of Fame despite his occasional moodiness?

Once tabbed on baseball's All-Century team and steamrolling toward Hank Aaron's home run record, Griffey flirted with the title of "Best Who Ever Played" and was a sure-shot first-ballot Hall of Famer after his 11 years with the Mariners. He was the face of Major League Baseball in advertisements and on video games. He was the jewel of the Emerald City, infallible to the easy going Northwest fans and coddled by the soft Seattle media.

In Cincinnati, however, a relentless series of mishaps and misdeeds has dulled the shine on his plaque. The latest was a completely torn tendon in his right ankle that put an end to the 2003 season. That's six trips to the DL in four seasons, four abbreviated campaigns that have derailed his quest for Aaron's record and all but erased him from baseball's consciousness.

If anything, you have to marvel at how quickly and fully Griffey went from being baseball's poster child to being plainly irrelevant. Jumped the shark? Griffey didn't even get a chance. He simply fell into the cage and was devoured whole.

Some call it karma. Some call it poetic justice. The Mariners rose to unprecedented heights after losing Griffey, while the Reds (who were one win away from a wild-card berth in 1999) have struggled to find any kind of success. There are many who think it's time for the Reds to cut the cord and let Griffey try to pick up the pieces of his career somewhere else.

"He really wants to make this work," Goldberg said. "While things certainly haven't worked out the way Kenny wanted … if Kenny had been healthy the past four years and hitting 50 home runs, it still wouldn't have meant a division title for the Reds. That's where people are just trying to find someone to blame."

How you choose to see Ken Griffey Jr. is up to you.

Ultimate team player or aloof superstar? Impish natural or tortured artist?

It's OK, there is no wrong answer. He is all of those things. He is one day giddy and childlike, the next day clench-jawed and steely-eyed. He'll say he doesn't bother reading what's written about him, then he'll quote a recent criticism verbatim and hold a grudge for weeks.

Contradiction has always been a big part of Griffey's life. One day before batting practice in 1998, with Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa pulling away in the home run race, Griffey said to me: "The thing that gets me is that when I'm laughing and having a good time, people say I'm not focused enough or trying hard enough. But if I'm not laughing and smiling, everybody wonders why I'm not having fun."

Just as Griffey has always had an enigmatic dual personality, so, too, has his career become the sum of two parts.

There's Seattle Junior, a carefree kid effortlessly scaling walls and launching moonshots into the cement sky of the Kingdome. The everlasting image is his mad dash with the series-winning run in the bottom of the 11th inning of Game 5 of the 1995 ALDS against the Yankees. As he is mobbed by his teammates, Griffey's jubiliant grin provides the only natural light that gawdawful parking deck ever saw.

Then there's Cincinnati Junior, a brooding loner who can't seem to get around the bases without pulling up lame with a lost look in his eyes and the sound of jeering in his ears.

"There's no doubt it takes it's toll," Goldberg said. "But you've got look at it where he is in the bigger scheme of life. If you know Junior at all, you know he has an awesome wife and kids and parents, overall he's healthy and he's probably one of the luckiest guys in the world in terms of the life he has.

"The baseball thing is disappointing, obviously, you can't sugarcoat it. But again, for all that he did for the first 11, 12 years and only having a couple of injuries … in the short term this is disappointing, but he's confident that he is going to come back strong from this."

But will he? And where? And should he even have to, just to bolster Hall of Fame credentials that should have been set in stone by now?

Go further in this week's SI, and you finally find mention of Griffey on Page 80. Two paragraphs recount his latest injury, analyze his diminishing offense and wonder what team would even want him now.

In our backward little world, that's almost more damning than the cover story.

David Vecsey's Voice of Reason column appears weekly on SI.com.

 

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