Joltin' Junior

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. That Jay Tessmer.

"Who?" Griffey said again. "I told you, I don't watch baseball on television."

Tessmer was just another bug splattered on Griffey's windshield. The Seattle Mariners' centerfielder had no recollection of facing him before, though he did fly out twice against Tessmer last year in their only previous matchups. As he waited in the on-deck circle to face the Yankees' reliever in the sixth inning, Griffey exhibited more interest in the people in the stands behind his team's dugout than he did in studying the righthander's funky sidewinding delivery.

When his turn came to hit, Griffey looked at a strike on the inside corner. When Tessmer tried to sneak another pitch by in the same location, Griffey lashed into it with that short stride and long finish that is iambic poetry in motion—the hands flashing through, the body torquing off the back leg and the bat finishing majestically high. Number 361—equaling DiMaggio and 17 short of halfway to Hank Aaron's alltime record—sailed on a pretty if only modestly long arc into the rightfield seats.

"Is that right, Joe DiMaggio?" said Mariners rightfielder Jay Buhner in the Seattle clubhouse after what was a typically unkempt 14-5 Mariners victory. "I didn't know that. Nobody said anything. Of course, Junior didn't say anything. It's just another example of how he's taken for granted. I mean, he just keeps moving along, shattering all these records and moving past these famous names, and he's just smiling and having a good time and nobody notices. Mr. Consistency. That's him."

The home run was Griffey's 11th of the season, tying him for the major league lead and providing the only semblance of normalcy to the start of a home run race spiced by comebacks (Fred McGriff, Matt Williams) and breakthroughs (Fernando Tatis). In the early going, many of those usually in Griffey's company among the big boppers have been simply human (Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Albert Belle, Greg Vaughn) or hurt (Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez). Last year Griffey hit the quietest 56 home runs in history. Only seven men have ever hit more in a season, but two did so in 1998. Griffey was a contented bit player in the Mac and Sammy Show.