It was talent, quite simply, that propelled Ken Griffey Jr. to the top of the baseball world.
It was his radiant personality that won our hearts.
Together, they created a sports phenomenon the likes of which this region may never see again.
That infectous smile. The rare ability to challenge tradition without seeming disrespectful. (Wearing his ballcap backwards during batting practice set a trend for a generation.) The unabashed love for a game that is such a central part of the American experience.
In a region that had rarely been more than a blip on the national sports radar, Griffey was the first true megastar — that rare blend of skill and charisma that cooks up a legend.
That his career ended without the spectacle that marked its beginning (he homered on his first swing in Seattle on April 10, 1989) doesn’t diminish any of that. Junior’s legend will only grow as his No. 24 is retired by the Mariners, and as he all but certainly enters the Hall of Fame in 2016 — the first year he’ll be eligible.
That legend needn’t be embellished. He hit 630 career home runs, fifth-highest all-time, even though the later years of his career were plagued by injury. The superhuman catches he made against center-field fences at the Kingdome and elsewhere will be recounted by grandparents who saw them as kids.
Perhaps most importantly, Griffey’s arrival as a brash and limitlessly talented 19-year-old marked the beginning of Seattle’s rise to legitimacy as a major-league baseball town.
It’s an overstatement to say that Griffey single-handedly saved baseball in Seattle. The pennant race and playoff run of 1995 that put Seattle on the big-league map was a team effort. (A beaming Griffey couldn’t have scored the winning run in the playoff series against the Yankees without Edgar Martinez driving him home, or Joey Cora scoring ahead of him.) Randy Johnson, Jay Buhner, manager Lou Piniella and others played a big part, too.
But Griffey was that team’s best player, probably the best in baseball at the time, and he was the leading face of the franchise. Without him, it’s hard to see how the team could have staged its amazing run in ’95, which convinced lawmakers to find a way to build Safeco Field, keeping the Mariners here.
Though Griffey left to play in his hometown of Cincinnati a decade ago, he and the fans who first embraced him never lost their love for each other. That he finished his career where it started was a gift for both.
Thanks, Junior. It’s been a wonderful ride.
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