The corner of 38th and Lombard in Everett isn’t much more than a 90-degree bend around the back doors of several new businesses – a bank, a physical therapy clinic, a development firm and a couple of restaurants.
It’s the site of baseball history.
Twenty years ago tonight, the minor-league Everett Giants opened their home schedule against the Bellingham Mariners at Everett Memorial Stadium, where 17-year-old Ken Griffey Jr. literally left his mark.
Griffey got his first professional hit, a home run.
Those who saw it knew the significance and today, outside the ballpark on the sidewalk at 38th and Lombard near the spot the ball landed, there’s a permanent marker.
Griffey, who the Seattle Mariners selected as the first overall pick in baseball’s amateur draft earlier in the month, already was forecast as a future major league star.
The game drew a crowd of 3,122, well beyond the capacity of the stadium in those days.
“Usually at that level of ball, people don’t know who the players are,” said Vince Bruun, who covered the Giants for The Herald. “But everyone had heard of Ken Griffey Jr. He was the first pick in the draft and there was a tremendous amount of interest in him, more than any other player who had come through there. There was definitely a buzz.”
The Bellingham team was always a drawing card in Everett because of its affiliation with the Mariners. This game was special because it was the Giants’ home opener and because Griffey was in town.
“We liked it because it called some attention to this little struggling franchise of ours,” said Bob Bavasi, who owned the Giants with his wife, Margaret. “There had been a lot of discussion about Griffey playing here and we had a big crowd that night.”
Bavasi, in fact, was helping position excess spectators on the grassy area down the right-field foul line when Griffey walked to the plate in the fourth inning. The Giants led 3-0 when Griffey batted with two runners on base.
Everett pitcher Gil Heredia, who went on to play in the major leagues for the Giants, Expos, Rangers and A’s, threw a one-ball, no-strike pitch and Griffey connected.
It wasn’t a mammoth blast that Griffey made famous in his spectacular career with the Mariners, and there was no right-field upper deck to plant the ball like he did so many times at the old Kingdome.
This was an opposite-field home run over the left-field fence, and the ball carried onto the street near the corner of 38th and Lombard.
“All I wanted to do was drive the ball somewhere,” Griffey said after the game. He’d gone hitless in his pro debut the night before in Bellingham against the Giants. “I had no idea that it was going to go out. It surprised me.”
Bruun also didn’t think Griffey hit it that well.
“It was not a jaw-dropping home run like he would hit later on,” Bruun said. “He just got it out on strength alone, and it kept carrying.”
Tom Lafferty, the longtime public address announcer for the Giants and, now, Everett AquaSox, remembers the night vividly because of Griffey and the overflow crowd.
“It was one of those nights we were way over capacity without the capacity to really know what we were doing,” he said. “I was kind of half-watching the game because, being in the minor leagues, there’s a lot more to deal with than announcing the next hitter. I was worried about whether the next contestant for break-a-plate contest was ready to go.
“I announced his name knowing he was the next great thing, but he was playing for the enemy so I couldn’t make a big deal about it. But you could tell he could hit, and when he hit that ball, it was gone.”
Bruun described the crowd’s reaction to Griffey in the next day’s Herald, writing: “The fans gave Griffey a good ovation, undoubtedly envisioning the day he’ll be playing for the Seattle Mariners in the Kingdome.”
Griffey already had been viewed as a player who could change a Mariners franchise that had wallowed through 10 losing seasons since their inception in 1977.
“I drove him up to Bellingham after we drafted him, and he was just a kid then,” said Roger Jongewaard, the Mariners’ scouting director at the time.
Griffey wasn’t an ordinary kid. He grew up around major leaguers as the son of Cincinnati Reds star Ken Griffey, and his powerful swing, footspeed and amazing defensive ability during his years at Moeller High School in Cincinnati already had labeled him as a can’t-miss superstar.
“He was special, without question,” said Jongewaard, who now lives in Southern California and scouts for the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. “That’s a college-level league and it’s very unusual when a high school player can compete in that league. He started to dominate that league.”
Griffey finished with a .313 average, 14 home runs and 40 RBI in 54 games, but he went through a midseason swoon that caught Jongewaard’s attention.
“I went up there late in the year and I got after him,” Jongewaard said. “He was swinging wildly and he was trying to hit home runs all the time. He was so good, he got bored with that league. The same thing happened the next year and we had to keep moving him up.”
Griffey played only one more year in the minor leagues before he reached the majors with the Mariners in 1989, and he was a star from the beginning.
Nine years ago, when Everett Memorial Stadium was remodeled and expanded, Bavasi decided to commemorate Griffey’s first hit as a pro with a bronze plaque. It remains embedded in the sidewalk outside the left-field fence on the corner of 38th and Lombard. It reads:
Ken Griffey Jr.’s first professional hit, a home run, landed near this spot on June 17, 1987. During the fourth inning of his second pro game, Griffey, age 17, playing for Bellingham against Everett in Northwest League action, muscled a 1-0 pitch from Everett’s starter Gil Heredia for an opposite-field, three-run home run to left. The ball traveled approximately 387 feet. A crowd of 3,122 was on hand. Everett won the game 7-6.
“We figured that this guy was going go to the Hall of Fame at some time,” Bavasi said. “Something good happened there and we thought, ‘How can we do it in a way that’s not flamboyant?’”
There’s been debate over the years concerning the exact spot that Griffey’s home-run ball landed, but Bavasi is confident the site of the bronze marker is close.
“We researched it hard and spent some time to make it as historically accurate as possible,” Bavasi said. “We asked a lot of people and tried to get a feeling for where it went over the fence, and from what we could gather, it landed somewhat near there.”
Inside the stadium, Bavasi also had a sign – reading “KGJ, HR #1, 6-17-87, 387 ft.” – built around the small auxiliary scoreboard showing where the ball went over the left-field fence.
That sign has weathered over the years and was removed when a new auxiliary scoreboard was recently installed. The Everett AquaSox plan to restore the sign and re-mount it next year.
The whereabouts of the baseball also has been in question. Bavasi said a man showed up at the team’s offices years ago claiming to have it, but it was never verified to be the actual home-run ball.
All that remain now are the memories of that night 20 years ago, and the bronze marker in the sidewalk outside the left-field fence – on the quiet corner of 38th and Lombard.
Kirby Arnold covers the Seattle Mariners for The Herald
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
