PEORIA, Ariz. — On the first day of his new job as a special consultant with the Seattle Mariners, Ken Griffey Jr. explained his final day as a player.
More than nine months after Griffey literally drove away from Seattle on June 2 after an abrupt decision to retire, he told reporters W
ednesday that he believed he had become a distraction to the team.
Griffey said he waited until several hours after he’d driven away from Seattle to notify the team of his decision because he knew a lot of people would try to talk him out of it.
“One thing I didn’t want to become was a distraction to the organization,” Griffey said. “Second, I gave myself a little bit of a head start. A lot of people who are friends of mine would (try to) talk me out of it. I just felt that it was best for me and the organization to retire.”
The final days of Griffey’s stellar career with the Mariners had become awkward. His batting average hovered below .200 and then-manager Don Wakamatsu cut his playing time. In May, the Tacoma News Tribune reported that he had fallen asleep in the clubhouse during a game.
Griffey said he has no hard feelings, no anger at how the end came.
“Things happen. I’m not upset,” he said. “I think people thought I was upset at certain things. That wasn’t the case. I just felt it was more important to retire instead of being a distraction.
“It no longer became the Seattle Mariners, it became, ‘When is Ken doing this? When is Ken doing that?’” he said. “I didn’t want my teammates, who I truly care about, having to answer these kinds of questions day in and day out.”
Griffey had returned to the Mariners in 2009 during what became a special season for him and the team. The Mariners, who’d lost 101 games the previous season, surprised a lot of people by winning 85, and after the final game players carried Griffey off the field knowing it might have been his last as a player.
Instead, he returned for the 2010 season and both he and the team suffered miserably. Griffey batted .184 in 33 games and, while the end seemed inevitable, few envisioned it developing the way it did — with him driving away.
However, in previous years Griffey had always joked with the media that there wouldn’t be a news conference or ceremony to his retirement. He said he’d just post a note on his locker that would say, “He gone!”
Essentially, that’s what he did.
Griffey was asked Wednesday what he would say to fans who were upset with the way he left the team.
“You want me to apologize for something that I felt was right?” he asked. “I feel it was right for me to leave. It was not intended to hurt people. It was a decision that I made. There are some people who are upset and there are some people who are not. I had to do what I felt was best for me.”
“I had to do what was best to drive a car to Atlanta and be around the kids and let them do their things. Just because a part of my life is over, I still have other parts that don’t stop, and that’s raising kids.”
Griffey’s son Trey is a highly recruited high school football star, and his daughter Taryn is a star youth basketball player. And, he coached son Tevin’s Pop Warner football team. That helped him adjust quickly into retirement, he said.
“It was straight dad mode, picking the kids up and things like that,” he said. “I had a few days to think about it, but once I got home it was, ‘What do I need to do to make my kids’ lives easier?’”.
Asked if he’d spoken with former Wakamatsu since last season, Griffey said he hadn’t. Asked why, if he didn’t have any hard feelings, Griffey paused before answering.
“My phone rings,” he said.
Asked if he believed he could still be a productive player, Griffey dismissed the notion.
“That’s not important,” he said. “The important thing is that it was time. That’s all that needs to be said. I just went out there and played as hard as I could every day. That’s the only thing that was important to me.”
Read Kirby Arnold’s blog on the Mariners at www.heraldnet.com/marinersblog and follow his Twitter updates on the team at @kirbyarnold.
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