Athletes - Ken Griffey, Jr.

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	Athletes - Ken Griffey, Jr.

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George Kenneth Griffey, Jr. (born November 21, 1969 in the Pittsburgh suburb of Donora, Pennsylvania) is an American Major League Baseball player. Ken Griffey Jr. shares not only the same birthday, but also the same birth place as Hall of Famer Stan Musial.

Youth and early career

Griffey was raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, where his father, Ken Griffey, Sr. played for the Cincinnati Reds. The younger Griffey played baseball at Moeller High School, a Catholic school in Cincinnati better known for its football program. When he was in high school, he drew raves from Major League scouts for his batting swing, widely regarded as the best of his generation, and effortless fielding prowess.

In 1987 Griffey was selected with the first overall pick of that year's amateur draft by the Seattle Mariners. As a Major League Baseball player, Griffey Jr. has often led the majors in major hitting statistics, and he was awarded Gold Gloves for his defensive excellence in 10 consecutive seasons, from 1990 to 1999, while playing center field for the Seattle Mariners. Griffey played on the same team as his father with the Seattle Mariners in 1990 and 1991.

Griffey's career began with the Seattle Mariners in 1989. He won the American League Most Valuable Player award in 1997, hitting .304, with 56 home runs and 147 runs batted in.

It was during Griffey's tenure with the Seattle Mariners that he established himself as one of baseball's premier players, and during his prime he was considered by the media to be one of the greatest players in the history of the game. He was a multi-dimensional player in an era when more and more players usually excelled at either hitting or fielding, but rarely both. Griffey could hit with high average, batting over .300 for seven of the ten years of the 1990s, and hit with power as well, slugging 422 home runs during the decade. Additionally, his defense in center field was arguably better than anyone else in the majors at the time: thanks to his impressive range, Griffey frequently made spectacular diving plays, and he often dazzled fans by making over-the-shoulder basket catches (a la Willie Mays' "the Catch" in the 1954 World Series) and by robbing would-be home runs at the wall, leaping up and pulling them back into the field of play. For all of these reasons, Ken Griffey, Jr. was one of baseball's most respected and well-liked players during the 1990s, as one could routinely see his picture on cereal boxes and television commercials, and he was a mainstay of the All-Star Game during the decade.

Perhaps the single most memorable moment of Griffey's career with the Mariners came during the 1995 ALDS against the New York Yankees. After falling behind in the series 0-2, they came back to take the next two games and create a must-win game 5. In the bottom of the eleventh inning, Griffey scored from first base on an Edgar Martinez double, to capture the series. Although the Mariners lost the ALCS to now-manager Mike Hargrove's Indians, the moment is one of the most pivotal in Mariners history, and the series has been credited with "saving baseball in Seattle." A video game for Super NES, "Ken Griffey Jr.'s Winning Run" commemorates the moment.

In 1999, he ranked Number 93 on The Sporting News' list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players. This list was compiled during the 1998 season, counting only statistics through 1997. Had the voting been done after 1998, he almost certainly would have ranked higher: at age 29 (going on 30), he was easily the youngest player on the list. That same year, Griffey was elected to the Major League Baseball All-Century Team.

Departure from Seattle

Despite Griffey's elite performances and seemingly bright future in Seattle, he nonetheless became disenchanted with playing for the Mariners. Publicly, he expressed frustration over what he believed was a lack of commitment to winning on the part of Seattle management.

Also, there was speculation that Griffey was very unhappy with Seattle's new park, Safeco Field, a stadium in which it was much harder for hitters to produce runs than in the Kingdome. It has been reported that Griffey -- along with other Seattle players -- requested that the architects of Safeco Field bring the fences closer to home plate, but that, much to the players' chagrin, the designers built a park with deeper-than-average dimensions (especially in center field). This, combined with Safeco being at sea level and Seattle's typically dense, moisture-laden atmosphere, helped create a "pitcher-friendly" ballpark where power hitters like Griffey would see their batting statistics suffer. In the summer of 1999, it was reported that Griffey hit a ball that would likely have been a home run in the Kingdome, but turned into a long fly-out to center in Safeco. Griffey then stormed angrily to the Mariner dugout telephone, called the Mariners' general manager, and demanded to be traded that day. Although Griffey has always denied his concern with baseball records, that year it appeared that he had his ambitions set towards eventually breaking Hank Aaron's all-time home run record.

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