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This Day In Sports…July 24, 2016, 10 years ago today:
Ken Griffey Jr. is inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, becoming the first player officially representing the Seattle Mariners to be enshrined in Cooperstown. Griffey had been elected to the Hall in January of that year with 99.3 percent of the vote, eclipsing the record of 98.8 percent set by Tom Seaver in 1992. Griffey, who was inducted with catcher Mike Piazza, hit 630 home runs during his 22-year big league career. “Junior” was the unanimous pick as American League MVP in 1997 when he hit .304 with 56 homers and 147 runs batted in.
Junior’s list of accomplishments in lengthy, so we’ll go Cliff Notes here. In 1993, Griffey homered in eight consecutive games to tie the MLB record held by Don Mattingly and Dale Long. And in 1995 came what they call “The Double” in Mariners lore. In the ALDS against the New York Yankees, Seattle icon Edgar Martinez laced a double into the leftfield corner in the bottom of the 11th in the deciding Game 5, and Junior sprinted all the way around from first base, sliding home with the winning run.
Griffey had impeccable timing, whether he meant to or not. He clubbed his 500th career home run on Father’s Day in 2004 while playing for the Cincinnati Reds, with his dad Ken Griffey Sr. watching from the stands. The father-son thing was a story in itself. The duo played 51 games together for the M’s in 1990 and 1991, becoming the first father-son combo in big league history to do so. The highlight came in September, 1990, when they hit back-to-back home runs.
Twenty-two of the games featured Griffey Sr. in left field and Griffey Jr. alongside in center. Griffey Sr. said that in one of the early games in that memorable set, he told The Kid, “I’m gonna cover three square feet, and the rest is yours.” In another contest, Griffey Sr. squared up to catch a routine fly ball in left, but Junior sprinted all the way over from center and snatched it. When the pair got to the dugout, Dad looked over and said, “Come here…you’re grounded.” He also confiscated Junior’s car keys on the spot.
Griffey’s first season of minor league baseball was in the Northwest League with the Bellingham Mariners in 1987. He actually played against the Boise Hawks in their first year as a franchise—not at Memorial Stadium, but at Wigle Field at Borah High School, where the Hawks played their first two seasons. Griffey batted .313 and hit 14 homers for Bellingham that summer. He made the Seattle roster out of spring training two years later at the age of 19 and made his debut on April 3, 1989.
(Tom Scott hosts the Scott Slant segment during the football season on KTVB’s Sunday Sports Extra. He also anchors four sports segments each weekday on 95.3 FM KTIK and one on News/Talk KBOI. His Scott Slant column runs every Wednesday.)
