Ken Griffy Jr. We Hardly Knew You.
Friday, May 16th, 2008Since the start of April I’ve been steadily getting more and more obsessed with professional baseball. It tends to happen every spring and then I go through a phase where it stops being interesting right around the all-star break and then I pick it back up during the pennant race and into the playoffs. What can I say, the season is just a little too long for me to maintain focus for an entire season. Anyway I digress, so far a couple of things have come to note, my favorite team the Toronto Blue Jays have great pitching, a terrible manager and could use a couple of bats in the lineup, The Marlins are way better than anyone thought, the Yankees young pitchers are worse than anyone thought, and Cincinnati has too many outfielders.
The Reds best prospect, a guy named Jay Bruce, is stuck in the minors because the Reds have a bevy of veteran outfielders stuck in front of him. According to all scouts Bruce is one of the three or four best baseball players that is currently in the minor league. The guy is major league ready but the Reds don’t have a place for him on the everyday major league team. On the major league team the reds currently feature 5 fielders with significant major league experience; Ryan Freel, Adam Dunn, Jerry Hairston, Corey Patterson and Ken Griffey Jr. Of all of these names only one sticks out as a legitimate all-star candidate, Ken Griffey Jr. Well I’m here to tell you today that Junior is no all-star.
Ken Griffey Jr. reminds me of a kid we’ll call “Dave” that was in my class from grade 3 through high school. When I switched to my new elementary school in grade 3 it was clear right away that Dave was cool, he was naturally the best athlete in the class, he was the tallest of all the boys, and he was nice even though he could have easily been a bully.
Dave became one of my best friends through elementary school and all was good until 8th grade when we were writing a test and Dave leaned over and asked me for answers. I didn’t think anything of it, generally I was a better student than so I gave him the answer, we were caught and punished. In the grand scheme of things nothing happened to us, we got detention we had to rewrite the test but nothing serious. But I think that this mistake in judgment may have changed our relationship. That September we went to high school, and Dave was no longer the tallest or the most athletic. It seemed that while everyone else kept growing Dave peaked in 6th grade, he was 5’11’’ and was still a strong athlete but he could never really get down the more complicated high school play books for all of the sports team. By 10 grade Dave was out of varsity sports altogether, he was still a nice guy but he had become one of those people that was in the background more often than not. He was never again the best player on any sports teams, and he was never the life of the party. I only really thought about him because he recently sent me a facebook message letting me know that he was getting married this summer to his high school girl friend. It was nice to know that he was doing ok, but it was really the first time I’d thought of him since I graduated high school 7 years ago.
Ken Griffey Jr. and Dave both seemed like they were destined for greatness, but I will remember both more for what they became. They actually have a lot in common, both were super stars (in their own right) in the early 90’s who couldn’t maintain the success they’d showed as the years passed, both seemed to have pinnacled right before a move (Griffey to Cincinnati, Dave to high school), and both enjoy wearing backwards baseball caps. Perhaps the worst thing however is that both just sort of went away and became normal. They both just became people.
