THE COOPERSTOWN KID
Fittingly, Hall welcomes Griffey with record vote
Ken Griffey Jr. was elected Wednesday to the baseball Hall of Fame, receiving a record-high 99.32% of votes. Only three of 440 ballots did not include Griffey’s name. Power-hitting catcher Mike Piazza was also elected.
Ken Griffey Jr., superstitious as a ballplayer and unfailingly modest away from the game, has spent his life refusing to set foot in the National Baseball Hall of Fame Museum.
Three times he was in Cooperstown, N.Y., playing in exhibition games, but never would permit himself to even look at the front of the building, let alone walk inside and admire the plaques of baseball’s greatest players.
“The one time I wanted to go in there, I wanted to be a member of it,” Griffey said.
Now, the player simply called “The Kid” has no choice.
Griffey was elected Wednesday into the Hall of Fame, receiving the highest voting percentage in history at 99.3%, receiving 437 of the 440 votes cast by members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America.
There was an immediate social media outcry about how three members could leave Griffey off their ballot and that Griffey deserved to be the first unanimously elected player, but Griffey was his typical self when asked about it.
“No, I’m not disappointed,” he said. “I can’t be sad or upset. It’s truly an honor to be elected, and to have the highest percentage was definitely a shock.”
The answer epitomizes the type of class and graciousness Griffey displayed throughout his career, which spanned 1989 to 2010.
Griffey joined Mike Piazza as the only players elected to the 2016 Hall of Fame class Wednesday, and he was thrilled to learn he’ll have company. Simply, Griffey didn’t want the stage to himself. He also becomes the first
player ever selected No. 1 overall in the draft to reach the Hall, while Piazza, a 62nd-round pick, becomes the lowest selection.
Griffey, relaxed and showing little emotion, never let his composure waver when asked several times in a conference call about playing in the steroid era. He was a 13-time All- Star and 10-time Gold Glove winner who hit 630 home runs but the only player with more than 500 homers during his era who never had scintilla of suspicion that he used performance-enhancing drugs.
So when asked whether he thought Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens belong in the Hall of Fame, he tiptoed around the questions, talked about their achievements before any PED accusations and declined to answer whether he would vote for them if given the opportunity.
“It’s a no-win situation,” said Brian Goldberg, Griffey’s longtime agent. “That’s why Junior never wanted to say much about it publicly. Even in private, he never did dwell on it, (never) saying, ‘Well, if these guys weren’t doing this, I’d have these many homers.’ “It’s just not him.” Sure, it privately bothered him to see so many of his contemporaries use PEDs, but Griffey refused to succumb to pity. It was no different than the estimated 1,500-plus plate appearances he missed because of injuries from 2001 to 2006, ruining any chance to break Hank Aaron’s home run record before Bonds did it. Or having a league-leading 40 home runs in the first 111 games of 1994, only for the players’ strike to wipe out the rest of the season, ending his bid to break Roger Maris’ season homer record before Mark McGwire did it.
“It wasn’t that I had to have help,” Griffey said. “If you couldn’t do it on your own, so be it.”
He was quite content to be the player known simply as The Kid, the face of baseball for two decades who wore his baseball cap backward with a smile that lit up Mount Rainier, whose stature as the game’s most popular player was verified by his record-setting Hall of Fame voting percentage.
Remember, this is the guy who received 55 million All- Star votes throughout his career, was a write-in candidate for president in 1996 during Nike’s promotional tour, appeared on The Simp
sons, was on the cover of Wheaties boxes, had a Nintendo video game, originated the idea to have every player wear No. 42 on Jackie Robinson Day, and even hit seven career home runs on Mother’s Day in honor of his mom, Birdie.
Oh yeah, and he also happened to help save a baseball franchise.
“They say that Yankee Stadium is the House that Babe Ruth built,” former Seattle Mariners president Chuck Armstrong said. “Well, Safeco Field is the stadium that Ken Griffey Jr. built.
“We wouldn’t have baseball in Seattle, or Safeco Field, without Kenny. It’s hard to overstate the overall importance that he had on this franchise and the entire community.”
Armstrong, his voice cracking simply talking about Griffey, was in charge of the Mariners organization when they decided to draft and sign Griffey with the first overall pick in 1987. Even today, he says he’ll be forever indebted to former general manager Dick Balderson and scouts Roger Jongewaard, Bob Harrison and Tom Mooney. They’re the ones who recommended the organization sign him instead of pitchers Mike Harkey, Mark Merchant or Willie Banks.
It was the greatest decision in Mariners history, forging a bond in a community that’s so rare in professional sports, where the same men who were his bosses also were his closest friends.
“My wife, Susan, and I view him as a surrogate son,” Armstrong told USA TODAY Sports. “He’s just such a wonderful human being. He cares about other people, he’s a very thoughtful person, family-oriented, and he embodies all of the right values, while being a superstar at the same time.
“He’s not only what you want every player to be like, but for your own son to be.
“I get goose bumps just talking about him.”
Just in case Griffey had any doubts about Seattle’s love affair with him and his impact in the community, it was fortified when he returned as a member of the Cincinnati Reds in 2007. He asked to be traded after the 1999 season, wanting to return home to Cincinnati, where he grew up, to be close to his parents.
“He was really worried about that, he was afraid,” Armstrong said. “We kept telling him not to worry, that we would have his back, but he didn’t know how the fans would respond.”
Griffey was greeted with a standing ovation with every at-bat. Every game was a sellout. “The love they showed me those three days were unbelievable,” Griffey said.
“I can never thank them enough the way people acted when I went there.”
This love affair with the Great Northwest and Seattle is why Griffey has decided to wear a Mariners cap into Cooperstown, and he’ll formally announce his decision Thursday at the Hall of Fame news conference in New York.
Griffey will travel Friday for a news conference with the Seattle media and will stay for the weekend. He will watch his daughter, Taryn, a redshirt freshman guard for the University of Arizona, play Friday night in Pullman against Washington State. He’ll be in Seattle on Saturday at former Mariners outfielder Dave Henderson’s memorial service. He’ll stay around Sunday and again watch his daughter, who scored a career-high 29 points two weeks ago, when she plays against Washington in Seattle.
He will then travel back home to Orlando, but his heart will for- ever remain in the Pacific Northwest.
The Mariners plan to honor him this summer and retire the uniform number he wore throughout his Seattle career. No. 24. It just so happens to be the same date as the Hall of Fame induction ceremony: July 24, in Cooperstown.
Griffey recently was made aware of the coincidence, but even getting him to talk about the Hall of Fame before Wednesday was no different from him discussing his career when he played. You could always get him to talk about his three kids, his wife, his parents or motorcycle riding, but rarely about his achievements.
Walking into his house a few years ago, the only visible sign that he even played baseball was a picture of him and his father wearing a Mariners uniform together. That was it. “I’m going to be a dad longer than I ever will be a baseball player,” said Griffey, who hired a videographer to record all of his kids’ games and school performances. “I always said I’m just a normal dad with an abnormal job.”
Now, he’ll be faced with another unique job.
Sitting down and writing that Hall of Fame speech.
And, yes, actually walking into the Museum and seeing his plaque for himself.