Results tagged ‘ Mariners ’
Mint Junior
Now, that’s a press conference you’d like to see in Spring Training.
An iconic player, returning to where the story began. An organization embracing him. And nobody apologizing to anyone.
Ken Griffey Jr. is 39 now. But he was a little bit 19 on Saturday.
“I was pretty much raised in Cincinnati, but I grew up here,” Griffey said in Saturday’s press conference officially announcing his return, and the neat part about that is that Mariners fans could only nod their heads, knowing that Junior was all grown up and back home.
There’s something to anticipate here, and it’s something pretty special: Ichiro and Junior in the same outfield. We’re talking about two truly unique talents, all due respect to Edgar Martinez, whose star should shine a lot brighter outside the Pacific Northwest, but the two biggest stars to put on a Mariners uniform.
While we’re handing out all due respect, Ichiro still has a way to go in certain ways. In fact, there’s one area he can’t possibly match Griffey.
“There might not be baseball in Seattle but for him,” Armstrong said of Junior. “It might have gone the way of the Sonics. Thank goodness it didn’t.”
And thank goodness nobody had to invoke the Fifth Amendment in this press conference.
Yakyu Haiku
That’s the American tradition of baseball in Japanese, and here’s an Americanized version of a Japanese tradition:
What roof can contain
that smile that outshines the sun?
Not Safeco, no way
Bottom line
CC caught the flu already? Well, it’s an annual tradition in Spring Training camps. Maybe he was just trying to beat the rush.
Party like its 1999, Seattle
Leave it to a guy nicknamed Junior to make going home look so good.
The reunion of Seattle and superstar on Wednesday just fits, always has, and probably should have happened some time ago. All you needed to see was Ken Griffey Jr.’s homecoming two years ago when he was with the Reds and the continued adoration last year while with the Sox to know: This is how it should be.
Yes, he’s a senior Junior with a recent medical log that doubles as his locker stool. No, he’s not the Kid anymore who spiked the wall and pushed 50 homers every year. Guess what? This isn’t the move to put the Mariners over the top. The top’s a bit beyond his reach right now, even back in the day.
Call it marketing, call it whatever you want. The Kid is back, and if there’s something wrong with that, there’s something wrong with this picture.
For one thing, it’s been a hard, hard sports year in the Northwest, don’t you know? The Mariners didn’t do so hot, the state’s two major college football teams went historic in a bad way, it’s hard for anyone outside Seattle to tell you much about the Seahawks and, well, the Sonics simply live in Oklahoma City now. And they’re as bad as their uniforms, so maybe it’s spreading.
But the Mariners are trying to start anew with GM Jack Zduriencik, who’s bringing in a rebuilding process from within and from the outside. With Ichiro as a cornerstone, they’re remaking themselves, but ready for King Felix to go all royal on the AL for a season and for a few others like Adrian Beltre to deliver the goods. If they succeed in 2009 and compete in the AL West, they will have surprised us all — and themselves.
It’s a pretty good guess right now that Junior’d be a big reason why. And wouldn’t that be something?
What’s wrong with a little flashback, back, back to the wall in center? Didn’t your mind flash back to that dog pile with the laughing kid at the bottom, or that smooth swing in its prime? Doesn’t it now? The No. 1 pick whose rise through the ’90s in the Kingdome led to Safeco Field, returning to the scene of the prime. It’s a good thing.
And so Wednesday was about stars returning, whether it’s to that place where it all started, or that place where it’s always been — see: Derek Jeter, holding court in the dugout in Tampa. They’re filing in to camps, one by one and in bunches. They’ll all be there soon.
That includes Junior heading back to Peoria, en route to Seattle.
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