Ken Griffey, Jr.’s baseball career is about to come to an end, probably within the next month, according to this column in the Tacoma News Tribune . According to the column, Griffey, 40, who is hitting .208, with no home runs and five RBI in 23 games this season as the left-handed-hitting DH for the Seattle Mariners, will be asked to retire or will be released after he apparently could not be used as a pinch hitter in a game last week because he was sleeping in the clubhouse.

“He was asleep in the clubhouse,” one player said. “He’d gone back about the fifth inning to get a jacket and didn’t come back. I went back in about the seventh inning—and he was in his chair, sound asleep.”

The other player, who knows Griffey a little better, tried to rationalize. “He doesn’t sleep well at night, he’s away from his family, he’s comfortable in the clubhouse,” he said. They could have awakened him…”

It’s hardly a capital offense, but it’s a telling piece of anecdotal evidence. This isn’t the Griffey of 2009.

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