Kuzul

From George A. King III :

The Mariners are scouting the Yankees’ organization thoroughly.

They had two scouts recently in Charleston (Single-A). Last night they had two scouts watching Trenton play Reading, one of whom was former Yankees minor league coach Bill Masse.

They are slated to have at least one scout check on SWB shortly.

The immediate need for the Yankees is a bat, but if the Mariners are going to shop Lee the Yankees will be interested because he will be a free agent after the season.

Of course, he is making $9 million this season, so even if the deal is made at the July 31 deadline the Yankees would have to pay him three million.

If they were to give up Austin Romine or Jesus Montero, the Yankees would need assurances that Lee would sign an extension and not become a free agent.

As for adding a bat, the Yankees have scouts following the Astros in the event that the club holds a fire sale and wants to move first baseman Lance Berkman, who would be a DH for the Yankees.

There are obstacles to adding Berkman, or any other high-priced bat like the White Sox’s Paul Konerko, because of the money owed.

Berkman is making $14.5 million this year and Konerko $12 million. Berkman has a complete no-trade clause; Konerko a limited no-trade.

According to King, “a person familiar with Seattle’s thought process if they deal with the Yankees” said the Mariners would “want one of the catchers and (Eduardo) Nunez,’’ for Lee.

I actually don’t think the Yankees will be in on Lee, at least not until the winter when they have the possibility to sign him as a free agent. Until then, I think the Yankees are pretty content with their starting rotation.

Andy Pettitte and Phil Hughes have been two of the best starters in the league. A.J. Burnett has been good, and while CC Sabathia has struggled, I’m sure nobody in the organization is too worried about him. On top of that, Javier Vazquez is throwing the ball a lot better these days.

As far as pitching goes, I think the Yankees should be focusing on a reliever to help sure up this bullpen.

To me that’s the only major flaw in this team.

Regarding Berkman and Konerko, the Yankees could land either player if they want to take on a decent amount, though I’m not sure they want to do that right now.

However, if they get to a point where a big bat will get them over the hump, their minds would change quickly.

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Ken Griffey Jr.’s retirement has inspired seemingly every sportswriter in America to recall their fondest memories of baseball’s golden child.

More importantly, Griffey continues to be hailed, now more than ever, as the league’s only steroid-free star of the Steroid Era.  

So, the question here is simple: Why?

The only real persuasive evidence anyone can argue in Griffey’s case is his slim physique. That’s it. But head over to Google Images and type in the names of these suspected users: Edinson Volquez, Paul Byrd, Gary Matthews Jr., Jose Guillen and Rick Ankiel.

All of them have been implicated as steroid users, but even with an extended look, none of them appear to be significantly bigger than Griffey, if they are bigger at all.

Physical appearance aside, Griffey posted far superior numbers to almost everyone in the Steroids Era.

He smacked 630 career homers, good enough for fifth all-time and placing him second to only one Steroids Era player: Barry Bonds. Griffey placed in the league’s top 10 in slugging percentage 10 times, including a stretch of nine years out of 10.

Not even the era’s poster children, Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire, can boast a matching résumé.

Don’t forget that Griffey posted these numbers against pitchers who appear to have been juicing as much as everyone else.

Throughout his illustrious career, Junior also made some of the most mesmerizing catches of all time. He robbed home runs while slamming into the outfield wall and stretched out his limbs to their last tendons to make diving grabs.

Griffey displayed elite athletic ability for the duration of his 21-year career.

So, Griffey’s numbers triumph those of almost every Steroids Era player, and the athleticism he displayed in the outfield is unmatched. Yet because the future Hall of Famer does not have muscles bulging from his neck and his biceps do not resemble something from a bodybuilding competition, he evades every performance-enhancing drug conversation.  

When he is included in one of the conversations, he is designated as “the one great player from the last 25 years who didn’t juice” (oftentimes alongside Derek Jeter).

Oddly enough, Lance Armstrong, who resembles a twig more than he resembles a PED abuser, has been under constant scrutiny and suspicion, long before the recent allegations of his former teammate Floyd Landis surfaced.

You might say, “Oh, but isn’t every rider in the Tour de France juicing?” Well, haven’t we been taught to suspect and more or less just assume every baseball player from the Steroids Era is guilty before proven innocent?

Some might point to Ken Griffey Sr.’s presence in the locker room during Junior’s early days in the majors as an explanation for his supposed steroid-free career, but Senior only shared the clubhouse with Junior for two seasons. Others might point to his lengthy list of injuries as evidence against any performance-enhancing drug use.

Now, in no way should we start looking at Griffey as a user simply because he posted great numbers (and in no way am I saying Griffey used steroids). After all, he never tested positive and was never named in any reports or connected to any shady doctors.

But the issue here is that Griffey played in the Steroids Era. He played right from its suspected beginning into its tail end. In that time, he posted not only the best numbers of the era, but of all time.

Griffey should not be exempt from steroids discussion merely because he is skinny.

Barry Bonds never tested positive, yet has emerged as the face of the Steroids Era. Of course, Bonds was connected to BALCO, and Griffey’s name remains clean, but he still should come under the same suspicion many other unconnected players from the era have.

It is time to celebrate the retirement of what may have been one of the greatest careers in baseball history, but when the dust settles, Griffey’s name should not sit alone as the only star who did not juice.

Especially when we have been trained to believe that every player from the Steroids Era did just that.

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Last Wednesday, Ken Griffey Jr., one of the greatest baseball players of all time, hung up his cleats, capping a historic career, both on and off the field.

Much has been made of his 13 All-Star nods, 10 Gold Gloves, seven Silver Sluggers, and one American League MVP Award, but lost in the fray of statistics and record books (in which Griffey certainly plays a dominant role), are the little things that made Ken Griffey Jr.’s career so great.

Growing up as a Mariners fan 1990s, I had the pleasure of witnessing the most epic moments in Mariners history. I saw the Kingdome, the Unit No-No (and the lesser-remembered Bosio No-No), Jay Buhner Hair Nights, and of course, the Ken Griffey Jr. Era of Seattle Mariners baseball.

As Jeff Sullivan of Lookout Landing wrote, “The experience of watching Ken Griffey Jr. rise in Seattle just seems like one of those things every Mariner fan should have in common.” Jeff was lamenting his long-distance admiration of Griffey in the 1990s, and eloquently explained a perceived Mariners fan rite of passage. Of course, Jeff Sullivan is one of the greatest Mariners’ minds in the business, and he has more than compensated for being far away from The Kid in the 1990s, but I found his statement concerning the Griffey Era remarkable.

Everyone knows about The Double, the Father/Son Homers, and The Wrist-Breaking Catch. What made Griffey’s run in Seattle so epic, however, was the little things like grinning, shimmying, shaking, and play-making.

So here is your forum, baseball fans, to share your Ken Griffey Jr. story. I encourage each reader to comment below with their “Ken Griffey Jr. moment.”

Here is my Ken Griffey Jr. moment:

I grew up in Bellingham, Washington, about 90 miles north of Seattle. Naturally, I grew up a Seattle Mariners fan, but being 90 miles from the Mariners had its drawbacks. 90 miles is close enough to go to games every now and then, but getting home after a 7:00 p.m. game was a task (midnight at best), and it took our best persuasive techniques to get my parents to take us down to the ballpark.

This being the case, most of the landmark Seattle Mariners’ moments came were viewed though my television, including all of the above-mentioned events (Unit No-No, etc.). It was not until I moved to Seattle in 2009, that I began attending Mariners’ games on a regular basis. Luckily, in the last year of Ken Griffey Jr.’s career, I witnessed what I consider my “Griffey Moment.”

On June 19, 2009, the Seattle Mariners hosted the Arizona Diamondbacks at Safeco Field. Entering the eighth inning, the Mariners trailed 3-0. Following a Russell Branyan solo home run, the Mariners sat trailing by two, with two outs and a runner on third.

As if from a movie script, Ken Griffey Jr. stepped into the on-deck circle to pinch hit for Wladimir Balentien.

Safeco Field erupted.

I, caught amidst the nostalgia, joined the resounding chorus of Safeco field, and participated in a standing ovation for The Kid. Concurrently, I leaned to my wife and her friend and said two things. First, that I had never heard Safeco Field so loud, and two, that it was a damn shame because Griffey was probably just going to strike out.

I was so delightfully wrong.

First pitch. Boom.

Tony Pena delivered a belt-high four-seam fastball, and Griffey sent it four hundred feet into right-center field. Safeco Field erupted, I was jumping up and down, and in an instant, I witnessed the charisma, nostalgia, and greatness of Ken Griffey Jr.’s Seattle Mariners career.

In an uncharacteristic moment, I almost teared up at a baseball game. It was uncharacteristic because I’m not a crying kind of guy. Not out of any attempted stereotypical manliness, but out of genuine physical inability. There are moments when I feel like crying, but it just doesn’t happen. Those moments, to me, are the same as crying is to other people. This was one of those moments.

I wasn’t there for The Double. I wasn’t there for a breath-taking Griffey catch. Instead, I was there for Griffey’s return. Ken Griffey Jr., and all his greatness, warranted a standing ovation nearly every time he was a late game pinch hitter. In this moment, he fulfilled every expectation in the stadium.

In this moment, Ken Griffey Jr. achieved greatness, both to the fans and the game.

Click Here to see the pinch hit home run , and tell me it doesn’t send shivers down your spine.

That is my Ken Griffey Jr. story.

Please share yours below.

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The Ken Griffey, Jr. Era officially ended on Wednesday, June 2, 2010 when the player known as “The Kid” retired from baseball after 22 seasons, 630 home runs, 1836 RBIs, and 1662 runs scored.  Griffey retires with one of the greatest resumes in the history of Major League Baseball.

Read any of the coverage of Junior’s retirement and you’ll begin to piece together the narrative of his career.  Griffey was drafted No. 1 overall in 1988 by the Seattle Mariners out of high school, and made an immediate impact in the major leagues.

He played in the same lineup with his dad Ken Sr. in 1990, the first time that had ever happened. He was one of the greatest players of all time by the age of 30, and despite being ravaged by injuries for most of his career, he was one of the two or three greatest power-hitting centerfielders of all-time.

And he did it all without the help of steroids in an era in a league overrun with steroid abusers.

Except . . . 

Are we willing to say that Ken Griffey, Jr. never used steroids?

Why?

It is incredibly difficult to believe, in this day and age, that any baseball fan would be willing to assume that a major league baseball player did not use steroids simply because his name never appeared on a positive test.

After ten-plus years of “shocking” steroids/PEDs revelations, the baseball-viewing public cannot possibly believe that a mere absence of evidence is evidence of cleanness.

Remember how shocked and surprised we all were when it turned out Jose Canseco, major league baseball’s biggest star in 1988, had been using steroids?  

How about when it turned out that Ken Caminiti had won a Most Valuable Player award in 1996 with the help of steroids?

Remember how shocked, hurt, and confused we all were when Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, then Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi, then Rafael Palmeiro and Miguel Tejada, then Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte, and then, most recently, Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez, were all busted for using performance enhancing drugs?

It seems to me that, by now, we should have all learned that the fact that a player has yet to test positive, in all likelihood, simply means he hasn’t been caught yet.

Does Griffey Not Fit the Profile of a Steroid User?

Remember, 103 players tested positive in 2003, and so far the only names we know are A-Rod, Manny, Sosa, and David Ortiz. Assuming Bonds, Giambi, Palmeiro, Tejada, and Clemens would all have been on that list as well, that leaves us about 95 players short.

How can we say conclusively that Griffey was not one of those players?

It’s not like Griffey doesn’t fit the profile of a steroid user, because he pretty much does. Griffey’s career has so many things in common with the careers of guys we either know or assume were using steroids that it is almost embarrassing when people pretend not to notice.

We naturally assume that guys like Juan Gonzalez, Brady Anderson, and Nomar Garciaparra, guys who put up conspicuous power numbers before succumbing to a rash of injuries while still in their primes, were on steroids.  

Yet we blindly and willingly assume that Griffey, who couldn’t stay on the field for a full season from the age of 30 to the age of 37, was clean.

We also look at guys like Steve Finley, Luis Gonzalez, Rafael Palmeiro, Ken Caminiti, and Sammy Sosa, guys who went from relatively light hitters to major power hitters, and assume that they were using steroids (or, in the case of the last three, we know they were).  

Nevertheless, we look at Griffey going from 27 home runs in 142 games in 1992 to 40 home runs in only 111 games in 1994 and we see only greatness.

Then there are guys like Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire. Both McGwire (in 1993 and 1994) and Bonds (1999) suffered injuries that cost them large portions of seasons, but somehow emerged from them the next season stronger than ever.  We naturally assume, or rather actually know, that McGwire and Bonds mixed steroids into their rehabilitation programs and came back stronger and healthier than before they left.

In 1995, Ken Griffey, Jr., missed almost half the season after breaking his wrist early in the season.  The following season, Griffey hit 49 home runs in only 140 games, then he hit 56 home runs in each of the season subsequent to that.

Again, we see only greatness.

Can we ever assume greatness was untainted?

As for the long list of guys who did things no else had ever done before and then later turned out to have done those things while using performance enhancing drugs, Griffey is pretty much the only one on the list that hasn’t been busted.

Whether it is Jose Canseco’s 40-40 season, Alex Rodriguez repeatedly hitting 50 home runs as a shortstop, or McGwire and Sosa hitting 60 home runs with the regularity that some players hit 30 home runs, never-before-seen exploits seem to have almost universally debunked by the steroids scandal.

So why do we assume that when Ken Griffey, Jr. became the only center fielder, and one of the only players ever, to hit 50 or more home runs in consecutive years, he did it on talent alone?

The only indication we really have that Griffey did not use steroids would be the fact that he never blew up like a balloon, a la Bonds, McGwire, Palmeiro, Sosa, Giambi, and just about every other 1990’s Era slugger.

Is that, alone, a basis for assuming that a player spent his entire career without using steroids or some other performance enhancing drug?  Remember, Alex Sanchez tested positive for steroids, and he wasn’t huge. Miguel Tejada also got busted without getting huge.

So, what’s the point of all this?

At this point, it might be good to take a moment to say the following:

I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, saying that I have evidence that Ken Griffey, Jr. used any sort of performance enhancing drug, nor am I saying that I even necessarily suspect that he did.

What I am saying is this: Jose Canseco fooled us. Ken Caminiti fooled us. Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa fooled us, and made us look bad doing it. Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi fooled us when we already should have had our guard up, and Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez fooled us at a point when we definitely should have known better.

So why, on earth, are we so willing to be fooled again?  Why are we willing to say that Ken Griffey, Jr. spent his career as a clean ballplayer?  By now we should all know that the fact that a player has never tested positive for performance enhancing drugs, in all likelihood, just means that he hasn’t been caught yet.

For that matter, it is not necessary to say that Griffey was clean in order to pay proper respect to his career, nor are we required to raise the possibility that he used steroids in order to paint a full picture of his career.

As we remember the career of one of the greatest players of all time, perhaps we should say nothing at all about the subject of performance enhancing drugs. This is a player who retired from baseball after 22 seasons with 630 home runs, 1836 RBIs, and 1662 runs scored.  He was drafted number one overall in 1988 by the Seattle Mariners out of high school; played in the same lineup with his dad Ken Sr. in 1990; one of the greatest players through the age of 30, and one of the greatest power-hitting center fielders of all-time.

He did things that very few other players, either using performance enhancing drugs or not, have never done.  

Isn’t that enough?

We don’t need to make broad, general, and unsubstantiated statements about whether or not he used performance enhancing drugs in order to be able to remember him as a legend.  

For one thing, it just sets us up to be fooled again.  

And for another, his resume speaks for itself.

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A part of my childhood died Wednesday.

No, my dog didn’t pass away. My mother didn’t give away the stuffed bear my parents bought for me the day I was brought into this world. And my trophy collection is still intact on the shelves of my West Chester bedroom. Nonetheless, I felt as if any one of those things had actually happened.

Which is why when Ken Griffey Jr. announced his retirement on Wednesday, I very nearly shed a tear. Sure, his play had deteriorated in recent years. The recent drama over whether he took an in-game nap will weigh on my mind for awhile longer. But it will soon become an afterthought.

Baseball in my family is a tradition passed down like heirlooms and bad jokes. Chances are if you cut open one of my veins and let me bleed for a few minutes, a sunflower seed may escape my body.

My elders love to talk about how great the Big Red Machine was. They gush about what a honor it was to see Pete Rose play the game like his hair was on fire, or how Tony Perez was so clutch and how Johnny Bench was a strong as an ox.

But I take great pride in saying Junior Griffey was my childhood hero. When my kids ask me, “Daddy, who was the best ballplayer you ever saw?” I won’t even have to think.

The Kid.

I could go on about his tumultuous tenure in Cincinnati. Or how ownership never fulfilled their promise to build a championship-caliber team around him. Perhaps I could question why Junior only trained hard after he suffered major injuries. Maybe wonder why he never made it to a World Series.

And here’s the proverbial Junior question: If he’d been relatively healthy during the last half of his career, would he have broken Henry Aaron’s home run record?

I usually openly give in to this small talk, and wonder what if. After all, what kind of true sports fan doesn’t love to speculate?

Not today.

I wasn’t old enough to remember “The Double” in the 1995 American League Division Series, which featured Griffey scoring the winning run from first in the bottom of the 11th inning to beat the Yankees and essentially save baseball in Seattle.

When I watch the replay of Edgar Martinez’s drive down the left-field line against Yankee ace Jack McDowell, two things stick out. Griffey elegantly galloping around the bases, taking each base at the perfect angle and sliding safely into home.

The other image is after the players are creating a mosh pit home plate, Griffey’s head emerges from the bottom of the pile. He was smiling cheek-to-cheek, pure joy emanating from his smile, which reflected the way he played the game.

There are so many spitting images of Griffey. There would be times you’d see him gallivanting around the outfield during batting practice, shagging balls and constantly joking with his teammates.

I always marveled at his swing, which was nothing less than a work of art. I’ll never forget his Home Run Derby shot off the Camden Yards warehouse. Or his power to all fields.

As a defense-first person, I have no problem stating that Junior reinvented the way center-field was played. No ball was uncatchable, whether that meant diving headlong into the grass or leaping over the ball.

In every sense of the word, Junior was a baseball player. Not just because he could hit for average, hit for power, run the bases, throw hard, and catch anything in sight. But because of something more.

The Kid loved the game. And I think it’s safe to say it loved him back.

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Growing up, a lot of kids wanted to be like Mike.

Not me, I wanted to be like Ken.

George Kenneth Griffey Jr. had it all.

He had the skill at the plate and in the field that only others could dream of having, giving him that superstar label rather early in his career.

Unlike most other superstars though, Griffey also had the personality and charisma that created a likeable clubhouse atmosphere.

He was the perfect guy to look up to, and that’s why so many little kids did, including myself.

Robin Yount and Paul Molitor may have played in my backyard, but Junior was the guy that got me interested in baseball.

I’m now a capable switch hitter at the plate because I just wasn’t Griffey if I couldn’t look like him.

We all know about his career; 630 HR, MVP winner, ‘The Slide’, the back-to-back with his dad, the contagious smile and laughter, the 500th home run with his dad in the stands, all the highlight reel catches and one of the sweetest swings that baseball has ever seen.

He also won 10-straight Gold Glove Awards, to which you can create a 24-hour loop of all his great catches, and I would watch it for a week straight.

Griffey had his superstar status without the superstar ego that normally comes with it, making him that much more special to the game.

But perhaps the greatest thing he did throughout his career, was stay away from steroids and PEDs throughout the steroid-era of baseball.

He could have taken the road that so many other superstars took, who didn’t need to (Bonds and A-Rod mainly). Both Barry and Alex had the talent and skill to be the next greatest thing, without needing the needles.

Junior could have turned into a muscle mass and smacked 900 HRs, but he stayed true to himself, and his father, and played his 22 years in the majors clean, with absolutely nobody questioning the integrity of his 630 HRs.

As a seven-year old kid from Wisconsin, I looked up to the 19-year old ‘Kid’ in the Pacific Northwest.

I followed his career to injury-plagued Cincinnati, even though he was with an NL Central enemy. I was amazed he made his way to the Windy City and glad that he was able to finish his long career where it started, in the Emerald City.

Once back in Seattle, it was hard to comprehend that the 20-year old superstar that I’ve adored from afar was now a 40-year old veteran, trying to hang on to his youth.

Some question his early-June exit and wonder why he didn’t finish the year.

I think Griffey left at exactly the right time. He knew that he could no longer produce at the major league level with guys half his age. Junior left on his terms, nobody forced him to walk away.

For 22 years, I watched and adored the Kid, the game just won’t be the same without him roaming the outfield.

Thanks for all the wonderful moments you gave us in the greatest game there is. See you in Cooperstown.

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This week in the world of sports, the phrase, “all bad things come is threes,” was taken to a new level. 

Much like the film industry, which lost Gary Coleman, Dennis Hopper and Rue McClanahan in a nine-day span, the sport’s world experienced the retirement of a baseball icon, a perfect game sabotaged and the death of a college basketball coaching legend.

It started late-Wednesday afternoon when reports out of Seattle said the Mariners’ Ken Griffey Jr., 40, was retiring. 

Griffey, the first pick in the 1987 amateur draft, played 23 big-league seasons, hit 630 home runs (fifth all time), made 13 All-Star appearances (including 11 straight from 1990-2000), won the 1992 American League MVP (with five top-five finishes in voting) and 10 Gold Gloves (all from 1990-’99).

Simply put, Griffey was unlike many players we will ever see.

In the 1990’s, The Kid, played the game hard, fast and at such an extremely high level it earned him a spot on baseball’s All-Century team, which included Hall-of-Fame outfielders Hank Aaron, Ted Williams, Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Ty Cobb, Pete Rose and Stan Musial.

In the 1996 and 1997 seasons, Griffey hit 56 home runs and became one of the first players to push Roger Maris’ single-season home-run record of 61.

Unfortunately for Griffey, things took a turn for the worst when he decided to leave Seattle for Cincinnati in 2000.

Griffey had some respectable years as a Red but his iconic status, which reached its peak in the late-90’s, faded when Barry Bonds demolished Maris’ and Mark McGwire’s records. 

Injury troubles helped Junior fade into the background. Without much media attention, which is given to most stars that approach milestones, Griffey slipped past they 500-and 600-home run benchmarks.

After a tough start to the 2010 season, which featured a .184 batting average after only 98 at bats and an overblown story of Griffey napping in the clubhouse, The Kid called it quits saying he no longer wanted to be a distraction to Mariners, the team which help make him great and took him back, last season, even after his glory days were long gone.

However, on the same night Junior would call it quits and baseball fans, especially Seattle supporters, thought they would finally cheer for him like they once did, umpire Jim Joyce, in Barry Band-like fashion, stole the spotlight.

In the bottom of the ninth, two outs and a perfect game on-the-line, Detroit Tiger’s hurler, Armando Galarraga, got Cleveland Indians’ shortstop Jason Donald to hit a soft grounder to first baseman Miguel Cabrera.

Cabrera fielded, threw to Galarraga, who was covering first, and celebrated the perfecto… prematurely.

To the naked eye watching the television, the play looked too-close-too-call. Observers could only be saddened as first-base umpire, Joyce, called Donald safe.

However, after further review it was easy to conclude that Joyce was wrong, very wrong.

Donald was out by a full stride and baseball history was made, not in a positive light, but in a negative once.

New York Times writer Paul Clemens described it best on writing on Friday, “Galarraga went from becoming only the 21^st pitcher in Major League history to throw a perfect game (and the third in four weeks, a convergence of perfection that can be expected to recur with Halley’s Comet-like regularity) to one of countless in Major League history to throw a one-hit shutout.”

Pitching only four seasons in the big leagues, Galarraga, 28, has compiled a 21-18 overall record and a 4.50 ERA.

No way will Galarraga become a Hall-of-Famer, Cy Young winner or MVP nominee.

Sadly, Galarraga one glory moment will not go into history as one of the greatest perfect games of all time (Galarraga was on pace to finish his perfect game with less than five strikeouts and 90 pitches.)

Instead, Galarraga will be known as the pitcher that was robbed of a perfect game and, for years to come, Joyce will be the answer to many trivia questions.

Saturday morning, the trifecta was completed when college basketball’s greatest coach, John Wooden, died of natural causes in California.

Wooden, 99, led the Bruins to 10 National Championships including sevens straight from 1967-’73.

Wooden, also knows as the Wizard of Westwood, is also the only person be elected into the Basketball Hall-of-Fame as player and coach.

However, Wooden’s legend grew more after his coaching days as he wrote numerous books on basketball, coaching and life.

“(Wooden is) about a perfect sports personality as anyone I’ve met in my years of broadcasting,” praised NBC broadcaster Dick Enberg in an interview about the Wizard.

Enberg says Wooden is sport’s Abraham Lincoln or Winston Churchill. Many would agree.

Even through his 90’s, Wooden was still writing books and conducting radio interviews trying to inspire players, coaches and people to do the best they can with what they have.

Wooden is the Yogi Berra of inspiring sports quotations.

“Sports don’t build character, they reveal it,” and “Be quick but don’t hurry,” are some of my favorites.

Don’t be surprised in 15 years professors build curriculum around his philosophies.

When asked in a 2008 interview what the secret of life is, Wooden replied, “Not being afraid of death and having peace within yourself. All of life is peaks and valleys. Don’t let the peaks get too high and valley’s too low.”

Today, the sports world has reached a valley. Tomorrow, the sport’s world and its fans will begin working towards a peak.

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The Seattle Mariners were the busiest team in baseball during the offseason. Many felt that they had stolen Cliff Lee away from the Phillies in the Roy Halladay deal. The signing of free agent, Chone Figgins, brought excitement to Seattle. Minor signings of players like Casey Kotchman and Mike Sweeney looked like value picks. Then, they got Junior back.

It looked like the stars had aligned. At least on paper, the M’s were ready for a run in the American League West. Once the season began, the pieces that looked to fall into place, instead, fell apart.

Cliff Lee, poised to make Felix Hernandez’s life a lot simpler, took the scenic route to making his Mariners debut. Lee hit Chris Synder with a pitch during a Spring Training game, leading to a five-game suspension to begin the season. After appeals, the suspension was lifted, but only because of Lee beginning his season on the disabled list with an abdomen injury.

Lee has not been the dominant ace that he was expected to be. With a 3-2 record and an ERA just under three, Lee has been very average in only seven starts this season.

Figgins has been a disappointment for Seattle, hitting just .211 and striking out 49 times in 54 games played. Figgins and Lee account for two of the top four salaries on the squad.

Up to this point, the $11 million gamble on Milton Bradley has yielded a .216 average, three home runs, and 20 runs batted in. Closer David Aardsma has rebounded from his breakout season last year with an 0-3 record and an ERA of almost four. In 71.1 innings last season, Aardsma had allowed 23 runs; in 2010, Aardsma has surrendered eight runs in just 18.1 innings.

With so much promise, the Mariners are last in the AL West (22-33) and are the third-worst team in the American League, in front of just the Cleveland Indians and Baltimore Orioles.

The lone mentions in national headlines this season have included the iconic Ken Griffey Jr. Last month, it was reported that Griffey could not pinch hit during a game because he was sleeping in the clubhouse. This week, Griffey walked away from the Mariners and baseball, retiring from the game at the age of 40.

The Mariners now have an identity crisis and are realizing that the pieces that they purchased in the offseason aren’t fitting. Manager Don Wakamatsu cannot be pleased with his team’s performance this season. Considering the improvements that Wakamatsu made with Seattle last season, it is expected that the manager’s job is safe for this season.

For Wakamatsu and Mariners fans, it is sure to be a long summer in Seattle.

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Ken Griffey Jr. is my version of The Beatles.

For every generation there are cultural phenomena that don’t resonate with their predecessors and go unappreciated by their successors.

I spent about two hours attempting to write a fitting sendoff for Junior the morning after he retired.

I explained the inaccurate parallel between the end of a great player’s career and a funeral. I explained how I’d begun writing an article disagreeing with Dave Cameron’s USS Mariner entry entitled Respect , and that when Mike Sweeney began hitting everything out of the yard he killed my best argument for Junior remaining a Mariner.

I used the same tired clichés and comparisons between Junior and Babe Ruth that I’ve used a half dozen times each since Junior returned to Seattle, once with the Reds and eventually as a Mariner.

Then I realized, I no longer had to defend Junior using specifics. His career as a player is over, and no matter where a player falls or how far overdrawn his career was, or how terribly it ended, the debate is truly moot at this point.

As reality sinks in that we’ve seen the last of Junior on the field, dozens of articles reflecting on a great career have surfaced.

I don’t want to do that.

The reason I compare Junior to The Beatles is that I don’t like The Beatles.

I’m not a music guy per se, but I’ve got enough knowledge to avoid looking like a jerk in most social settings.

I’m obsessed with sports. I like listening to music.

That stated, I don’t like arguing about music for the simple fact that in almost all cases, I’m in over my head. The same way many of my friends’ brains spin when I reel off a handful of acquirable prospects the Mariners could receive in a Cliff Lee trade, my brain scrambles when they name obscure B-sides from indy bands I’ve never heard of.

But I’ve developed an escape hatch for uncomfortable music-related conversations, specifically, Beatles-related conversations.

“I don’t care for their music personally, but I respect what they did for music”

What the hell does that even mean?

I don’t know enough about music to make that statement. I didn’t grow up in the 1960s or 70s, I’ve never seen The Beatles live. In fact, the only Beatles album I’ve ever purchased was “One,” an album of chart-toppers that I bought for my dad.

Not only can I barely remember the names of any songs on the album, I’ve never listened to it, unless it was the music I ignored while I rode in his truck.

But you see, I’m not a bad person for not liking The Beatles (some of my friends may argue this). I just didn’t live The Beatles. I think that “I Want to Hold Your Hand” sucks and I don’t understand why it inspired so much enthusiasm and passion from men and women alike in that timeframe.

Even in retrospect, I’m confident that I could listen to that song a million times, and I’d never understand the passion.

Passion isn’t cultivated overnight. While the seed of passion may have an anniversary date for its planting, its growth and the final product take years to mature.

So when we realize that fans come in waves, there is often posturing, and a veritable display of resumes somehow displayed and quantified by years as a suffering fan.

1995. 1997. 2000. 2001. 2009.

The former four years respresent Mariners playoff appearances, while the latter represents the first year of Jack Zduriencik’s tenure in Seattle, which may eventually lead to years before Zduriencik became the team’s general manager being referred to as B.Z. (Before Zduriencik), provided he can weather the present Mariners struggles.

The truth is that while I aspire to quantify all of my sentiments towards a player and team using logical means, my love for Junior knows no logic.

For all intents and purposes, I’m no different than the 1960s teenage girl with a Paul McCartney poster on her bedroom wall who convinced her parents to let her stay up late to watch The Beatles’ United States debut on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”

I was nearly three years old when Junior made his MLB debut. As far as my memory dates back, Junior may as well be named Abner Doubleday, because I know no baseball without him.

It’s awful to watch a star slowly stop shining. But in many ways it is worse to be involuntarily stuck remembering when the star shined at its brightest.

I don’t know when Dave Cameron became a Mariners fan. I don’t know when much of the fan base became Mariners fans.

I do know that there was a large portion of the fan base that didn’t support Junior in the waning days of his career. At this point, there is no point in arguing the validity of such contrition.

If you didn’t catch the fever, you never will. There aren’t adequate words to describe the impact Junior had on the lives of people around my age.

For those that don’t understand the blind devotion of myself or others like me, you never will. But I understand that you don’t understand. Passion is hard to convey on replay.

Most of all though, Junior did it the right way. Call it fear of abandonment, but I hitched my wagon to perhaps the lone remaining clean cowboy.

While seemingly everyone else’s favorite baseball player was being named in the Mitchell Report, or by Jose Canseco, the only ink that Griffey received was on his ever-growing medical chart.

And while it’s become common place to think of “what could have been” when it comes to Junior’s career and injury history, the truth is, that while it may have lasted longer than many, Junior’s career is more aptly described as “what should have been.”

Players become injury prone and less productive as they grow old. And we want our athletes to believe, no matter what permanent hurdles, or inevitable obstacles they face, that they are one solid contact away from finding their groove and returning to form.

So in the ultimate modern day baseball story, it was Don Wakamatsu, a man who has managed baseball more than ten times less years than Griffey has played at the highest level, who may have told Junior his time was over.

It was an imperfect ending to an amazing career. But if 40 is the new 30, and 30 is the new 20, then in the age of steroids and scandal, imperfect but clean is the new perfect.

Hell of a career Junior, I’d have been there if it lasted another 22 years. 

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When Ken Griffey, Jr. retired earlier this week I realized I was officially old. 

I remember a night in 1988 when we took my niece up to Everett, WA to see the then Everett Giants play the Bellingham Mariners featuring an 18-year-old phenom by the name of Ken Griffey, Jr. From that point on I referred to my niece as a Griffey baby. 

She turned 24 earlier this year and works as manager of a sports club. So yeah, I’m getting old.

It’s hard to explain what Griffey, Jr. meant to Seattle sports back in the late 80’s. The Mariners aren’t exactly the best team in baseball these days, but back then they were one of the worst teams in professional sports. 

The Mariners were a replacement team given to the city in 1977 after a successful law suit against Major League Baseball for allowing Milwaukee to steal our original team, the Pilots, after one season in 1970. That law suit was to be the only big win for the team until Griffey, Jr. came on the scene.

From 1977 to 1991 the Mariners never breached the .500 mark for an entire season.

Adding to the fact that the team was dreadful was the stadium where they played. The Kingdome was a large concrete cylinder with all the charm of a roadside culvert with seats.

One of the worst nights of my life was a Mariners-Yankees game in the mid-80’s. Myself, my brother-in-law, and mutual friend went to bat night with five kids in town.

Back then they used to give the kids real bats and sometime during a late rally the kids discovered that if all 30,000 of them pounded the floor with their bats at the same time the Kingdome would echo so hard that the entire building shook from the noise.

The Mariners came back from a 6-1 deficit that night and won the game on a Tom Paciorek three-run homer in the ninth. That blast set off the kids in a bat pounding frenzy that caused most of the adults in attendance to miss work for an entire week. 

I later told someone that what we went through that night was akin to jumping into a trash dumpster and having a crowd of people whack it on the side with large logs.

And that was a good night at the Kingdome.

But when Griffey came to the team everything changed. It was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever witnessed as a sports’ fan.

It took two years before the team had it’s first winning season, and several more before the city built a new stadium. But almost immediately things got noticeably better for the Seattle baseball club.

Griffey was one of those rare athletes that matched the hype of his arrival. He was that good.

And when his Dad came to the Mariners in 1990 marking the first time a father and son had played on a major league team, the city fell in love. 

When the team started winning shortly after, the romance was in full bloom.

If you are a true baseball fan and you never got to see Griffey play in his prime you missed something special—because you really had to see him in person to realize just how good he was.

Whether it is the time during his sophomore season when he ignored the cut off man to throw out a runner trying to score from second on a deep single or when he tomahawked a ball several feet out of the strike zone for a home run that kept his record setting home run streak alive in 1993, Griffey was incredible to watch in person.

That doesn’t mean there weren’t controversies. But they were so minor and so “Griffey” that they seem quaint in this day and age.

One of those controversies was his refusal to sign autographs for adults. 

This was during the sports memorabilia hey day. It’s hard to believe now but there was a time in the late 80’s and early 90’s when people were investing in baseball card sets like Glenn Beck invests in gold now. 

Griffey got upset when he found out that many of the autographs he was giving out were for memorabilia sellers rather than real fans. That was when he went to his “kids only” policy. 

He would sign all day long for children when they flocked to him, but adults were ignored or waved off. Some people were bugged by that but most of us understood his reasoning.

The team won games and division championships with Griffey in 1995 and 1997, but they were never able to get over the hump and win the World Series.

In 1998, the team traded star pitcher Randy Johnson in order to avoid losing him in free agency. The team went 76-85 that year and 79-83 the next despite monster numbers from Griffey, Jr.

That’s probably why when he asked to be traded to his hometown after the 1999 season the fans of Seattle accepted it and wished him well. He always did his best for the city of Seattle and the city wanted to return the favor.

They welcomed him back with open arms last year despite diminished skills. He played decently in 2009 but this year he hasn’t been able to capture the old magic. 

I don’t think anyone was surprised that Griffey retired in the middle of the season considering his performance this year. He’s been less than a shadow of his former self— he has been, quite frankly, terrible.  

It’s always hard to see your heroes when they come back down to earth. I remember seeing Nolan Ryan in his last game. It was supposed to be his second to last outing but two batters into the game there was a loud pop that resounded throughout the stadium.

He faced two more batters after that and walked them both. I don’t think he came within a foot of the plate on eight straight pitches.

The old cowboy tipped his hat to the crowd as he left. It was then that I realized that Nolan was a very bald, middle aged man with a broken gate. 

I also knew he would never pitch again and it made me sad.

That’s how I felt when I heard Griffey, Jr. was retiring last week. He was a class act in an era when we seem to have fewer and fewer of them.

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